Death poems
/ page 276 of 560 /
Picnic, Lightning
© Billy Collins
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
The Art Of Drowning
© Billy Collins
I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
The Curse Upon Edward
© Thomas Gray
Edward, lo! to sudden fate
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun)
Half of thy heart we consecrate.
(The web is wove. The work is done.)
The Progress of Poesy
© Thomas Gray
A Pindaric OdeAwake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
Sonnet On The Death Of Mr Richard West
© Thomas Gray
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And redd'ning Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join;
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire:
The Fatal Sisters
© Thomas Gray
Now the storm begins to lower,
(Haste, the loom of Hell prepares!)
Iron-sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darkened air.
On The Death Of A Favourite Cat, Drowned In A Tub Of Gold Fishes
© Thomas Gray
'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
The Poet's Corner
© Laura Riding Jackson
And loveliness?
Death has an understanding of it
Loyal to many flags
And is a silent ally of any country
Beset in its mortal heart
With immortal poetry.
With The Face
© Laura Riding Jackson
With the face goes a mirror
As with the mind a world.
Likeness tells the doubting eye
That strangeness is not strange.
The Simple Line
© Laura Riding Jackson
The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,
Though the mind is meek.
To be aware inwardly
of brain and beauty
The Sompnour's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Carrack: A great ship of burden used by the Portuguese; the
name is from the Italian, "cargare," to load
The Cook's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Jack of Dover: an article of cookery. (Transcriber's note:
suggested by some commentators to be a kind of pie, and by
others to be a fish)
The Man of Law's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Plight: pulled; the word is an obsolete past tense from
"pluck."
The Reeve's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
1. "With blearing of a proude miller's eye": dimming his eye;
playing off a joke on him.
The General Prologue
© Geoffrey Chaucer
There was also a Reeve, and a Millere,
A Sompnour, and a Pardoner also,
A Manciple, and myself, there were no mo'.
The Knight's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
Upon that other side, Palamon,
When that he wist Arcita was agone,
Much sorrow maketh, that the greate tower
Resounded of his yelling and clamour
The pure* fetters on his shinnes great *very
Were of his bitter salte teares wet.
Double Ballade on the Nothingness of Things
© William Ernest Henley
The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
London Voluntaries IV: Out of the Poisonous East
© William Ernest Henley
Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellerage of hell,
Madam Life's a Piece in Bloom
© William Ernest Henley
Madam Life's a piece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She's the tenant of the room,
He's the ruffian on the stair.
The Dark and the Fair
© Stanley Kunitz
A roaring company that festive night;
The beast of dialectic dragged his chains,
Prowling from chair to chair is the smoking light,
While the snow hissed against the windowpanes.
