I'm dying
but death I deny-
I'm still living
though hope is not in the offing
yet with every dawn
there's sweet unfolding meaning
as I've loved living
there's not a stint of sadness
in my soon-to-be departing
I've been listening
to Schubert's Das Tod Und Das Madchen#
death is a friend--a thought so comforting
my poetry is my life entire- -singing
to me is each line drawn from
my body-system which is failing
you my friends who brought me poetry books for reading
late into the night I kept awake
I'd been through Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and Browning
yet more, the other poets remaining--
the true poet never gives in to weeping
his poems triumph over everything
you, my dear friends, now I'm biding
you good cheer, do promise you would go away smiling
knowing I've loved every moment of living.
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 10:54 PM UTC
I'm dying
but death I deny-
I'm still living
though hope is not in the offing
yet with every dawn
there's sweet unfolding meaning
as I've loved living
there's not a stint of sadness
in my soon-to-be departing
I've been listening
to Schubert's Das Tod Und Das Madchen#
death is a friend--a thought so comforting
my poetry is my life entire- -singing
to me is each line drawn from
my body-system which is failing
you my friends who brought me poetry books for reading
late into the night I kept awake
I'd been through Keats, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and Browning
yet more, the other poets remaining--
the true poet never gives in to weeping
his poems triumph over everything
you, my dear friends, now I'm biding
you good cheer, do promise you would go away smiling
knowing I've loved every moment of living.
* eminent Scottish poet (born 1898, died 1946 of TB). Also wrote DIARIES OF A DYING MAN (posthumously released in 1954) which inspired this poem of mine.
# Death And The Maiden, written in 1817 (Schubert died aged 31 in 1828,
a year after Beethoven). He was buried next to Beethoven at his request.