Death poems
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The Dedication
© Henry Vaughan
To my most merciful, my most loving, and dearly
loved REDEEMER, the ever blessed, the only
HOLY and JUST ONE,
JESUS CHRIST,
Olney Hymn 39: The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death
© William Cowper
My soul is sad, and much dismay'd;
See, Lord, what legions of my foes,
With fierce Apollyon at their head,
My heavenly pilgrimage oppose.
Elegy for a Soldier
© Marilyn Hacker
You, who stood alone in the tall bay window
of a Brooklyn brownstone, conjuring morning
with free-flying words, knew the power, terror
in words, in flying;
February
© Margaret Atwood
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
Marenghi
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
II.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...
The Hut by the Black Swamp
© Henry Kendall
Now comes the fierce north-easter, bound
About with clouds and racks of rain,
And dry, dead leaves go whirling round
In rings of dust, and sigh like pain
Across the plain.
The Gift
© Li-Young Lee
To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.
Cleopatra.
© Robert Crawford
The asp, her baby, on her breast,
She falls asleep,
Ever, like Antony, to rest
While Nile shall keep
Hymn to Life
© James Schuyler
The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
The Prayer Of Nature
© George Gordon Byron
Father of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?
Barbara Allen
© Pierre Reverdy
In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry Well-a-way!
Her name was Barbara Allen.
Death The Leveller
© James Shirley
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Kalamazoo
© Roald Dahl
Once, in the city of Kalamazoo,
The gods went walking, two and two,
With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion,
The speaking pony and singing lion.
For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart
Lived the girl with the innocent heart.
A Lesson In Humility
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Where is thy greater virtue? Thinkest thou sin
Is but crime's record on the judgment seat?
Or must thou wait for death to be bowed down?
Oh for a righteous reading which should join
Thy deeds together in an accusing sheet,
And leave thee if thou couldst, to face men's frown!
Poems - Written On The Deaths Of Three Lovely Children
© Jean Ingelow
Yellow leaves, how fast they flutter-woodland hollows thickly strewing,
Where the wan October sunbeams scantly in the mid-day win,
While the dim gray clouds are drifting, and in saddened hues imbuing
All without and all within!
The Months
© Linda Pastan
Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,
" Do kings put faith in fortressed walls, and bar"
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Do kings put faith in fortressed walls, and bar
Their cities' gates, as strong to keep out war?
The constancy of friends is stronger far.
Are lilies pure, that in some vale unknown
Epitaph
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Stop, Christian passer-by!Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
To Giusue Carducci
© George William Lewis Marshall-Hall
O RICH and splendid soul that overflowest
With light and fire caught from thy native skies!
