Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


THE LAST MAN: RECEPTION OF EVIL TIDINGS by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES

Poet Analysis

First Line: WHAT'S THIS? DID YOU NOT SEE A WHITE CONVULSION
Last Line: THERE BY HER MURDERER CRUSHED INTO THE EARTH.
Subject(s): DEATH; MESSAGES & MESSENGERS; MURDER; DEAD, THE;

WHAT'S this? Did you not see a white convulsion
Run through his cheek and fling his eye-lids up?
There's mischief in the paper.
Mark again
How, with that open palm, he shades his brain
From its broad, sudden meaning. Once I saw
One who had dug for treasure in a corner,
Where he, by torchlight, saw a trembling man
Burying a chest at night. Just so he stood
With open striving lips and shaking hair;
Alive but in his eyes, and they were fixed
On a smeared, earthly, bleeding corpse—his sister,
There by her murderer crushed into the earth.



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