Home     The Archive     Melville's Writings     Listen to this Story     Our Video Portal     About This Site  


Monody
By 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.
 
------------
 
  Home     The Archive     Melville's Writings     Listen to this Story     Our Video Portal     About This Site