Скачать или смотреть Death Carol (from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d) by Walt Whitman (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Contemplation of death is called thanatopsis. The portrait shows Walt Whitman when he was about 50 years old. When compared with guys of similar age these days he does look a lot older. He was only 72 when he died. Life was much harder then, I suppose.

It should be "Has none chanted for thee..." not "Have none..." because it means "Has no-one chanted for thee.." You should know better, Mr Whitman, you're not George Bush. .

The paintings are by Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), an English Pre-Raphaelite painter, they are Field of the Slain, 1916 and The Angel of Death, 1880

Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

Approach strong deliveress, when it is so,
when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.

From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.

The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves,
Over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all
And the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy,
With joy to thee O death.