The Passing of the Elder Bards
The Passing of the Elder Bards - context Summary
Composed After Friends' Deaths
Written in 1816 and included in Ecclesiastical Sketches, this poem responds to the recent deaths of Wordsworth’s close contemporaries Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. It mourns those "mighty" and "gentle" figures, traces a swift procession of losses, and registers the poet’s own survival and anxious foreboding. The tone balances elegiac grief with a quiet, personal question about who will be taken next.
Read Complete AnalysesTHE MIGHTY Minstrel breathes no longer, Mid mouldering ruins low he lies; And death upon the braes of Yarrow Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes: Nor has the rolling year twice measured, From sign to sign, its steadfast course, Since every mortal power of Coleridge Was frozen at its marvellous source; The 'rapt One, of the godlike forehead, The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth: And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle, Has vanished from his lonely hearth. Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber Were earlier raised, remain to hear A timid voice, that asks in whispers, "Who next will drop and disappear?"
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