Literature Annotations
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Mitchell, S. (Silas) Weir |
| Genre | Poem |
| Keywords | Catastrophe, Death and Dying, Grief, Human Worth, Loneliness, Love, Mourning, Pain, Suffering, Time |
| Summary | The poet stands before an ancient Lycian tomb, upon which is carved the sorrowful face of a woman: "One woman garbed in sorrow’s every mood." He reflects on the constancy of loss in human life. He asks the woman to weep for him, also, because [I] "Share thy stilled sadness, which must ever be / Too changeless, and unending like my own . . . . " Though the Lycian woman’s grief is old, the poet’s is young. He has lost a child: "With that too human wail in pain expressed, / The parent cry above the empty nest." He is skeptical about dreams of a better life. He rejects "The first confusing, mad bewilderment, / Life’s unbelief in death . . . . " Death is real and final. He concludes with full understanding that "life is but a tender instrument / Whereon the master hand of grief doth fall." |
| Commentary | This is one of the finest of Mitchell’s poems, an elegantly crafted ode in 19 six-line iambic pentameter stanzas. The poem is a rather well-sustained reflection on loss and mourning, occasioned by the death of Mitchell’s daughter from diphtheria in 1898. Unlike most of Mitchell’s poetry, much of this ode hits home in a very visceral way. It seems to speak honestly to the reader, rather than being artificial and pretentious. |
| Source | Complete Poems |
| Publisher | Century |
| Edition | 1914 |
| Place Published | New York |
| Alternate Source | A Physician's Anthology of English and American Poetry |
| Alternate Publisher | Oxford Univ. Press |
| Alternate Edition | 1920 |
| Alternate Editors | Casey A. Wood & Fielding H. Garrison |
| Place Published | New York |
| Miscellaneous | Written in 1899; first published in book form in 1914. |
| Annotated by | Coulehan, Jack |
| Date of Entry | 05/01/96 |
| Last Revised | 09/05/06 |