FUNERAL POEMS
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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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Helen
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre of the olives
where she stands,
.....
H. D.
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Conlath And Cuthona
ARGUMENT.
Conlath was the youngest of Morni's sons, and brother to the celebrated Gaul. He was in love with Cuthona, the daughter of Rumar, when Toscar, the son of Kenfena, accompanied by Fercuth his friend, arrived from Ireland, at Mora, where Conlath dwelt. He was hospitably received, and according to the custom of the times, feasted three days with Conlath. On the fourth he set sail, and coasting the island of waves, one of the Hebrides, be saw Cuthona hunting, fell in love with her, and carried her away, by force, in his ship. He was forced, by stress of weather, into I-thona, a desert isle. In the mean time Conlath hearing of the rape, sailed after him, and found him on the point of sailing for the coast of Ireland. They fought: and they and their followers fell by mutual wounds. Cuthona did not long survive: for she died of grief the third day after. Fingal hearing of their unfortunate death, sent Stormal the son of Moran to bury them, but forgot to send a bard to sing the funeral song over their tombs. The ghost of Conlath comes long after to Ossian, to entreat him to transmit to posterity, his and Cuthona's fame. For it was the opinion of the times, that the souls of the deceased were not happy, till their elegies were composed by a bard.
.....
James Macpherson
The Infanticide
Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
The clock's slow hand hath reached the appointed time.
Well, be it so--prepare, my soul is ready,
Companions of the grave--the rest for crime!
.....
Friedrich Schiller
Wilful Missing
(Deserters)
There is a world outside the one you know,
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare--
It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
.....
Rudyard Kipling
An Island
Take it away, and swallow it yourself.
Ha! Look you, there's a rat.
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf,
And two of them were living in my hat.
.....
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Voice
As the kindling glances,
Queen-like and clear,
Which the bright moon lances
From her tranquil sphere
.....
Matthew Arnold
The Odyssey: Book 04
They reached the low lying city of Lacedaemon them where they
drove straight to the of abode Menelaus [and found him in his own
house, feasting with his many clansmen in honour of the wedding of his
son, and also of his daughter, whom he was marrying to the son of that
.....
Homer
The Iliad: Book 21
Now when they came to the ford of the full-flowing river Xanthus,
begotten of immortal Jove, Achilles cut their forces in two: one
half he chased over the plain towards the city by the same way that
the Achaeans had taken when flying panic-stricken on the preceding day
.....
Homer
The Death Of Euclid
[”Euclid, we are told, is at last dead, after two thousand
years of an immortality that he never much
deserved.”-The Times Literary Supplement.]
.....
R. C. Lehmann