Death poems
/ page 322 of 560 /
Assurance
© Emma Lazarus
Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed
The Suicide
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Last was the wealth I carried in life's pack-
Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust but Time
A Note on My Son’s Face
© Toi Derricotte
Mother. Grandmother. Wise
Snake-woman who will show the way;
Spider-woman whose black tentacles
hold him precious. Or will tear off his head,
her teeth over the little husband,
the small fist clotted in trust at her breast.
Sanctuary
© Jean Valentine
Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship—
The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear.
Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes.
But they will not be mine;
to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices—
1959
© Gregory Corso
Uncomprising yearI see no meaning to life.
Though this abled self is here nonetheless,
either in trade gold or grammaticness,
I drop the wheelwrights simple principle
Why weave the garland? Why ring the bell?
The Pillar Towers of Ireland
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand
By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land;
In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime,
These gray old pillar temples, these conquerors of time!
Ritual One
© David Ignatow
All through the play I scream
and am invited on stage to take a bow.
I lose my senses and kick the actors in the teeth.
In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 95
© Alfred Tennyson
By night we linger'd on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
Maud XVIII: I have led her Home, my love, my only friend
© Alfred Tennyson
I have led her home, my love, my only friend,
There is none like her, none.
And never yet so warmly ran my blood
And sweetly, on and on
Calming itself to the long-wished-for end,
Full to the banks, close on the promised good.
Up at a Villa—Down in the City
© Robert Browning
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
Lyell’s Hypothesis Again
© Kenneth Rexroth
An Attempt to Explain the Former
Changes of the Earth's Surface by
Causes Now in Operation
In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport
© Emma Lazarus
Here, where the noises of the busy town,
The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.
The Monument and the Shrine
© John Logan
At focus in the national
Park’s ellipse a marker
Draws tight the guys of
Janet Waking
© John Crowe Ransom
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
Convict Once - Part First.
© James Brunton Stephens
I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!
The Death of Antinoüs
© Mark Doty
When the beautiful young man drowned—
accidentally, swimming at dawn
in a current too swift for him,
or obedient to some cult
of total immersion that promised
the bather would come up divine,
The bright blessed day with joy we see
© Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig
The bright blessed day with joy we see
Rise out of the sea at dawning;
It lightens the sky unceasingly,
Our gain and delight adorning!
As children of light we sense that soon
Dark night will give way to morning!
Song of Myself
© Walt Whitman
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
