The Poet's Goodbyes
Recently I've been impressed with a sense of my own mortality. This sounds a bit stupid; we all know that someday, one day, we will be no more and have to say goodbye to this world. We all know that. We're all mortal. It isn't such a bad thing as all that; we all have to move over and make room for the new people. Mortality is part of life, and even more unavoidable than taxes.
Death is the elephant in the room than no one mentions. It's too sad, or too morbid, or too gruesome to think about if one is in good health and reasonably happy. Everybody wants to live, and while we're all busy living, we don't want to think about dying. We'd all sort of like to hang on to our childhood belief in our own immortality. It's as if we unconsciously think we're exempt from "grave" matters!
There comes a time in everyone's life when all of the sudden we are impressed with the fact of our own inevitable demise. It might be a near miss of a plane crash while flying; it might be a car accident that either didn't happen, by a hair, or did happen and one miraculously survived! It could be a health issue; it could be a domestic accident; it could be the death of a close friend, sibling or near contemporary that wakes one up, open's one's eyes, to the now inescapable impression of one's own mortality. Death is real, and it's gonna happen to me.
How to handle this realization? People react in different ways. Most of us try to be better people, at least until the impression fades a bit. Here's how the poets handle it:
From: "The Imitation of Horace", Book 3, ode 19 (1695) by John Dryden (1631-1700)
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say
Tomorrow do your worst, for I have lived today.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
From Plato's Apology (Plato, 428-348 BC):
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways, you to live and I to die. Which is better, God only knows.
From Mother Goose (1903) by George Michael Cohan (1878-1942)
Always leave them laughing when you say goodbye.
From Poems (1847) by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Goodbye, proud world, I'm going home.
From "Ae Fond Kiss" by Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever
Ae farewell, and then forever!
From "All Lovely Things Will Have an Ending" by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)
All lovely things will have an ending
All lovely things will fade and die
And youth, that's now so bravely spending
Will beg a penny, by and by.
From "The Jew of Malta" by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Friar Barnadine: Thou hast committed--
Barabas: fornication-but that was in another country,
and besides, the wench is dead.
From "Summer Day" by Samuel Hoffensten (1890-1947)
The heart's dead
Are never buried.
"The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Call the roller of big cigars
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds,
Le the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let it be the finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered three fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
