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| Ere the birth of my life, I wished it or no No question was asked me--it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try And to live on be Yes, what can No be? to die. (Nature's answer) Is't returned, as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear? Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you were! I gave you innocence, I gave you hope, Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope, Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair? Make out the invent'ry ; inspect, compare! Then die--if die you dare! -Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834, 'The suicide's argument' (1811) |
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| And in life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within; And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat; You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light, Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake. And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you -Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834, 'The presence of love' (1807) |
| When I am dead, my dearest, Sign no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget. -Christina Rossetti 1830-1894, 'When I am dead, my dearest' (1848) |
| Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me to her parlor Above her winding stair. To educate young spiders She took me all apart. My ghost came back to haunt her. I saw her eat my heart. -Vachel Lindsay 1879-1931, 'The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly' (1914) |
| A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me "A sense of obligation." -Stephen Crane 1871-1900, 'A man said to the universe' (1894) |
| One wept whose only child was dead, New-born, ten years ago. "Weep not; he is in bliss," they said. She answered, "Even so, "Ten years ago was born in pain A child, not now forlorn. But oh, ten years ago, in vain, A mother, a mother was born." -Alice Meynell 1847-1922, 'Maternity' (1894) |