Poems (Chandler)/For Cupid Dead

by Louise Chandler Moulton

FOR CUPID DEAD.

HEN Love is dead, what more but funeral rites,—
 To lay his sweet corse lovingly to rest,
To cover him with rose and eglantine,
 And all fair posies that he loved the best?

What more, but kisses for his close-shut eyes,
 His cold, still lips that never more will speak,—
His hair, too bright for dust of death to dim,
 The flush scarce faded from his frozen cheek?

What more, but tears that will not warm his brow,
 Although they burn the eyes from whence they start?
No bitter weeping or more bitter words
 Can rouse to one more throb that pulseless heart.

So dead he is, who once was so alive!
 In-summer, when the ardent days were long,
He was as warm as June, as gay and glad
 As any bird that swelled its throat with song.

So dead! yet all things were his ministers,—
 All birds and blossoms, and the joyous June:
Would they had died, and kept sweet Love alive
 Since he is gone, the world is out of tune.