Sonnet II, from "To W.P."

Sonnet II, from "To W.P."

With you a part of me hath passed away;
For in the peopled forest of my mind
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind
Shall never don again its green array.
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,
Have something of their friendliness resigned;
Another, if I would, I could not find,
And I am grown much older in a day.

But yet I treasure in my memory
Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease,
And the dear honour of your amity;
For these once mine, my life is rich with these.
And I scarce know which part may greater be,--
What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

-- George Santayana

Found this from The Wondering Ministrel.

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My grandfather was like that. No, my late grandfather is like this. 

In any case, this poem describe how it feels when someone close to us dies, and how it felt to be the one to live. Not many people in life can actually touch us deeply. Yet these very people whose existence is so dear to us one day will leave, and when they leave first, they take the joy of their existence with them.

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A Brief Introduction to the Poet

George Santayana is considered a contemporary architect of philosophic thought. He balanced his many interests to make considerable contributions in literature and philosophy. He distinguished himself as a professor of philosophy at Harvard University, teaching philosophy as a way of life rather than just as an academic subject.

            He was a philosopher, poet, critic of culture and literature, and best-selling novelist. Although born in Spain, Santayana said that he must be considered an American author and philosopher. Educated in the United States, he taught at Harvard University for over twenty years. He retired from Harvard in order to be a full-time writer and philosopher (he had planned for early retirement since the mid-1890s, but Harvard's president prevailed upon him to stay two years longer than he planned). Although he was invited to hold positions at Oxford University, Harvard University, and Brown University, he chose to live the remaining forty years of his life in Europe traveling and writing, finally settling in Rome in a Catholic hospital-clinic in 1941 after an unsuccessful attempt to leave the country for Switzerland during World War II. He was then seventy-nine years old. These forty international years were remarkably productive in terms of his literary corpus, and his correspondence as a celebrated philosopher and writer was extensive. He is one of a few philosophers to appear on the cover of Time magazine (3 February 1936).

This poem was first published in 1896, as part of Santayana's collection "Sonnets and other Verses".              The W.P. of the title was Warrick Potter, who tragically died of complications from a boating accident three years earlier. Santayana suffered a number of significant personal griefs and shocks as he approached his 30th birthday, including the tragic deaths of many of his close friends. But the death of Potter, whom Santayana described as his "last real friend", hit Santayana particularly hard. Today's poem is the second of four sonnets written by Santayana in memory of his friend.