Death poems
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The Phantom Fleet
© Alfred Noyes
The sunset lingered in the pale green West:
In rosy wastes the low soft evening star
Woke; while the last white sea-mew sought for rest;
And tawny sails came stealing o'er the bar.
The King Of England
© Sir Henry Newbolt
In that eclipse of noon when joy was hushed
Like the bird's song beneath unnatural night,
Dulnesse
© George Herbert
Why do I languish thus, drooping and dulle,
As if I were all earth?
Oh give me quicknesse, that I may with mirth
Praise thee brim-full!
Prosopopoia : or, Mother Hubbards Tale
© Edmund Spenser
Yet he the name on him would rashly take,
Maugre the sacred Muses, and it make
A servant to the vile affection
Of such, as he depended most upon;
And with the sugrie sweete thereof allure
Chast Ladies eares to fantasies impure.
The Young that Died in Beauty
© William Barnes
If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in ethly light,
An nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an feace,
To The Lake
© Edgar Allan Poe
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
Has Your Soul Sipped?
© Wilfred Owen
Has your soul sipped
Of the sweetness of all sweets?
Has it well supped
But yet hungers and sweats?
Life Is A Dream - Act III
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
FIRST SOLDIER [within]. He is here within this tower.
Dash the door from off its hinges;
Enter all
Feasts
© Boris Pasternak
I drink the gall of skies in autumn, tuberoses'
Sweet bitterness in your betrayals burning stream;
I drink the gall of nights, of crowded parties' noises,
Of sobbing virgin verse, and of a throbbing dream.
The Fear
© Pablo Neruda
They all ask me to jump
to invigorate and to play soccer,
to run, to swim and to fly.
Very well.
Olney Hymn 56: Hatred Of Sin
© William Cowper
Holy Lord God! I love Thy truth,
Nor dare Thy least commandment slight;
Yet pierced by sin the serpent's tooth,
I mourn the anguish of the bite.
A Small Moment by Cornelius Eady: American Life in Poetry #197 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2
© Ted Kooser
I suspect that one thing some people have against reading poems is that they are so often so serious, so devoid of joy, as if we poets spend all our time brooding about mutability and death and never having any fun. Here Cornelius Eady, who lives and teaches in Indiana, offers us a poem of pure pleasure.
Ballad of Reading Gaol - I
© Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
Masnawi
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
In the prologue to the Masnavi Rumi hailed Love and its sweet madness that heals all infirmities, and he exhorted the reader to burst the bonds to silver and gold to be free. The Beloved is all in all and is only veiled by the lover. Rumi identified the first cause of all things as God and considered all second causes subordinate to that. Human minds recognize the second causes, but only prophets perceive the action of the first cause. One story tells of a clever rabbit who warned the lion about another lion and showed the lion his own image in a well, causing him to attack it and drown. After delivering his companions from the tyrannical lion, the rabbit urges them to engage in the more difficult warfare against their own inward lusts. In a debate between trusting God and human exertion, Rumi quoted the prophet Muhammad as saying, "Trust in God, yet tie the camel's leg."8 He also mentioned the adage that the worker is the friend of God; so in trusting in providence one need not neglect to use means. Exerting oneself can be giving thanks for God's blessings; but he asked if fatalism shows gratitude.
God is hidden and has no opposite, not seen by us yet seeing us. Form is born of the formless but ultimately returns to the formless. An arrow shot by God cannot remain in the air but must return to God. Rumi reconciled God's agency with human free will and found the divine voice in the inward voice. Those in close communion with God are free, but the one who does not love is fettered by compulsion. God is the agency and first cause of our actions, but human will as the second cause finds recompense in hell or with the Friend. God is like the soul, and the world is like the body. The good and evil of bodies comes from souls. When the sanctuary of true prayer is revealed to one, it is shameful to turn back to mere formal religion. Rumi confirmed Muhammad's view that women hold dominion over the wise and men of heart; but violent fools, lacking tenderness, gentleness, and friendship, try to hold the upper hand over women, because they are swayed by their animal nature. The human qualities of love and tenderness can control the animal passions. Rumi concluded that woman is a ray of God and the Creator's self.
God's Rest.
© Robert Crawford
I saw God in a dream go by,
As if He trod the phantom air
Within a hushed eternity,
Dead worlds around Him everywhere.
