Death poems
/ page 308 of 560 /
Year’s End
© Lola Ridge
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
What Is Prayer?
© James Montgomery
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed;
The motion of a hidden fire,
That trembles in the breast.
The Berg (A Dream)
© Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
I saw a ship of martial build
(Her standards set, her brave apparel on)
The Fly
© Ishmael Reed
O hideous little bat, the size of snot,
With polyhedral eye and shabby clothes,
The House Of Dust: Part 03: 03:
© Conrad Aiken
The lamplit page is turned, the dream forgotten;
The music changes tone, you wake, remember
Deep worlds you lived before,deep worlds hereafter
Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music,
Rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter.
There’s only one natural death, and even that’s Bedcide For the post-mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan
© Edward Dorn
A B H O R E N C E S
November 10, 1984
The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 10
© Publius Vergilius Maro
THE GATES of heavn unfold: Jove summons all
The gods to council in the common hall.
The Sprits Of Light And Darkness
© Madison Julius Cawein
As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.
A Phonecall from Frank O’Hara
© Anne Waldman
“That all these dyings may be life in death”
I was living in San Francisco
Grief Thief Of Time
© Dylan Thomas
Grief thief of time crawls off,
The moon-drawn grave, with the seafaring years,
Within and Without: Part IV: A Dramatic Poem
© George MacDonald
SCENE I.-Summer. Julian's room. JULIAN is reading out of a book of
poems.
October 1973
© John Betjeman
Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York
Looking for help for you, Nicanor.
Modern Love: VIII
© George Meredith
Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt
Of righteous feeling made her pitiful.
Paradise Regain'd: Book I (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
I Who e're while the happy Garden sung,
By one mans disobedience lost, now sing
On The Downs
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
A faint sea without wind or sun;
A sky like flameless vapour dun;
A valley like an unsealed grave
That no man cares to weep upon,
Bare, without boon to crave,
Or flower to save.
