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. 



Back to Ginsberg's Celestial Homework