I find poetry and music (e.g. requiems, elegies,
Nimrod from Enigma Variations, Mahler 6) very stirring and powerful; I relish the magnificent, beautiful sadness and sentiments typically expressed therein. Perhaps it is that these composers and authors were often musing on death and endings, and they poured their emotions into their works. I love these pieces in appropriate proportion with art expressing other emotions.
When I read a poem like
this one, I am struck by the strength and magnitude of the sentiment - "Think of all you planned to do...", "God! and is it time to go?", "There is still the greater drink." I think the poem is eloquent and stirring as a work of art, but what I glean from the poem is not sadness and despair, but hope. Life is an opportunity, a set possibilities. When the day comes that this poem describes my life, I will have an answer for "think of all you planned to do... Have you done the best you can?" I will have a lifetime of memories, of joys, of sorrows, of shared moments with people and loved ones, of quests, of success, of failure, of love; I will have the sum total of what my life has been, and I will remember it in its completeness gladly; I will not evaluate my life with despair.
May it be that I do not live it or remember alone.