Death poems
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To the Fringed Gentian
© William Cullen Bryant
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.
Retroduction to American History
© Allen Tate
Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog,
The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep
Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers,
The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway.
Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
© Thomas Lux
For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall
Their Bodies
© David Wagoner
They gave away the gift of those useful bodies
Against his wish. (They had their own ways
Of doing everything, always.) If you’re not certain
Which ones are theirs, be gentle to everybody.
North Labrador
© Hart Crane
A land of leaning ice
Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
Flings itself silently
Into eternity.
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
Sleep Is A Spirit
© Madison Julius Cawein
Sleep is a spirit, who beside us sits,
Or through our frames like some dim glamour flits;
The Old Major Explains
© Francis Bret Harte
Well, you see, the fact is, Colonel, I don't know as I can come:
For the farm is not half planted, and there's work to do at home;
And my leg is getting troublesome,--it laid me up last fall,--
And the doctors, they have cut and hacked, and never found the ball.
Feel Me
© May Swenson
“Feel me to do right,” our father said on his deathbed.
We did not quite know—in fact, not at all—what he meant.
The Spirit Land
© Jones Very
Father! thy wonders do not singly stand,
Nor far removed where feet have seldom strayed;
A Dedication - To K.S.G.
© Henry Timrod
Fair Saxon, in my lover's creed,
My love were smaller than your meed,
Lines Written Near San Francisco
© Louis Simpson
I wake and feel the city trembling.
Yes, there is something unsettled in the air
And the earth is uncertain.
If? See No End In Is
© Frank Bidart
What none knows is when, not if.
Now that your life nears its end
when you turn back what you see
is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,
it is a vast resonating chamber in
which each thing you say or do is
Over The Carnage
© Walt Whitman
OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice,
Be not dishearten'd-Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom
yet;
Those who love each other shall become invincible-they shall yet
make Columbia victorious.
