Death poems
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The To-Be-Forgotten
© Thomas Hardy
I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are you distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"
In Tenebris
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Last Words To A Dumb Friend
© Thomas Hardy
Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.
Friends Beyond
© Thomas Hardy
WILLIAM Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
The Church-Builder
© Thomas Hardy
The church flings forth a battled shade
Over the moon-blanched sward:
The church; my gift; whereto I paid
My all in hand and hoard;
The Choirmaster's Burial
© Thomas Hardy
He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
The Dead Man Walking
© Thomas Hardy
They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?
The Subalterns
© Thomas Hardy
"Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky,
"I fain would lighten thee,
But there are laws in force on high
Which say it must not be."
An Autumn Rain-Scene
© Thomas Hardy
There trudges one to a merry-making
With sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.
The Darkling Thrush
© Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?
© Thomas Hardy
"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"
A Performance Of Henry V At Stratford-Upon-Avon
© Elizabeth Jennings
For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is
Wind Chill
© Linda Pastan
The door of winter
is frozen shut, and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them. How ceremonious snow is,
Middle Passage
© Robert Hayden
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5
© Alexander Pope
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapp'd his glad wings, and sate to view the fight:
Propp'd on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1
© Alexander Pope
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
The Rape of the Lock
© Alexander Pope
He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leapt up, and wak'd his Mistress with his Tongue.
'Twas then Belinda, if Report say true,
Thy Eyes first open'd on a Billet-doux.
Wounds, Charms, and Ardors, were no sooner read,
But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head.
The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt)
© Alexander Pope
He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book
© Alexander Pope
Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,
Why should not we be wiser than our sires?
In ev'ry public virtue we excel:
We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well,
And learned Athens to our art must stoop,
Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.
From an Essay on Man
© Alexander Pope
Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
