Death poems
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Borderland
© Amy Levy
Am I waking, am I sleeping?
As the first faint dawn comes creeping
Thro' the pane, I am aware
Of an unseen presence hovering,
A Reminiscence
© Amy Levy
It is so long gone by, and yet
How clearly now I see it all!
The glimmer of your cigarette,
The little chamber, narrow and tall.
A Minor Poet
© Amy Levy
"What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"
Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
A Cross-Road Epitaph
© Amy Levy
"Am Kreuzweg wird begraben
Wer selber brachte sich um."
When first the world grew dark to me
I call'd on God, yet came not he.
The Witch
© Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
I HAVE walked a great while over the snow,
And I am not tall nor strong.
My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set,
And the way was hard and long.
Good Friday in my Heart
© Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.
Death and the Lady
© Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
TURN in, my lord, she said ;
As it were the Father of Sin
I have hated the Father of the Dead,
The slayer of my kin ;
By the Father of the Living led,
Turn in, my lord, turn in.
The Spider Queen
© Edith Nesbit
IN the deep heart of furthest fairyland
Where foot of man has never trodden yet
The enchanted portals of her palace stand,
And there her sleepless sentinels are set.
To The Earl Of Clare
© George Gordon Byron
The recollectlon seems alone
Dearer than all the joys I've known,
When distant far from you:
Though pain, 'tis still a pleasing pain,
To trace those days and hours again,
And sigh again, adieu!
A Voice From The Factories
© Caroline Norton
WHEN fallen man from Paradise was driven,
Forth to a world of labour, death, and care;
Still, of his native Eden, bounteous Heaven
Resolved one brief memorial to spare,
The Unconquered Dead
© John McCrae
Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.
Victoria
© Alfred Austin
The lark went up, the mower whet his scythe,
On golden meads kine ruminating lay,
And all the world felt young again and blithe,
Just as to-day.
The Song Of The Derelict
© John McCrae
Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
(I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
(A treacherous lover, the sea!)
The Pilgrims
© John McCrae
An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
Where every beam that broke the leaden sky
Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;
Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;
And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
And this was Life.
On The Death Of Rebecca
© George Moses Horton
Thou delicate blossom; thy short race is ended,
Thou sample of virtue and prize of the brave!
No more are thy beauties by mortals attended,
They now are but food for the worms and the grave.
Song of the Stars
© William Cullen Bryant
"Away, away, through the wide, wide sky, -
The fair blue fields that before us lie, -
Each sun with the worlds that round him roll,
Each planet poised on her turning pole;
With her isles of green and her clouds of white,
And her waters that lie like fluid light.
The Captain
© John McCrae
Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
Yet unashamed: her memories remain.
Penance
© John McCrae
My lover died a century ago,
Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous breath,
Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
The peace of death.
But the Greatest of These is Charity
© George Essex Evans
Give: we are pawns upon the board;
We see not how Fates dice are thrown.
The life swung by a trembling cord
Might be your own.
