The Sorrow Of Dead Faces
By Edgar Lee Masters
I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death,
But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain.
There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life;
And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through;
Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white;
And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy.
Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall,
Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea,
Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream.
All of these I have seen, but the face of Harold the bold
Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise.
For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life.
And the ardent heat of his blood was cold as the sweat of a stone.
Life came in an evil hour and stabbed with a poisoned word
The heart of a girl who faintly smiled through her tears.
And her little life was tossed as the eddies that whirl in the hollows
From the great world-currents that wreck the battle ships at sea.
And the face of dead Lillian seemed like a rain-ruined flower.
Or what is writ on the brow of the babe as the mother wails for the day
When it leaped in the light of the sun and babbled its pure delight?
But the face of William the Great was fashioned by life and thought;
And death made it massive as bronze, and deepened the lines thereof:
Some for the will and some for patience, and some for hope,
Hope for the weal of the world wherein he mightily strove,
Yet what did it all bespeak, what but submission and awe,
And a trace of pain as one with a sword in his side?
I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death
But the sorrow thereof is dumb like the cloth that lies on the brow.
So what should be said of the faun surprised in the woodland dances,
Of Harold the light of heart who fought with fear to the last?