Last Wish

A meditation on mortality and love, written in the voice of someone facing their final moments. The poem moves through tender reflections on what remains when all else falls away: the beloved face, the lingering touch, the wish for peace both for the departing and those left behind. Bulwer-Lytton writes with Victorian elegance and quiet dignity, balancing grief with acceptance, longing with serenity. The language is formal yet deeply felt, capturing that universal moment when words become precious because they may be the last. It has endured for over a century not because it offers comfort in any easy sense, but because it names something true about how we face the unfaceable: with love as our final wish, and hope, against reason, for the happiness of those we leave behind.