CEMETERY POEMS

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

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

Books Written On The Road

ocean wave moving across sail crape rays
sun glimmering sea rail sunset, campfire
beach street revolutionary figures, walk
taken along the sand, somewhere between
.....

Joseph Mayo Wristen

There Is

There is this ship which has taken my beloved back again
There are six Zeppelin sausages in the sky and with night
coming on it makes a man think of the maggots from which the
stars might some day be reborn
.....

Guillaume Apollinaire

Of De Witt Williams On His Way To Lincoln Cemetery

He was born in Alabama.
He was bred in Illinois.
He was nothing but a
Plain black boy.
.....

Gwendolyn Brooks

Captain Dobbin

CAPTAIN Dobbin, having retired from the South Seas
In the dumb tides of , with a handful of shells,
A few poisoned arrows, a cask of pearls,
And five thousand pounds in the colonial funds,
.....

Kenneth Slessor

Last Will And Testament

Comrades, if I don't live to see the day
-- I mean,if I die before freedom comes --
take me away
and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.
.....

Nazim Hikmet

A Question Of Privilege

Reported By Truthful James


It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks
.....

Bret Harte

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

The Tombstone-maker

He primmed his loose red mouth and leaned his head
Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said:
‘You'd think so much bereavement would have made
‘Unusual big demands upon my trade.
.....

Siegfried Sassoon

America, America!

I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
-of the peoples' hearts, crossing it
.....

Delmore Schwartz

Inscription For A Rural Cemetery

Peace to the dead! The forest weaves,
Around your couch, its shroud of leaves;
While shadows dim and silence deep,
Bespeak the quiet of your sleep.
.....

Sam G. Goodrich

Cemetery

Who whispers here is forgotten.

Saliva's emptiest fruit
adorns the stones,
.....

Bill Knott

A Song Of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
.....

Pablo Neruda

Pauline Part I

To the memory of my devoted wife dead and gone yet always with me I dedicate

PAULINE

.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

The View From An Attic Window

Among the high-branching, leafless boughs
Above the roof-peaks of the town,
Snowflakes unnumberably come down.

.....

Howard Nemerov

Books In Red Binding

From heaven of a childhood life
A farewell to me you're sending,
The ever-loyal dear friends
Within a red worn down binding.
.....

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

Saving A Train

'Twas in the year of 1869, and on the 19th of November,
Which the people in Southern Germany will long remember,
The great rain-storm which for twenty hours did pour down,
That the rivers were overflowed and petty streams all around.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

Workshop

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.
It gets me right away because I'm in a workshop now
so immediately the poem has my attention,
like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.
.....

Billy Collins

For The Consecration Of A Cemetery.

This verdant field that smiles to Heaven
In Nature's bright array,
From common uses set apart,
We consecrate to-day.
.....

Horatio Alger, Jr.

A Jewish Cemetery In Germany

On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer
nor the voice of lamentation is heard there
.....

Yehuda Amichai

The Shooting-range And The Cemetery.

"Cemetery View Inn" "A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper -o f this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity."
He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the sunshine.
The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath.
The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life the life of things infinitely small and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 04

On the day when my uncle and I drove to the cemetery,
Rain rattled on the roof of the carriage;
And talkng constrainedly of this and that
We refrained from looking at the child's coffin on the seat before us.
.....

Conrad Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 04

On the day when my uncle and I drove to the cemetery,
Rain rattled on the roof of the carriage;
And talkng constrainedly of this and that
We refrained from looking at the childâ??s coffin on the seat before us.
.....

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Cemetery Nightingale

In the hills' embraces holden,
In a valley filled with glooms,
Lies a cemetery olden,
Strewn with countless mould'ring tombs.
.....

Morris Rosenfeld

The Death Of The Rev. Dr. Wilson

'Twas in the year of 1888 and on the 17th of January
That the late Rev. Dr. Wilson's soul fled away;
The generous-hearted Dr. had been ailing for some time,
But death, with his dart, did pierce the heart of the learned divine.
.....

