A GRAVE FASCINATION

For as long as I can remember, I have loved cemeteries. I go for quiet reflection and to refocus my mind. I like to look at the gravestones and have recently started to learn about the symbolism of the images that are used. Recently, I was in a cemetery and found a stone with two poems. I have tried to learn more about who wrote them, but am unable to find out anything. So I have decided to share them in the hope that the minions who might read this blog can enlighten me. This is the longer of the two, but it is my favorite. I will post the shorter one on a later date.

BRIGHT VEINS

In vain, in vain, against the door of death

I raise my hand and strike: in vain, in vain.

No answer comes, no least remorse of breath,

No whisper, "It is I: I see thy pain."

Canst thou look back? Canst thy behold my tears,

The watercourse of sorrow down my cheek?

Are they as nothing, all those linked years?

Is death so strong? Is love, is love, so weak?

O, if it be, if death of love be lord,

The starry universe is worth no more

Than is a pinch of sawdust! What reward

to multiply the sun sextillion score?

If thy soul murdered with body lie,

Eternal wrong rules in the arching sky.

That luminous blood which coursed the world's

While she did live, is quenched and in its place

An inky flood, a fluid darkness stains

The earth and sea, and daunts the sun's sweet face.

Thy case is cureless, cureless is thy wound,

Save by the means that made it, save by the grace.

Dream not tomorrow will be brighter nooned:

This dark is come to stay: That moment gave

Thy death wound, too: thy fault is to be here,

Wandering upon a shore whence light is gone,

Which counts no beacon by which thou canst steer,

And where it boots thee not to pray for dawn

Cease, then, to plead, -cease, then, to weep and rave:

If tears could bring her back, there were no grave.

How do I thus endure to go about

The common street, my side empty of the

Aching I seek, in the aching world without,

That imaged ache, the phantom that is she.

Strain not that spark of madness 'twixt thy hands

that round some corner some day she may wait.

The book of death is bound with iron bands,

Thou canst not open it and change thy fate.

She's dead, she's gone, she has esaped from me!

I had not time to tell her lips goodbye.

She groaned, and sank into eternity,

And I but live because I fear to die.

One place I still may look for pain to cease:

One thing the grave can give, and that is peace.