Death poems
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Dream Song 41: If we sang in the wood (and Death is a German expert)
© John Berryman
If we sang in the wood (and Death is a German expert)
while snows flies, chill, after so frequent knew
so many all nothing,
for lead & fire, it's not we would assert
particulars, but animal; cats mew,
horses scream, man sing.
Raphael
© John Greenleaf Whittier
I shall not soon forget that sight
The glow of Autumn's westering day,
A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter VII - Pompilia
© Robert Browning
There,
Strength comes already with the utterance!
I will remember once more for his sake
The sorrow: for he lives and is belied.
Could he be here, how he would speak for me!
Dream Song 10: There were strange gatherings. A vote would come
© John Berryman
There were strange gatherings. A vote would come
that would be no vote. There would come a rope.
Yes. There would come a rope.
Men have their hats down. "Dancing in the Dark"
will see him up, car-radio-wise. So many, some
won't find a rut to park.
The Touchstone
© Edith Nesbit
There was a garden, very strange and fair
With all the roses summer never brings.
The snowy blossom of immortal Springs
Lighted its boughs, and I, even I, was there.
There were new heavens, and the earth was new,
And still I told my heart the dream was true.
Argentile and Curan. - extracted from Albion's England
© William Warner
The Brutons thus departed hence, seaven kingdoms here begonne,
Where diversly in divers broyls the Saxons lost and wonne.
Monochromes
© Madison Julius Cawein
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes,--
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.
To Samet Vurgun
© Nazim Hikmet
But the day will come
when I'll totally separate you from yourself, Samet.
You'll enter the world of respectable memories.
And I'll lay flowers on your grave
without tears in my eyes.
Lyells Hypothesis Again
© Kenneth Rexroth
The mountain road ends here,
Broken away in the chasm where
A Cameo
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
THERE WAS a graven image of Desire
Painted with red blood on a ground of gold
Dream Song 46: I am, outside. Incredible
© John Berryman
I am, outside. Incredible panic rules.
People are blowing and beating each other without mercy.
Drinks are boiling. Iced
drinks are boiling. The worse anyone feels, the worse
treated he is. Fools elect fools.
A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath, "Christ!"
Dream Song 48: He yelled at me in Greek
© John Berryman
He yelled at me in Greek,
my God!âIt's not his language
and I'm no good atâhis Aramaic,
wasâI am a monoglot of English
(American version) and, say pieces from
a baker's dozen others: where's the bread?
Dream Song 49: Blind
© John Berryman
Old Pussy-cat if he won't eat, he don't
feel good into his tum', old Pussy-cat.
He wants to have eaten.
Tremor, heaves, he sweaterings. He can't.
A dizzy swims of where is Henry at;
. . . somewhere streng verboten.
Farewell
© Sir Henry Newbolt
Mother, with unbowed head
Hear thou across the sea
The farewell of the dead,
The dead who died for thee.
Greet them again with tender words and grave,
For saving thee, themselves they could not save.
Dream Song 127: Again, his friend's death made the man sit still
© John Berryman
Again, his friend's death made the man sit still
and freeze insideâhis daughter won first priceâ
his wife scowled over at himâ
It seemed to be Hallowe'en.
His friend's death had been adjudged suicide,
which dangles a trail
Like Some Wild Sleeper
© Mathilde Blind
Like some wild sleeper who alone at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above;
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep,
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.
Dream Song 76: Henry's Confession
© John Berryman
Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? âI explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
âIf life is a handkerchief sandwich,
Moonrise Over Tyringham
© Edith Wharton
Now the high holocaust of hours is done,
And all the west empurpled with their death,
How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,
How little while the dusk remembereth!
The Day Of Dead Soldiers
© Emma Lazarus
WELCOME, thou gray and fragrant Sabbath-day,
To deathless love and valor dedicate!
Glorious with the richest flowers of May,
With early roses, lingering lilacs late,
