No one could hope to gather all the poetry, or even all the major poetry, which deals with the topic of death. The following are only a tiny sample of the rich and fascinating range of material that could have been included. The reader is encouraged to see these poems as simply a starting point from which to begin to explore this fascinating field.
The comments offered after each poem are simply the views of this compiler. Readers should think about their own responses and seek others…..
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou thinkst, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stoke; why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death thou shalt die.
In this sonnet, Donne personifies death and addresses it directly, challenging the notion that death is terrible and all-powerful. In each quatrain (four-line section) he addresses one aspect of death and scornfully dismisses the beliefs on which it is based. Death, he argues, has no real power, it is just a longer sleep, and therefore gives us ease and comfort. He goes on to point out that has ugly company and is controlled by many other factors, denying its right to be proud. The couplet at the end sums up his central point which is based on his own religious conviction, that death it but a steppingstone to heaven, where death has no power.
‘The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true-love;
In cold grave she was lain.
‘I’ll do as much for my true-love;
As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn at her grave
For twelvemonth and a day.’
The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead bean to speak:
‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?’
‘ ’Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,
And I will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek.’
‘You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips;
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss of my clay cold lips,
Your time will not be long.
‘ ’Tis down in yonder garden green,
Love, where we used to walk,
The finest flower that ere was seen
Is withered to a stalk.
‘The stalk is withered dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love
Till God calls you away.’
Ballads were sung or recited by travelling minstrels and became woven
into the culture. This English tale, like many ballads contained a warning
or message. In this case it warns against undue or excessive grief. When
disease and accidents made death a common occurrence, it would be dangerous
and wasteful to spend one’s life grieving over a loved one who had passed
away. The ballad concludes with the wise words from the departed loved
one, "make yourself content, my love / till God calls you away."
Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side
Should’st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable Love should grow
Vaster than Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on the Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast:
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age to each and every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Deserts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then worms shall try
That long preserv’d Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my .
The Grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew,
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now; like am’rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow’r.
Let us role all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
As this eager young man addresses his loved one, urging her to accept
him, we might think that death would be the last thing on his mind. Yet
the key to the poem lies in the lines, "But at my back I alwaies hear /
Times winged Charriot hurrying near." The poet is all too aware of the
brief span of life, and the message for all readers is to use the time
we have before we are carried off in "the winged Charriot." He urges us
to share love, for "The Grave’s a fine and private place / But none I think
do there embrace." We all know that time is relative: when we are doing
something boring, it seems to drag, but in pleasurable pursuits, time rushes
quickly past. Marvel concludes therefore that even though we cannot stop
time, or achieve immortality, at we can make the most of the time we have,
"Thus, though we cannot make our Sun / Stand still, yet we will make him
run."
IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee, -
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly !
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press, - by the wilderness out-spread, -
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow, - by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine !
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine,
But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
And smile away my mortal to Divine ! '
THERE 's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave ;
I 've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.
Calmly to watch the failing breath,
Wishing each sigh might be the last ;
Longing to see the shade of death
O'er those belovèd features cast.
The cloud, the stillness that must part
The darling of my life from me ;
And then to thank God from my heart,
To thank Him well and fervently ;
Although I knew that we had lost
The hope and glory of our life ;
And now, benighted, tempest-tossed,
Must bear alone the weary strife.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The flacon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack of all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This strange and disturbing poem seems to be about the death, not of
any one individual, but of the world itself. In the Christian faith, the
Second Coming is usually portrayed as a time of great glory, when all receive
their ultimate reward, but this is not the way Yeats portrays the event.
He seems very despondent about the state of the world, where, "The best
lack of all conviction,/ while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."
Consequently, he predicts a ghastly fate, where the troubled world has
created some monstrous rebirth, "vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle."
This could be seen as a warning to the reader that we must all end our
wicked ways. The powerful image of the "rough beast, its hour come at last,"
which, "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born" certainly creates a vivid
and troubling final picture.
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby gray;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is the cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Walking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
Perhaps it is the sensitivity and perceptiveness needed to be a poet
that results in so many sobering visions of the world. Like Keats, Eliot
sees the world as a sad and selfish place, where humanity has little of
value:" We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men."
Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs
The convoys of dead sailors come;
At night they sway and wonder in the waters far under,
But morning rolls them in the foam.
Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire
Someone, it seems, has time for this,
To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows
And tread the sand upon their nakedness;
And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,
Bears the last signature of men,
Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,
The words choke as they begin -
‘Unknown seamen’ - the ghostly pencil
Wavers and fades, the purple drips,
The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions
As blue as drowned men’s lips,
Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,
Whether as enemies they fought,
Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,
Enlisted on the other front.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
In this poem, Dylan Thomas addressees his father directly as the
time of the older man's death approaches. He presents a fierce challenge
and a plea to not accept death passively, but to "rage, rage against the
dying of the light." The use of light to represent life and darkness to
signify death is a frequent symbol in death poetry, but rarely so well
used as here where "blind eyes...blaze like meteors" at "close of
day." Thomas lists all types of men and for each explains why death should
not by simply accepted. The underlying message is that life is too precious
to give up without a battle. This poem is an example of a villanelle,
a French poetry form.
O Death! why dost thou steal the great,
With grudging like to strongest hate,
And rob the world of giant minds,
For whom all nature mourns and pines.
So few have we upon the earth,
Whom God ennobled at their birth,
With genius stamped upon their souls,
That guides, directs, persuades, controls.
So few who scorn the joys of life,
And labor in contending strife,
With zeal increased and stength of ten,
To ameliorate the ills of men.
So few who keep a record clean,
Amid temptations strong and keen;
Who live laborious days and nights,
And shun the stores of passion's blights.
O, why cannot these linger here,
As lights upon this planet drear;
Forever in the public sight,
To lead us always to the right?
O Douglass! thou wert 'mong the few
Who struggles and temptations knew,
Yet bravely mounted towering heights,
Amazing both to blacks and whites.
The sons of Ham feel desolate
Without thee, O Douglass the Great;
A nation's tears fall now with mine,
While mourning at thy sacred shrine.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen lived to be 25. He was killed in the trenches of France
in WWI. He was the one of the first to actually write of the war from
his own personal experiences from the trenches and to reveal the truth
extent of the tragedy. Anthem for doomed youth is a sonnet which conveys
something of the sadness and bitterness towards the waste of a generation.
The format of this poem is asking two rhetorical questions. The Octet begins
"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?" a term like "die as cattle"
suggests the inhumanity and brutality used. Sounds of the war are vividly evoked "Only the stuttering rifles' rapid
rattle" and "The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells" These sounds
are compared to the "…bugles calling for them from sad shires" makes us
face the inevitability of their deaths. The sense of a conclusion and impact
on the whole society is summed up with the simple image of "And each slow
dusk a drawing-down of blinds."
1
FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for
you:
You are to die - Let others tell you what they please,
I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you - There is no
escape for you.
Softly I lay my right hand upon you - you just feel it,
I do not argue - I bend my head close, and half envelope
it,
I sit quietly by - I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
I absolve you from all except yourself, spiritual, bodily
- that is
Eternal - you yourself
will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.
2
The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions!
Strong thoughts fill you, and confidence - you smile!
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines - you do not mind the weeping
friends - I
am with you,
I exclude others from you - there is nothing to be commiserated,
I do not commiserate - I congratulate you.
Here Whitman challenges many of the usual attitudes to death. Rather
than hiding behind flowery imagery he states the facts plainly, "You are
to die." His poem is not cruel or harsh however. He shows warmth and compassion
for the person he addresses, "Softly, I lay my right hand upon you." Indeed,
the poem seems to be mostly about Whitman’s feelings about his own experience
of waiting with someone for their death, rather than about the person who
is dying, about whom we hear very little. Again a spiritual element is
reflected as the dying person casts off the unpleasant paraphernalia of
dying, the medicines, the weeping friends, and smiles, at peace at last.
This explains Whitman’s final line, "I do not commiserate - I congratulate
you."
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Cummings challenged all the commonly accepted rules about the structure and form of poetry, creating highly original and evocative pieces like this. Here he reflects on a colorful character from history, an interesting comparison to the traditional odes covered elsewhere on this page. The reader is reminded that death comes to all of us, including those who have lead a wild and violent life. The final question, addressed directly to death, suggests that death is truly the final reaper.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I am a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot-
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands,
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
"A miracle!"
