Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Poem on Grief

I ran across this poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that has been really helpful to me (his poem "Threnody" is also a beautiful piece, written after the death of his son). Emerson was a founder of the transcendental movement and friends with Branson Alcott, father of writer Louisa May Alcott.

All Return Again
It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

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