Death poems
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For The One Who Would Take Man's Life In His Hands
© Delmore Schwartz
Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Crucifix In A Deathhand
© Charles Bukowski
yes, they begin out in a willow, I think
the starch mountains begin out in the willow
and keep right on going without regard for
pumas and nectarines
The Sad Day
© Thomas Flatman
But--when his next companions say
'How does he do? What hopes?'--shall turn away,
Answering only, with a lift-up hand--
'Who can his fate withstand?'
Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius
© Edgar Allan Poe
Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I'll conceal
Like those champions devoted and brave,
When they plunged in the tyrant their steel,
And to Athens deliverance gave.
A Woman's Fancy
© Thomas Hardy
"Ah Madam; you've indeed come back here?
'Twas sad-your husband's so swift death,
And you away! You shouldn't have left him:
It hastened his last breath."
To Helen 2
© Edgar Allan Poe
I saw thee once- once only- years ago:
I must not say how many- but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Ocean: An Ode. Concluding With A Wish.
© Edward Young
Sweet rural scene Of flocks and green!
At careless ease my limbs are spread;
All nature still, But yonder rill;
And listening pines nod o'er my head:
Tamerlane
© Edgar Allan Poe
On mountain soil I first drew life:
The mists of the Taglay have shed
Nightly their dews upon my head,
And, I believe, the winged strife
And tumult of the headlong air
Have nestled in my very hair.
Al Aaraaf
© Edgar Allan Poe
"My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee-
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman's loveliness- and passionate love."
The Lake
© Edgar Allan Poe
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.
Spirits Of The Dead
© Edgar Allan Poe
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
To My Mother
© Edgar Allan Poe
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
The City In The Sea
© Edgar Allan Poe
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
Lenore
© Edgar Allan Poe
"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her- that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read?- the requiem how be sung
By you- by yours, the evil eye,- by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"
William Rufus
© Marriott Edgar
The reign of King William the Second
Were an uninteresting affair
There's only two things that's remembered of him
That's his sudden death and his red hair.
Henry the Seventh
© Marriott Edgar
Henry the Seventh of England
Wasn't out of the Royal top drawer,
The only connection of which he could boast,
He were King's nephew's brother-in-law.
Asparagus
© Marriott Edgar
Mr. Ramsbottom went to the races,
A thing as he'd ne'er done before,
And as luck always follers beginners,
Won five pounds, no-less and no-more.
Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun
© Heather McHugh
Too volatile, am I?too voluble?too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:I'm a primordially
stirred person.
The Far Field
© Theodore Roethke
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.
In A Dark Time
© Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
