Explore "Elegy" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ah, how I pity the young dead who gave / All that they were, and might become, that we / With tired eyes should watch this perfect sea / Reweave its patterning of silver wave / Round scented cliffs of arbutus and bay.
No more shall any rose along the way, / The myrtled way that wanders to the shore, / Nor jonquil-twinkling meadow any more, / Nor the warm lavender that takes the spray, / Smell only of the sea-salt and the sun,
But, through recurring seasons, every one / Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, / Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, / Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, / Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread-
And always we shall walk with the young dead- / Ah, how I pity the young dead, whose eyes / Strain through the sod to see these perfect skies, / Who feel the new wheat springing in their stead, / And the lark singing for them overhead!