Death poems
/ page 509 of 560 /
Terence, This is Stupid Stuff
© Alfred Edward Housman
TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There cant be much amiss, tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
Poem With Refrains
© Robert Pinsky
But they did speak: on the phone. Wept and argued,
So fiercely one or the other often cut off
A sentence by hanging up in rage--like lovers,
But all that year she never saw her face.
An Eternity
© Archibald MacLeish
There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.
Death in the Family
© Julie Hill Alger
They call it stroke.
Two we loved were stunned
by that same blow of cudgel
or axe to the brow.
A Way to Love God
© Robert Penn Warren
Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
The Shroud
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Death, I say, my heart is bowed
Unto thine,O mother!
This red gown will make a shroud
Good as any other!
The Singing-Woman From The Wood's Edge
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?
Passer Mortuus Est
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness,presently
Every bed is narrow.
The Poet And His Book
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
My Most Distinguished Guest And Learned Friend
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
My most Distinguished Guest and Learned Friend,
The pallid hare that runs before the day
Having brought your earnest counsels to an end
Now have I somewhat of my own to say:
Sonnets 08: And You As Well Must Die, Beloved Du
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Invocation To The Muses
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Archaic, or obsolescent at the least,
Be thy grave speaking and the careful words of thy clear song,
For the time wrongs us, and the words most common to our speech today
Salute and welcome to the feast
Conspicuous Evil or against him all day long
Cry out, telling of ugly deeds and most uncommon wrong.
Dirge
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Boys and girls that held her dear,
Do your weeping now;
All you loved of her lies here.
Doubt No More That Oberon
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Doubt no more that Oberon
Never doubt that Pan
Lived, and played a reed, and ran
After nymphs in a dark forest,
Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Be loosed by you and not by me,
Sonnets 10: Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:
How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,
More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,
And make you old, and leave me in my prime?
Mariposa
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
To A Poet That Died Young
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
Still, though none should hark again,
Drones the blue-fly in the pane,
Thickly crusts the blackest moss,
Blows the rose its musk across,
Floats the boat that is forgot
None the less to Camelot.
Inland
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound
