Death poems
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Dead
© William Dean Howells
SOMETHING lies in the room
Over against my own;
The windows are lit with a ghastly bloom
Of candles, burning alone,
Untrimmed, and all aflare
In the ghastly silence there!
The Wind Chimes by Shirley Buettner: American Life in Poetry #37 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Painful separations, through divorce, through death, through alienation, sometimes cause us to focus on the objects around us, often invested with sentiment. Here's Shirley Buettner, having packed up what's left of a relationship.
Children Of The War
© Katharine Lee Bates
SHRUNKEN little bodies, pallid baby faces,
Eyes of staring terror, innocence defiled,
She Was A Phantom Of Delight
© William Wordsworth
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
Written In The Mountains Of The Tyrol
© Richard Monckton Milnes
A Heart the world of men had bound and sealed
With shameful stamp and miserable chain,
Here, mother Nature, is to Thee revealed,
Open to Thee; oh! be it not in vain.
The Foe
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
My foe did strike me, Lord, I am not meek,
I cannot turn to him the other cheek,
To Poesy
© Charles Harpur
Ah, misery! what were then my lot
Amongst a race of unbelievers
Sordid men who all declare
That earthly gain alone is fair,
And they who pore on bardic lore
Deceived deceivers.
Bayswater.W.
© Arthur Henry Adams
About me leagues of houses lie,
Above me, grim and straight and high,
They climb; the terraces lean up
Like long grey reefs against the sky.
Veils
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Veils, everywhere float veils; veils long and black,
Framing white faces, oft-times young and fair,
But, like a rose touched by untimely frost,
Showing the blighting marks of sorrow's track.
Hudibras - The Lady's Answer to The Knight
© Samuel Butler
We are your guardians, that increase
Or waste your fortunes how we please;
And, as you humour us, can deal
In all your matters, ill or well.
The Young Princess -- A Ballad Of Old Laws Of Love
© George Meredith
When the South sang like a nightingale
Above a bower in May,
The training of Love's vine of flame
Was writ in laws, for lord and dame
To say their yea and nay.
Lines Written In August
© Thomas Babbington Macaulay
The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o'er;
Worn out with toil, and noise, and scorn, and spleen,
I slumbered, and in slumber saw once more
A room in an old mansion, long unseen.
The Death Of Sir James, Lord Of Douglas
© James Clerk Maxwell
"Men may weill wyt, thouch nane thaim tell,
How angry for sorow, and how fell,
Is to tyne sic a Lord as he
To thaim that war off hys mengye.
Gliding Over All
© Walt Whitman
GLIDING o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul-not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
Elegy XVII. He Indulges the Suggestions of Spleen.-- An Elegy to the Winds
© William Shenstone
AEole! namque tibi divûm Pater atque hominum rex,
Et mulcere dedit mentes et tollere vento.
Imitation.
O AEolus! to thee the Sire supreme
Of gods and men the mighty power bequeath'd
To rouse or to assuage the human mind.
Elegy III
© Henry James Pye
The dewy morn her saffron mantle spreads
High o'er the brow of yonder eastern hill;
