Death poems
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My Aviary
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.
The Iron Gate
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,
The Voiceless
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WE count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
Bill and Joe
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.
AN ELEGY Upon the most Incomparable K. Charles the First
© Henry King
Call for amazed thoughts, a wounded sense
And bleeding Hearts at our Intelligence.
Call for that Trump of Death the Mandrakes Groan
Which kills the Hearers: This befits alone
Acceptance
© Leon Gellert
Beside the doors of a keen-lighted hall
I paused, and quite by chance
I noticed Love
Smiling and tall;
And then I heard the whirling dance,
And saw the dismal skies above.
The Errand
© Anne Sexton
I've been going right on, page by page,
since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage,
two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out,
double-crossing out lives with doubt,
leaving us separate now, fogy with rage.
The Missionary - Canto Eighth
© William Lisle Bowles
Oh, shout for Lautaro, the young and the brave!
The arm of whose strength was uplifted to save,
When the steeds of the strangers came rushing amain,
And the ghosts of our fathers looked down on the slain!
For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach
© Anne Sexton
In his tenth July some instinct
taught him to arm the waiting wave,
a giant where its mouth hung open.
He rode on the lip that buoyed him there
Ghost Glen
© Henry Kendall
"Shut your ears, stranger, or turn from Ghost Glen now,
For the paths are grown over, untrodden by men now;
Shut your ears, stranger," saith the grey mother, crooning
Her sorcery runic, when sets the half-moon in.
The Firebombers
© Anne Sexton
We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
Some Foreign Letters
© Anne Sexton
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
Translation From Catullus
© George Gordon Byron
[Lugete, Veneres, Cupidinesque, &c.]
Ye Cupids, droop each little head,
Nor let your wings with joy be spread;
My Lesbia's favourite bird is dead,
In The Deep Museum
© Anne Sexton
My God, my God, what queer corner am I in?
Didn't I die, blood running down the post,
lungs gagging for air, die there for the sin
of anyone, my sour mouth giving up the ghost?
A Spirit Present
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
IF, coming from that unknown sphere
Where I believe thou art,--
The world unseen which girds our world
So close, yet so apart,--
The Division Of Parts
© Anne Sexton
1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
A Day In The Castle Of Envy
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
The castle walls are full of eyes,
And not a mouse may creep unseen.
All the window slits are spies;
And the towers stand sentinel
A Destiny
© Caroline Norton
And his two sons in careless beauty grew,
Like wild-flowers in his path: he mark'd them not,
Nor reck'd he what they needed, learnt, or knew,
Or what might be on earth their future lot;
But they died young--which is a thought of rest!
Unscorn'd, untempted, undefiled--so best.
The Earth Falls Down
© Anne Sexton
If I could blame it all on the weather,
the snow like the cadaver's table,
the trees turned into knitting needles,
the ground as hard as a frozen haddock,
