And Thou Art Dead

The poem And Thou Art Dead, as Young and Fair is about the teller of the story experiencing the death of someone who was beloved and close to him. It talks about his feelings for the deceased and how even as the days go on and cannot be changed, that death cannot conquer love. Although this person has died, they are still being loved as shown in stanza II.

"I will not ask where thou liest low,

 Nor gaze upon the spot;

There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:

It is enough for me to prove

That what I lov'd, and long must love,

Like common earth can rot;

To me there needs no stone to tell,

'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well."

It says that even though this person is dead, he doesn't think that he needs to know where they are buried or to see their gravestone to still love them.

"Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,

Who didst not change through all the past,
And canst not alter now.

The love where Death has set his seal,

Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:

And, what were worse, thou canst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me."

People seem to think death is the end of everything. A life is extinguished, but life still remains. When a person is born, they begin creating a conscious stream of memories. Others can remember times they can't. It shares a similar theme with some of Shakespeare's works. That love can conquer all.

"I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow'd such a morn

Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish'd, not decay'd;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,

My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o'er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again."

The way this poem is written in rhyme is what caught my eye. Looking into it, I thought how much you have to love someone before you can not feel the same way for someone else after they're gone? There is also guilt, as the teller of the story couldn't bear to see his loved one die and so he kept away, forever feeling guilty that he wasn't there in the last moments of life.
It's a very sad, bittersweet poem that can be entirely realistic. It has different shades of emotion in each line, some subtle and others not so. If we were able to cover Byron's work in class, I'd present this as a preview.