Death Sonnet
Death Sonnet - meaning Summary
Grief Made Gentle Burial
The poem depicts a speaker reclaiming a loved one from a cold, public burial and laying them in a warm, motherly earth. Through nurturing images—soft cradle, rose dust, moonlight—the speaker seeks consolation and intimacy while asserting a final, private authority over the body. The closing line frames this act as a defiant, personal revenge against strangers’ coldness. The tone reflects Mistral’s recurrent preoccupation with loss and grief.
Read Complete AnalysesFrom the icy niche where men placed you I lower your body to the sunny, poor earth. They didn't know I too must sleep in it and dream on the same pillow. I place you in the sunny ground, with a mother's sweet care for her napping child, and the earth will be a soft cradle when it receives your hurt childlike body. I scatter bits of earth and rose dust, and in the moon's airy and blue powder what is left of you is a prisoner. I leave singing my lovely revenge. No hand will reach into the obscure depth to argue with me over your handful of bones.
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