Dead! all’s done with!
— R. Browning.
These blossoms that I bring,
This song that here I sing,
These tears that now I shed,
I give unto the dead.
There is no more to be done,
Nothing beneath the sun,
All the long ages through,
Nothing–by me for you.
The tale is told to the end;
This, ev’n, I may not know–
If we were friend and friend,
If we were foe and foe.
All’s done with utterly,
All’s done with. Death to me
Was ever Death indeed;
To me no kindly creed
Consolatory was given.
You were of earth, not Heaven. . .
This dreary day, things seem
Vain shadows in a dream,
Or some strange, pictured show;
And mine own tears that flow,
My hidden tears that fall,
The vainest of them all.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.