Sunday Poetry - Adelaide Crapsey

Adelaide Crapsey was unpublished & unknown in her lifetime. She grew up in Rochester, New York, studied at Vassar College & taught poetry there. She wrote a book on English metrical poetry that was published after her death. She died of tuberculosis in 1914, aged only 36.
This poem, The Lonely Death, is beautifully controlled, very spare & quiet, but that final image is powerful.

In the cold I will rise, I will bathe

In waters of ice; myself

Will shiver, and shrive myself,

Alone in the dawn, and anoint

Forehead and feet and hands;

I will shutter the windows from light,

I will place in their sockets the four

Tall candles and set them a-flame

In the grey of the dawn; and myself

Will lay myself straight in my bed,

And draw the sheet under my chin.