William Topaz Mcgonagall

Autobiography (polish It Like A Piece Of Silver)

I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? 'God-forsaken is beautiful, too.'
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
.....

Richard Brautigan

In A Breton Cemetery

They sleep well here,
These fisher-folk who passed their anxious days
In fierce Atlantic ways;
And found not there,
.....

Ernest Dowson

Spleen (ii)

J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans.

Un gros meuble à tiroirs encombré de bilans,
De vers, de billets doux, de procès, de romances,
.....

Charles Baudelaire

Improvisations: Light And Snow

I

The girl in the room beneath
Before going to bed
.....

Conrad Potter Aiken

A Question Of Privilege

It was Andrew Jackson Sutter who, despising Mr. Cutter for remarks he heard him utter in debate upon the floor,
Swung him up into the skylight, in the peaceful, pensive twilight, and then keerlessly proceeded, makin' no account what we did To wipe up with his person casual dust upon the floor.

Now a square fight never frets me, nor unpleasantness upsets me, but the simple thing that gets me now the job is done and gone,
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

Barney Hainsfeather

If the excursion train to Peoria
Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life-
Certainly I should have escaped this place.
But as it was burned as well, they mistook me
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

The Captain's Story

“Well, comrades, let us fight one battle more;
Let the cock crow-we'll guard the camp till morn.
And-since the singers and the merry ones
Are hors de combat-fill the cups again;
.....

Hanford Lennox Gordon

Quatrains

I
Give to brave deeds emblazoned shrines
Where reverent memories may throng.
For them Art draws her perfect lines
.....

Harriet Monroe

The Jewish Cemetery At Newport

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Willie Metcalf

I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me “Doctor Meyers”
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
.....

Edgar Lee Masters

Nothing Remains

Nothing remains of unrecorded ages
That lie in the silent cemetery time;
Their wisdom may have shamed our wisest sages,
Their glory may have been indeed sublime.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Distressed Haiku

In a week or ten days
the snow and ice
will melt from Cemetery Road.

.....

Donald Hall

Veterans' Cemetery

The ceremonies of the day have ceased,
Abandoned to the ragged crow's parade.
The flags unravel in the caterpillar's feast.
The wreaths collapse onto the stones they shade.
.....

Dana Gioia

Giorno Dei Morti

Along the avenue of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices
Of linen, go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . .
.....

David Herbert Lawrence

The Traveled Man

Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,
The ships all sunk among the coral strands.
I am so very weary, yea, so worn out,
With tales of those who visit foreign lands.
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Violet-gatherer (from The Danish Of Oehlenslaeger)

Pale the moon her light was shedding
O'er the landscape far and wide;
Calmly bright, all ills undreading,
Emma wander'd by my side.
.....

George Borrow

Service Of All The Dead

Between the avenues of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices
Of linen, go the chaunting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers.
.....

David Herbert Lawrence

Song Of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
.....

Pablo Neruda

I Have Become Very Hairy

I have become very hairy all over my body.
I'm afraid they'll start hunting me because of my fur.

My multicolored shirt has no meaning of love --
.....

Yehuda Amichai

In Beechwood Cemetery

Here the dead sleep--the quiet dead. No sound
Disturbs them ever, and no storm dismays.
Winter mid snow caresses the tired ground,
And the wind roars about the woodland ways.
.....

Archibald Lampman

At Magnolia Cemetery

SLEEP sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.
.....

Henry Timrod

The Mountain Cemetery

With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill
The crevices in grave plots' broken stones.
The bees renew the blossoms they destroy,
While in the burning air the pines rise still,
.....

Edgar Bowers

Those Graves In Rome

There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example, is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
.....

Larry Levis

Sailing Home From Rapallo

[February 1954]
Your nurse could only speak Italian,
but after twenty minutes I could imagine your final week,
and tears ran down my cheeks....
.....

Robert Lowell