A Mountain Grave

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)



Why fear to die
And let thy body lie
Under the flowers of June,
Thy body food
For the ground-worms' brood
And thy grave smiled on by the visiting moon.
  
Amid great Nature's halls
Girt in by mountain walls
And washed with waterfalls
It would please me to die,
Where every wind that swept my tomb
Goes loaded with a free perfume
Dealt out with a God's charity.
  
I should like to die in sweets,
A hill's leaves for winding-sheets,
And the searching sun to see
That I am laid with decency.
And the commissioned wind to sing
His mighty psalm from fall to spring
And annual tunes commemorate
Of Nature's child the common fate.
  
WILLIAMSTOWN, VERMONT, 1 June, 1831.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
21

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABCCB DDDAEEF GGFFHHII B
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 643
Words 123
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 7, 8, 1

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. more…

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