Song for the Funeral of a Boy by Herbert Trench
Herbert Trench's poem is a funeral song in which young companions are told to carry a dead boy's bier up a mountain glen, past a tarn, fawns, and the great sky above. They lay him in a green hollow with violets, his sling, arrows, spear, and lute, then sing farewell. They praise his bold limbs, his kind and base-free face, and his happy soul. Night takes his little pyre, but at dawn they are urged to remember him with joy, since he loved and passed like uplands dew.
By Herbert Trench · First published 1901 · Genre: Elegy, Dirge, Pastoral elegy · 527 words
First lines
1. On stems from silver woods / Carry him, young companions, to the glen / Where white Olympus broods; / Flushes of rustlers shall precede you then / By bush and glade / Low-thrilling and afraid; / And as along its curve of shore ye pass / The dark tarn ruddied with the pine shall glass, / Moving to hymns out of its lonely ken, / The boy's light bier, with beaded rushes laid.
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Genres
- Elegy — The whole poem is a formal lament for a dead boy, moving from procession to praise to farewell.
- Dirge — The funeral procession, the bier of beaded rushes, and the call to sing farewell give it the solemn character of a dirge.
- Pastoral elegy — Mourning is set in a rural landscape of glens, woods, tarns and mountains, with the boy's companions as mourners, in the tradition of pastoral lament.
- Threnody — It is a song of lamentation sung in ritual procession, the classical sense of a mourning song.
Tags
elegy · funeral song · lament · dead boy · youthful death · young companions · funeral procession · mountain glen · Mount Olympus · pastoral · classical antiquity · pyre
What this Textopian page supports
Song for the Funeral of a Boy is listed on Textopian as a poem by Herbert Trench, dated 1901 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Herbert Trench
- Date: 1901 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Elegy, Dirge, Pastoral elegy, Threnody, Lyric poetry
- Length: 527 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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