Death poems
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Homage To Sextus Propertius - VI
© Ezra Pound
You will follow the bare scarified breast
Nor will you be weary of calling my name, nor too weary
To place the last kiss on my lips
When the Syrian onyx is broken.
The Maid of Gerringong
© Henry Kendall
Rolling through the gloomy gorges, comes the roaring southern blast,
With a sound of torrents flying, like a routed army, past,
Any Mother
© Katharine Tynan
"What's the news? Now tell it me."
"Allenby again advances."
"No, it is not Allenby
But my boy, straight as a lance is.
A Song of Honour
© Ralph Hodgson
I climbed a hill as light fell short,
And rooks came home in scramble sort,
The Tombstone Told When She Died
© Dylan Thomas
The tombstone told when she died.
Her two surnames stopped me still.
Family Reunion by Catherine Barnett: American Life in Poetry #67 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
One in a series of elegies by New York City poet Catherine Barnett, this poem describes the first gathering after death has shaken a family to its core. The father tries to help his grown daughter forget for a moment that, a year earlier, her own two daughters were killed, that she is now alone. He's heartsick, realizing that drinking can only momentarily ease her pain, a pain and love that takes hold of the entire family. The children who join her in the field are silent guardians.
Family Reunion
My father scolded us all for refusing his liquor.
He kept buying tequila, and steak for the grill,
until finally we joined him, making margaritas,
cutting the fat off the bone.
An Essay on Man: Epistle II
© Alexander Pope
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal Man unfold all Nature's law,
Admir'd such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton as we shew an Ape.
The Road To Ruin
© Siegfried Sassoon
My hopes, my messengers I sent
Across the ten years continent
Of Time. In dream I saw them go--
A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634. (Comus)
© John Milton
The Scene changes to a stately palace, set out with all manner of
deliciousness: soft music, tables spread with all dainties. Comus
appears with his rabble, and the LADY set in an enchanted chair;
to
whom he offers his glass; which she puts by, and goes about to
rise.
The Phantom Kiss
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell on my lips
Inside And Outside
© Allen Tate
For look you how her body stiffly lies
Just as she left it, unprepared to stay,
The posture waiting on the sleeping eyes,
While the body's life, deep as a covered well,
Instinctive as the wind, busy as May,
Burns out a secret passageway to hell.
The God And The Bayadere - An Indian Legend
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men as man he'd fain perceive.
And when he the town as a trav'ller hath seen,
Observing the mighty, regarding the mean,
He quits it, to go on his journey, at eve.
A Fly About A Glasse Of Burnt Claret.
© Richard Lovelace
I.
Forbear this liquid fire, Fly,
It is more fatal then the dry,
That singly, but embracing, wounds;
And this at once both burns and drowns.
On His Ladies Waking
© Pierre de Ronsard
My lady woke upon a morning fair,
What time Apollos chariot takes the skies,
Becoming A Dad
© Edgar Albert Guest
Old women say that men don't know
The pain through which all mothers go,
A Letter From A Girl To Her Own Old Age
© Alice Meynell
Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.
Hymn For The House Of Worship At Georgetown, Erected In Memory Of A Mother
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all
In temples which thy children raise;
Our work to thine is mean and small,
And brief to thy eternal days.
Weary Of The World, And With Heaven Most Dear
© Thomas Kingo
Farewell, world, farewell
As thrall here Im weary and no more will dwell,
On The Jungfrau, By Moonlight
© Richard Monckton Milnes
The maiden moon is resting
The maiden mount above,
They gaze upon each other,
With cold majestic love.
