Death poems
/ page 289 of 560 /
This Room and Everything in It
© Li-Young Lee
Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I’ll need what I know so clearly this moment.
The Princess: Tears, Idle Tears
© Alfred Tennyson
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
In Death Valley
© Edwin Markham
There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,
Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill
The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
© Gwendolyn Brooks
He wakes, unwinds, elaborately: a cat
Tawny, reluctant, royal. He is fat
And fine this morning. Definite. Reimbursed.
The Author to His Body on Their Fifteenth Birthday, 29 ii 80
© Howard Nemerov
“There’s never a dull moment in the human body.”
—The Insight Lady
Helen: A Revision
© Jack Spicer
And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost
And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost
Hope the cost.
Psalm 55
© Mary Sidney Herbert
My God, most glad to look, most prone to hear,
An open ear, oh, let my prayer find,
The War in the Air
© Howard Nemerov
For a saving grace, we didn't see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
In the clean war, the war in the air.
Ælla, a Tragical Interlude
© Thomas Chatterton
The boddynge flourettes bloshes atte the lyghte;
The mees be sprenged wyth the yellowe hue;
Ynn daiseyd mantels ys the mountayne dyghte;
The nesh yonge coweslepe bendethe wyth the dewe;
The trees enlefed, yntoe Heavenne straughte,
Whenn gentle wyndes doe blowe to whestlyng dynne ys broughte.
Sad Wine (I)
© Cesare Pavese
It was beautiful how he cried as he told it,
the way a drunk cries, his whole body to it,
and he hung on my shoulder saying, Between us,
always respect, and there I was, shaking with cold,
wanting to leave, and helping him walk.
Eyes Like Leeks
© Michael Rosen
It had almost nothing to do with sex.
The boy
in his corset and farthingale, his head-
A Song from the Italian from Limberham: or, the Kind Keeper
© John Dryden
By a dismal cypress lying,
Damon cried, all pale and dying,
from The People, Yes
© Carl Sandburg
Lincoln? Was he a poet?
And did he write verses?
“I have not willingly planted a thorn
in any man’s bosom.”
I shall do nothing through malice: what
I deal with is too vast for malice.”
Mr. Attila
© Carl Sandburg
They made a myth of you, professor,
you of the gentle voice,
the books, the specs,
the furitive rabbit manners
in the mortar-board cap
and the medieval gown.
