Death poems
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Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell
© John Keats
Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:
No God, no Demon of severe response,
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.
Then to my human heart I turn at once.
Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art
© John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
Endymion: Book I
© John Keats
This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star
Through autumn mists, and took Peona's hand:
They stept into the boat, and launch'd from land.
The Eve Of St. Agnes
© John Keats
St. Agnes' Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Hyperion
© John Keats
BOOK I Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Ode On Melancholy
© John Keats
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
© John Keats
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.
Ode To A Nightingale
© John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
Bombay
© John Matthew
In your bosom we wake up with fear,
In your sky theres only unending tears,
You always roar, but within,
Hangs silence like a shroud of death.
In a Churchyard
© Richard Wilbur
That flower unseen, that gem of purest ray,
Bright thoughts uncut by men:
Strange that you need but speak them, Thomas Gray,
And the mind skips and dives beyond its ken,
Advice to a Prophet
© Richard Wilbur
When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,
The Ride
© Richard Wilbur
The horse beneath me seemed
To know what course to steer
Through the horror of snow I dreamed,
And so I had no fear,
The Writer
© Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly
© James Joyce
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?
From Dewy Dreams
© James Joyce
From dewy dreams, my soul, arise,
From love's deep slumber and from death,
For lo! the treees are full of sighs
Whose leaves the morn admonisheth.
Death Of The Kapowsin Tavern
© Richard Hugo
I can't ridge it back again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
With Tears They Buried You Today
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
With tears they buried you to-day,
But well I knew no turf could hold
Your gladness long beneath the mould,
Or cramp your laughter in the clay;
I smiled while others wept for you
Because I knew.
The Watchman
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
Claudia, how may I tell what came to pass?
I have been mocked at when I told the tale
For a crazed dreamer punished by the gods
Because he slept on guard; but mock not thou!
I could not bear it if thy lips should mock
The vision dread of that Judean morn.
The Three Songs
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
The poet sang of a battle-field
Where doughty deeds were done,
Where stout blows rang on helm and shield
And a kingdom's fate was spun
The Farewell
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
He rides away with sword and spur,
Garbed in his warlike blazonry,
With gallant glance and smile for her
Upon the dim-lit balcony.
