Death poems
/ page 457 of 560 /
Minerva Jones
© Edgar Lee Masters
I am Minerva, the village poetess,
Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street
For my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk,
And all the more when "Butch" Weldy
The Treasure
© Robinson Jeffers
Mountains, a moment's earth-waves rising and hollowing; the
earth too's an ephemerid; the stars-
Elizabeth Childers
© Edgar Lee Masters
Dust of my dust,
And dust with my dust,
O, child who died as you entered the world,
Dead with my death!
Anne Rutledge
© Edgar Lee Masters
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
'With malice toward none, with charity for all.'
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
The Village Atheist
© Edgar Lee Masters
Ye young debaters over the doctrine
Of the soul's immortality
I who lie here was the village atheist,
Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
Margaret Fuller Slack
© Edgar Lee Masters
I would have been as great as George Eliot
But for an untoward fate.
For look at the photograph of me made by Penniwit,
Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes --
Julian Scott
© Edgar Lee Masters
Toward the last
The truth of others was untruth to me;
The justice of others injustice to me;
Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
Rita Matlock Gruenberg
© Edgar Lee Masters
Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys,
And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six,
Here is your little Rita at last
Grown old, grown forty-nine;
Roger Heston
© Edgar Lee Masters
Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I
Argue about the freedom of the will.
My favorite metaphor was Prickett's cow
Roped out to grass, and free you know as far
The Widow Of Crescentius : Part I.
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
'Midst Tivoli's luxuriant glades,
Bright-foaming falls, and olive shades,
Silence
© Edgar Lee Masters
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
Wendell P. Bloyd
© Edgar Lee Masters
They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
There being no statute on blasphemy.
Later they locked me up as insane
Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
To Mrs. M. B. On Her Birthday
© Alexander Pope
Oh be thou blest with all that Heav'n can send,
Long Health, long Youth, long Pleasure, and a Friend:
Willard Fluke
© Edgar Lee Masters
My wife lost her health,
And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
Then that woman, whom the men
Styled Cleopatra, came along.
Charitas Nimia; or, The Dear Bargain
© Richard Crashaw
Lord, what is man? why should he cost Thee
So dear? what had his ruin lost Thee?
Lord, what is man, that Thou hast over-bought
So much a thing of naught?
The Season of the Northers
© Jose Maria de Heredia y Campuzano
The weary summer's all-consuming heat
Is tempered now; for from the frozen pole,
The freed north winds come fiercely rushing forth,
Wrapt in their mantles, misty, dim, and frore,
While the foul fever flies from Cuba's shore.
Jonah
© Thomas Parnell
Thus sung the kingsome angel reach a bough
From Eden's tree to crown the wisest brow;
And now thou fairest garden ever made,
Broad banks of spices, blossom'd walks of shade,
O Lebanon! where much I love to dwell,
Since I must leave thee Lebanon, farewel!
Two Infants II
© Khalil Gibran
A prince stood on the balcony of his palace addressing a great multitude summoned for the occasion and said, "Let me offer you and this whole fortunate country my congratulations upon the birth of a new prince who will carry the name of my noble family, and of whom you will be justly proud
