Death poems
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The Spirit Of Great Joan
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Back of each soldier who fights for France,
Aye, back of each woman and man
The Expert
© Rudyard Kipling
Youth that trafficked long with Death,
And to second life returns,
Squanders little time or breath
On his fellow-man's concerns.
Earned peace is all he asks
To fulfill his broken tasks.
Tim Turpin
© Thomas Hood
Tim Turpin he was gravel-blind,
And ne'er had seen the skies :
For Nature, when his head was made,
Forgot to dot his eyes.
The Song of the Shirt
© Thomas Hood
With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
The Haunted House
© Thomas Hood
Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!
The City Of The Dead XX
© Khalil Gibran
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.
The Dream of Eugene Aram
© Thomas Hood
'Twas in the prime of summer-time
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys
Came bounding out of school:
There were some that ran and some that leapt,
Like troutlets in a pool.
The Death Bed
© Thomas Hood
We watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
The Bridge of Sighs
© Thomas Hood
One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Faithless Sally Brown
© Thomas Hood
Young Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's maid.
Faithless Nelly Gray
© Thomas Hood
Ben Battle was a soldier bold,
And used to war's alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms.
Death
© Thomas Hood
It is not death, that sometime in a sigh
This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That sometime these bright stars, that now reply
In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night;
The Golden Legend: VI. The School Of Salerno
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
_Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema
© Conrad Aiken
The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 05: The Bitter Love-Song
© Conrad Aiken
Sharp shafts of music dazzled my eyes and pierced me.
I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight,
Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of beauty,
Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms
© Conrad Aiken
He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room belowhis floor her ceiling
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,
The Banks Of Wye - Book I
© Robert Bloomfield
No butler's proxies snore supine,
Where the old monarch kept his wine;
No Welch ox roasting, horns and all,
Adorns his throng'd and laughing hall;
But where he pray'd, and told his beads,
A thriving ash luxuriant spreads.
The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus
© Conrad Aiken
The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.
