Death poems
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The Other World
© Harriet Beecher Stowe
It lies around us like a cloud,
A world we do not see;
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.
A Question.
© Arthur Henry Adams
AND so in the death-darkened chamber they met,
The woman that once he had loved and the one he loved yet
The wife who had warped his desire and the woman he could not forget.
They stood by the bier where between them he slept,
Design
© Robert Frost
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.
Invita Minerva
© James Russell Lowell
The Bardling came where by a river grew
The pennoned reeds, that, as the west-wind blew,
Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew
What music slept enchanted in each stem,
Till Pan should choose some happy one of them,
And with wise lips enlife it through and through.
Laughter And Death
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
THERE is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Monody On The Death Of Chatterton
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thee, Chatterton! yon unblest stones protect
From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect!
Escaped the sore wounds of affliction's rod,
Meek at the throne of mercy, and of God,
Perchance, thou raisest high th' enraptured hymn
Amid the blaze of seraphin!
Enemy of Death
© Salvatore Quasimodo
(For Rossana Sironi) You should not have
ripped out your image
taken from us, from the world,
a portion of beauty.
The Dead Child And The Mocking-Bird
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
ONCE in a land of balm and flowers,
Of rich fruit-laden trees,
Where the wild wreaths from jasmine bowers
Trail o'er Floridian seas;
Our Men
© William Watson
Our men, they are our stronghold,
Our bastioned wall unscaled,
Who, against Hate and Wrong, hold
This Realm that never quailed;
Returning, We Hear the Larks
© Isaac Rosenberg
Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lies there.
Dead Man's Dump
© Isaac Rosenberg
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.
Filthy Savior
© Laure-Anne Bosselaar
there it goes, letting the wind
push it, suck it into a cloud; then its
gone like some vague, inhuman
longing as the rain lifts, and the suburbs
emerge in dirty white light.
The Silence
© Wendell Berry
Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.
Words
© Muriel Stuart
Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles,--
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis? --MARLOWE
The Country Of Marriage
© Wendell Berry
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
Testament
© Wendell Berry
2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Ripening
© Wendell Berry
The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now
who are dead! We, who were young,
In The Churchyard At Tarrytown
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame!
1991-ii
© Wendell Berry
The ewes crowd to the mangers;
Their bellies widen, sag;
Their udders tighten. Soon
The little voices cry
