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Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Monody

Herman Melville

To have known him, to have loved him
  After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
  And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
  Ease me, a little ease, my song!

By wintry hills his hermit-mound
  The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
  Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
  That hid the shyest grape.
Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From John Marr and Other Poems | 1922
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