Death poems
/ page 335 of 560 /
Heart by Rick Campbell: American Life in Poetry #169 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
I remember being scared to death when, at about thirty years of age, I saw an x-ray of my skull. Seeing one's self as a skeleton, or receiving any kind of medical report, even when the news is good, can be unsettling. Suddenly, you're just another body, a clock waiting to stop. Here's a telling poem by Rick Campbell, who lives and teaches in Florida.
Heart
The Hearts
© Robert Pinsky
The legendary muscle that wants and grieves,
The organ of attachment, the pump of thrills
And troubles, clinging in stubborn colonies
OEnone
© Alfred Tennyson
"Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm
Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold,
That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd
And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech
Came down upon my heart.
Too Late
© Madison Julius Cawein
I looked upon a dead girl's face and heard
What seemed the voice of Love call unto me
There Is
© Louis Simpson
Look! From my window there’s a view
of city streets
where only lives as dry as tortoises
can crawl—the Gallapagos of desire.
Runner McGee: (Who Had "Return if Possible" Orders)
© Edgar Albert Guest
YOU'VE heard a good deal of the telephone wires,"
He said as we sat at our ease,
The Troubadour. Canto 1
© Letitia Elizabeth Landon
There is a light step passing by
Like the distant sound of music's sigh;
It is that fair and gentle child,
Whose sweetness has so oft beguiled,
Like sunlight on a stormy day,
His almost sullenness away.
Falling Asleep over the Aeneid
© Robert Lowell
An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.
The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,
Sonnet 54: "O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem..."
© William Shakespeare
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
from Odes: 15 ["Nothing"]
© Ted Hughes
Nothing
substance utters or time
stills and restrains
joins design and
Structure of Rime XXVIII: In Memoriam Wallace Stevens
© Robert Duncan
“That God is colouring Newton doth shew”—William Blake
Erecting beyond the boundaries of all government his grand Station and Customs, I find what I have made there a Gate, a staking out of his art in Inconsequence. I have in mind a poetry that will frame the willingness of the heart and deliver it over to the arrest of Time, a sentence as if there could stand some solidity most spacial in its intent against the drifts and appearances that arise and fall away in time from the crude events of physical space. The Mind alone holds the consequence of the erection to be true, so that Desire and Imagination usurp the place of the Invisible Throne.
Song #12.
© Robert Crawford
I have brought thee all the faith
That a man can give,
I have sheltered thee with love,
O life's fugitive!
To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair
© George Gordon Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
Simone Weil: The Year of Factory Work (1934-1935)
© Edward Hirsch
A glass of red wine trembles on the table,
Untouched, and lamplight falls across her shoulders.
To Ladies Of A Certain Age
© John Trumbull
Ye ancient Maids, who ne'er must prove
The early joys of youth and love,
The Hunter And His Dying Steed
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Wo worth the chase. Wo worth the day,
That cost thy life, my gallant grey!Scott
Poems On Life
© Rabindranath Tagore
Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation into a
harmony with the whole.