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart-
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blook
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash-
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Now I know what cool earth the armies
return, return, return, in absolute silence,
under the hurt gaze of the moon.
Slim, nude, beautiful, each combatant
rises into injured light, shrugging off
the last fox-hole sand, the last cast
Of silica shielding him from the air that moves
massing about him in clumps of darkness where the grass
on its frail blades tests the throat of dew
Alive with enquiry then, and anxious for
a solace dreamed of while the brute weather
exploded above them, they roil, roll, writhe
As if bewitched on the pure blebs besprinkling
the vast yard. If they could sing, they would;
if they could travel speedily enough
Over the surface of their world to inhabit
perpetual night, that would be something
and better than retreating, as they must, at the hour
When the first birds whistle their eerily reveille and the sky quakes
with its sick pallor, black into holes,
there
to eat soil, to thirst, to lie, eyeless.
THOSE forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights
That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind
That smites us by the roadside--are the Night's
Innumerable children. Unconfined
By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls,
Uneasy spirits, steal into the air
From ancient graveyards when the curfew tolls
At the day's death. Pestilence and despair
Fly with the sightless bats at set of sun;
And wheresoever murders have been done,
In crowded palaces or lonely woods,
Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost
Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods
Some sad, invisible, accurséd ghost!
Aldrich uses the sonnet to evoke a picture of ghosts which is familiar to most of us, the classical image of the strange light or odd cold breathe of wind where no wind should be. His ghosts are the sad, tormented spirits who have been unable to find rest due to their violent deaths, untimely death or unfinished business in the world of the living.
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
In the first watch no death but made us mourn;
Now tearless eyes run down the daily roll,
Whose names are written in the book of death;
For sealed are now the springs of tears, as when
The tropic sun makes dry the torrent's course
After the rains. They are too many now
For mortal eyes to weep, and none can see
But God alone the Thing itself and live.
We look to seaward, and behold a cry!
To skyward, and they fall as stricken birds
On autumn fields; and earth cries out its toll,
From the Great River to the world's end--toll
Of dead, and maimed and lost; we dare not stay;
Tears are not endless and we have no more.
For me, my friend, no grave-side vigil keep
With tears that memory and remorse might fill;
Give me your tenderest laughter earth-bound still,
And when I die you shall not want to weep.
No epitaph for me with virtues deep
Punctured in marble pitiless and chill:
But when play time is over, if you will,
The songs that soothe beloved babes to sleep.
No lenten lilies on my breast and brow
Be laid when I am silent; roses red,
And golden roses bring me here instead,
That if you love or bear me I may know;
I may not know, nor care, when I am dead:
Give me your songs, and flowers, and laughter now.
With emotions blunted and eyes no longer able to weep at each death, the overwhelming horror of the endless lists of dead were the topic for this sonnet by Eleanor Alexander.
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of ,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love, and all its smart,--
Then sleep, dear,
sleep!
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your
eyelashes;
Lie still and deep,
Sad soul, until the
sea-wave washes
The rim o' the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky,
But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love, and all its smart,-
Then die, dear, die!
'T is deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank
to lie dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid
the beaming
Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her
In eastern sky.
Here Beddoes reminds that us that while life may seem full of
heartache and pain, the only alternative is death, and that is hardly a
happy option. The poem seems to have been written in response who wept
in misery over a broken heart too long, but Beddoes’ rather harsh sounding
response does offer the comfort of an eventual reunion of the lovers "In
eastern sky."
To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,--
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice:--Yet a few days, and they
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretcheing in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the coplaining brooks,
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there;
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone!
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living; and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before shall chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore -
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping - rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
This it is and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly yours forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping - tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" - here I opened wide the door: -
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" -
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore! -
Merely this and nothing more.
Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more."
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above this chamber door -
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before,"
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his Hope the melacholy burden bore
Of 'Never-nevermore.'"
But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this Home by Horror haunted - tell me truly I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? tell me - tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore.
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting -
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting - still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a Demon that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!