Death poems
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Paradise Lost: Book IX (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
To whom the Virgin Majestie of Eve,
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austeer composure thus reply'd,
Mummia
© Rupert Brooke
As those of old drank mummia
To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
Stand pandar to their bed;
The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House
© Howard Nemerov
The painter’s eye follows relation out.
His work is not to paint the visible,
He says, it is to render visible.
Whispers of Immortality
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
The Rolling English Road
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
The Dying Hunter to his Dog
© Susanna Moodie
Lie down—lie down!—my noble hound,
That joyful bark give o’er;
The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part IV: Vita Nova: LXXXV
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THE SAME CONTINUED
These flowers shall be my offering, living flowers
Which here shall die with you in sacrifice,
Flowers from the empty fields which once were yours
Limerick:There was an Old Person of Tartary
© Edward Lear
There was an Old Person of Tartary,
Who divided his jugular artery;
But he screeched to his wife,
And she said, 'Oh, my life!
Your death will be felt by all Tartary!'
Haverhill
© John Greenleaf Whittier
O river winding to the sea!
We call the old time back to thee;
From forest paths and water-ways
The century-woven veil we raise.
Days of 1994: Alexandrians
© Marilyn Hacker
for Edmund White
Lunch: as we close the twentieth century,
death, like a hanger-on or a wanna-be
sits with us at the cluttered bistro
table, inflecting the conversation.
January 22nd, Missolonghi
© Lord Byron
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
Fresh Air
© Kenneth Koch
3
Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.”
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney
Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle,
But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea.
"The Foresters"
© William Watson
Clear as of old the great voice rings to-day,
While Sherwood's oak-leaves twine with Aldworth's bay:
Frederick and Alice
© Sir Walter Scott
Frederick leaves the land of France,
Homeward hastes his steps to measure,
Careless casts the parting glance
On the scene of former pleasure.
Burying Friends
© Kenneth Slessor
BURYING friends is not a pomp,
Not, indeed, Roman:
Lacking the monument,
Heroic stone;
A Legend of Service
© Henry Van Dyke
It pleased the Lord of Angels (praise His name!)
To hear, one day, report from those who came
Sonnet XXIII: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint
© Patrick Kavanagh
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
In War
© Nikolay Alekseyevich Nekrasov
Hearing the terrors of the war, sore troubled,
By each new victim of the combat torn--
Nor friend, nor wife I give my utmost pity,
Nor do I for the fallen hero mourn.
Alas! the wife will find a consolation.
The friend by friend is soon forgot in turn.
