Versos English Edward Carpenter Death

English poem

Death

by (1844–1929)

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Since, small or great, and every man on earth, Must know thee at the last, thy lonely gloom Is bright with something of diviner birth-- The lamp of human love, that o’er our doom Sheds undivided radiance. For in this Our modern world of finely graded life, The soul is nursed knowing nothing of the bliss Of sorrow borne, since human. In this strife Of complex individual interests Poor man and princely, side by side, share not One pain or passion of a common lot, Till death, more liberal than life, invests All men alike in his wide winding-sheet, And in that suit of sorrow makes them meet.

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