Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“ With faintness of the pulse, and backward cling
To life. But knowing what I soothly know,
High-seeming Death, I dare thee! and have hope,
In God's good time, of showing to thy face
An unsuccumbing spirit, which sublime
May cast away the low anxieties
That wait upon the flesh—the reptile moods;
And enter that eternity to come,
Where live the dead, and only Death shall die. ”

“ Far better than their silence. Oh constrain'd
And awful silence!—awful peace of death!
There is an answer to all questioning,
That one word—death. Our bitterness can throw
No look upon the face of death, and live. ”

“ I could not look thereon, but turn'd and wept!
****************Oh Death—oh crownëd Death—pale-steedëd Death
Whose name doth make our respiration brief.
Muffling the spirit's drum! Thou, whom men know
Alone by charnel-houses, and the dark
Sweeping of funeral feathers, and the scath
Of happy days,—love deem'd inviolate!—
Thou of the shrouded face, which to have seen
Is to be very awful, like thyself! ”