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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Dead Hope

Christina Rossetti

Hope new born one pleasant morn
  Died at even;
Hope dead lives nevermore,
  No, not in heaven.

If his shroud were but a cloud
  To weep itself away;
Or were he buried underground
  To sprout some day!
But dead and gone is dead and gone
  Vainly wept upon.

Nought we place above his face
  To mark the spot,
But it shows a barren place
  In our lot.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Poems | Little, Brown, and Company, 1906
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