Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers To touch the covered corpse of him that fled The uplands for the fens and rioted Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers? -- Come! -- let the grass grow there; and leave his verse To tell the story of the life he led. Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead, And let the worms be its biographers. Song sloughs away the sin to find redress In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings For long but laurel to the stricken brow That felt the Muse's finger; nothing less Than hell's fulfillment of the end of things Can blot the star that shines on Paris now. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE; A FRAGMENT by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE SPRING OF THE YEAR by ALLAN CUNNINGHAM THE INQUEST by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES WRAITH by EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ISAAC AND ARCHIBALD by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY by HENRY TIMROD A CANTO OF KHANS by BERTON BRALEY |