Twelve poems

Chapter 13: ALTERNATIVE EPITAPHS

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A sequence of lyrical poems moves between sunlit Mediterranean landscapes and inward, elegiac reflection, using vivid sensory detail to evoke thyme-scented hills, wind-driven seas, and classical ruins. Several pieces celebrate beauty and the transports of sight and song, while others register loss, mourning, and the human costs of conflict, portraying bereavement, domestic desolation, and the persistence of memory. The collection alternates narrative vignettes and compact meditations, shifting tone from exultant natural observation to restrained grief and philosophical acceptance, exploring how art, place, and memory mediate desire, beauty, and mortality.

ALTERNATIVE EPITAPHS

“—— of heart-failure.”

(i)

Death touched me where your head had lain.
What other spot could he have found
So tender to receive a wound,
So versed in all the arts of pain?

(ii)

Love came, and gave me wind and sun,
Love went, and left me light and air.
Nor gave he anything more fair
Than what I found when he was gone.

HERE END THE TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON, PRINTED IN THE RICCARDI PRESS FOUNT AT THE CHISWICK PRESS FOR THE MEDICI SOCIETY, LONDON. MDCCCCXXVI

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.