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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


ON THE DEATH OF MARY COWDEN CLARKE by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR

First Line: SHE WHO SAW BLUE-EYED SHELLEY PLAIN IS GONE
Last Line: NOW THAT THEIR LAST CONTEMPORARY DIES.
Subject(s): CLARKE, MARY COWDEN (1809-1898); DEATH; FINALITY; FUNERALS; GRIEF; LOSS; DEAD, THE; BURIALS; SORROW; SADNESS;

She who saw blue-eyed Shelley plain is gone.
Weep, little Loves and Venuses, ah, weep!
Snapt the last link with Epipsychidion,
Merged in the bosom of eternal sleep.

Gone the last relic of the days of Keats,
Gone the last memory of sweet Leigh Hunt,
Death with a thousand bitter gross defeats,
Doth our poor generation aye confront.

But none more bitter is than this which flings
Oblivion o'er the splendours of Song's saints.
I do not care at all what poet sings
Today, or what his elegies or plaints,

For Mary Cowden Clarke is of the dead.
Down there in sunny Genoa she lies.
The laurel fades on many a marble head
Now that their last contemporary dies.



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