The Death-Wake

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About this book

Storms, grief and imagined music surround a monk's attachment to a dead woman in Thomas Tod Stoddart's narrative verse. Divided into three parts called chimeras, The Death-Wake follows Julio and Agathè through scenes of strange, heightened emotion. At sea, Julio travels in a small boat with his lifeless bride as a larger vessel breaks apart nearby. A harp recovered from the water becomes the focus of a song, bringing delicate musical imagery into the violence of the weather.

Andrew Lang's introduction places the poem among Romantic writing and discusses its early publication, Stoddart's literary beginnings and his later love of angling. The volume also contains shorter poems about a spirit, a stormbound bird and Orion. Readers interested in the relationship between verse storytelling and song can explore its shifting rhythms, elaborate sea imagery and mingling of sorrow with fantastic invention.