Gothicized, Glamourized, Mythologized: The Funeral of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Gothic Keats Press

paroxysm

The body, he explains, was carried into the Forum and placed on the rostra, normally propped up somehow in an upright position, so it was visible to a large audience. In the procession that followed, family members wore masks made in the likeness of the dead man’s ancestors and dressed in the costume appropriate to the offices each had held (purple

His eyes, staring up into the abyss, had gone flat like deflated balloons. If a lover’s eyes are a clear mountain lake, Byron’s were a stagnant pond. His mouth twisted open in a silent scream.

dross

Lyrical elaboration, which suggests dramatic, aesthetic, poetic, artistic, painterly, or whatever, forms—artwork—forms of elaborating what the dead want to say.

Birth, death and grief