Death poems
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The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top
© Stephen Crane
Blood -- blood and torn grass --
Had marked the rise of his agony --
This lone hunter.
The grey-green woods impassive
Had watched the threshing of his limbs.
On the desert
© Stephen Crane
On the desert
A silence from the moon's deepest valley.
Fire rays fall athwart the robes
Of hooded men, squat and dumb.
A spirit sped
© Stephen Crane
A spirit sped
Through spaces of night;
And as he sped, he called,
"God! God!"
Once there came a man
© Stephen Crane
Once there came a man
Who said,
"Range me all men of the world in rows."
And instantly
An Ode in Time of Hesitation
© William Vaughn Moody
After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
The Curtain
© Hayden Carruth
renewing field of corpse-flesh.
In this valley the snow falls silently all day and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in
Saturday At The Border
© Hayden Carruth
Here I am writing my first villanelle
At seventy-two, and feeling old and tired--
"Hey, Pops, why dontcha give us the old death knell?"--
Days of 1986
© Carolyn Kizer
He was believed by his peers to be an important poet,
But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden,
Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin.
The Shepherds Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
The shepherd's brow, fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heavena story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
What Shall I Do For the Land that Bred Me
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
What shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner Ill live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
The Times Are Nightfall
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal
The Loss Of The Eurydice
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Eurydiceit concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen
The Lantern Out Of Doors
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind
What most I may eye after, be in at the end
I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
The Leaden Echo And The Golden Echo
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
(Maidens' song from St. Winefred's Well)
THE LEADEN ECHOHow to kéepis there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, ... from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
No Worst, There Is None. Pitched Past Pitch Of Grief
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
Peace
© Gerard Manley Hopkins
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
Came the Great Popinjay
© Dame Edith Sitwell
CAME the great Popinjay
Smelling his nosegay:
In cages like grots
The birds sang gavottes.
Over the Sea our Galleys Went
© Robert Browning
Over the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave,
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,
