FUNERAL POEMS

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This Is A Blossom Of The Brain

945

This is a Blossom of the Brain—
A small—italic Seed
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
A Befitting Send-off

Brothers, carry out the autopsy gently
That corpse was a rich man's residence
The carcass was never an ordinary body
To be hacked and dug upon
.....
Michael Aete

Michael Aete
The Old Burying-ground

Our vales are sweet with fern and rose,
Our hills are maple-crowned;
But not from them our fathers chose
The village burying-ground.
.....
John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier
Night Funeral In Harlem

Night funeral
In Harlem:

Where did they get
.....
Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes
To Think Of Time

To think of time, of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!

Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
.....
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman
The Swan

I'll leave the mortal world behind,
Take wing in an flight fantastical,
With singing, my eternal soul
Will rise up swan-like in the air.
.....

Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin
To Live Merrily, And To Trust To Good Verses

Now is the time for mirth,
Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with the flow'ry earth
The golden pomp is come.
.....

Robert Herrick
The Child Of The Islands - Winter

I.

ERE the Night cometh! On how many graves
Rests, at this hour, their first cold winter's snow!
.....
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Terence Macswiney

See, though the oil be low more purely still and higher
The flame burns in the body's lamp! The watchers still
Gaze with unseeing eyes while the Promethean Will,
The Uncreated Light, the Everlasting Fire
.....

'æ,' George William Russell
The Iliad: Book 23

Thus did they make their moan throughout the city, while the
Achaeans when they reached the Hellespont went back every man to his
own ship. But Achilles would not let the Myrmidons go, and spoke to
his brave comrades saying, “Myrmidons, famed horsemen and my own
.....

Homer
Endymion: Book Iii

There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
.....
John Keats

John Keats
An Introduction

I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
I amIndian, very brown, born inMalabar,
.....

Kamala Das
Place For A Third

Nothing to say to all those marriages!
She had made three herself to three of his.
The score was even for them, three to three.
But come to die she found she cared so much:
.....
Robert Frost

Robert Frost
Power

The mighty sound of forests murmuring
In answer to the dread command;
The stars that shudder when their king
extends his hand,
.....
Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley
Victory

I.
Before those golden altar-lights we stood,
Each one of us remembering his own dead.
A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood
.....
Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes
Upon Concluded Lives

735

Upon Concluded Lives
There's nothing cooler falls-
.....
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson
Clocks

HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.
.....
Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg
Threnody

O ye who claim to be our loyal friends
Come now and build for us a funeral pyre,
And lay our emptied bodies on the fire,
Pray for our souls, murmur your sad amens;
.....

Harry Crosby
Helen

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre of the olives
where she stands,
.....

H. D.
The Leveller

Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.
.....
Robert Graves

Robert Graves
Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood

The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, “My Heart Leaps Up”)
.....
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth
The Odyssey: Book 03

But as the sun was rising from the fair sea into the firmament of
heaven to shed Blight on mortals and immortals, they reached Pylos the
city of Neleus. Now the people of Pylos were gathered on the sea shore
to offer sacrifice of black bulls to Neptune lord of the Earthquake.
.....

Homer
The Iliad: Book 22

Thus the Trojans in the city, scared like fawns, wiped the sweat
from off them and drank to quench their thirst, leaning against the
goodly battlements, while the Achaeans with their shields laid upon
their shoulders drew close up to the walls. But stern fate bade Hector
.....

Homer
Dirge Over A Nameless Grave

By yon still river, where the wave
Is winding slow at evening's close,
The beech, upon a nameless grave,
Its sadly-moving shadow throws.
.....
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Satirical Elegy

On the Death of a Late FAMOUS GENERAL


His Grace! impossible! what dead!
.....
Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift
A Burial At Sea

The shore hath blent with the distant skies,
O'er the bend of the crested seas,
And the leaning ship in her pathway flies,
On the sweep of the freshened breeze.
.....

Sam G. Goodrich
What Our Dead Do

Jan came this morning
â??I dreamt of my father
he says

.....

Zbigniew Herbert
The Envoy Of Mr Cogito

Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees
.....

Zbigniew Herbert
After Hearing A Waltz By Bartok

But why did I kill him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,
.....
Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell
Letters To The Roman Friend

From Martial
Now is windy and the waves are cresting over
Fall is soon to come to change the place entirely.
Change of colors moves me, Postum, even stronger
.....

Joseph Brodsky
Sketches In The Exhibition

What various objects strike with various force,
Achilles, Hebe, and Sir Watkin's horse!
Here summer scenes, there Pentland's stormy ridge,
Lords, ladies, Noah's ark, and Cranford bridge!
.....

William Lisle Bowles
Saint Edmond's Eve

Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,
And did you observe his frown?
He goeth to say the midnight mass,
In holy St. Edmond's town.
.....
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Captain Craig

I

I doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Race

On the hill they are crowding together,
In the stand they are crushing for room,
Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather,
They gather like bees on the broom;
.....
Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon
For The King

Northern Mexico, 1640


As you look from the plaza at Leon west
.....
Bret Harte

Bret Harte
Rondel

I follow, tottering, in the funeral train
That bears my body to the welcoming grave.
As those I mourn not, that entomb the brave,
But smile as those that lay aside the vain;
.....
George Macdonald

George Macdonald
On The Astrologers (from The Greek)

The astrologers did all alike presage
My uncle's dying in extreme old age;
One only disagreed. But he was wise,
And spoke not till he heard the funeral cries.
.....
William Cowper

William Cowper
Elegy:the End Of Funeral Elegies

MADAMâ??
That I might make your cabinet my tomb,
And for my fame, which I love next my soul,
Next to my soul provide the happiest room,
.....
John Donne

John Donne
The Little Black Cormorant

By inlet and islet and wide river reaches,
By lake and lagoon I'm at home,
Yet oft' the far forests of blue-gum and beeches
About the broad ranges I roam,
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
In Black

The image that haunts me is not beautiful.
I do not think it will open into a field
of wildflowers; I doubt that it will take
wing suddenly, startling us into admiration.
.....

Joyce Sutphen
Talbragar

Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
Jack Denverâ??s wife bowed down her headâ??her daughterâ??s grief was wild,
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child.
.....
Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson
Cupid's Funeral

BY his side, whose days are past,
Lay bow and quiver!
And his eyes that stare aghast
Close, with a shiver.
.....

Victor James Daley
The Piano-organ

My student-lamp is lighted,
The books and papers are spread;
A sound comes floating upwards,
Chasing the thoughts from my head.
.....

Amy Levy
The Rose Of The World

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
.....
William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats
Sonnet 18 - I Never Gave A Lock Of Hair Away

XVIII

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
.....
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A Fantasy

I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
.....
Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck
Faith

And is the great cause lost beyond recall?
   Have all the hopes of ages come to naught?
   Is life no more with noble meaning fraught?
Is life but death, and love its funeral pall?
.....

Ada Cambridge
Graves

I dreamed one man stood against a thousand,
One man damned as a wrongheaded fool.
One year and another he walked the streets,
And a thousand shrugs and hoots
.....
Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg
This Heritage To The Race Of Kings

This heritage to the race of kings,
Their children and their children's seed
Have wrought their prophecies in deed
Of terrible and splendid things.
.....

Joseph Plunkett
Translation From Horace

[Justum et tenacem propositi virum, &c.]

The man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control;
.....

George Gordon Byron