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Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor
By Ben Purkert
A week apart, our birthdays
formed a bridge. They always fell

at the best time: snow over flowers
like thoughts scattered suddenly

over the phone. You want to know
his name? He was the beautiful friend,

the loudmouth, the one whose voice
shook the walls until the...
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas
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...
A Brown Girl Dead
By Countee Cullen
With two white roses on her breasts,
   White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
   Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
   To lay her out in white;
She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
   To...
The Truth the Dead Know
By Anne Sexton
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the...
Bede’s Death Song
By Bede
Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket
By Robert Lowell
I

A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket—
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled,...
Of Glory not a Beam is left (1685)
By Emily Dickinson
Of Glory not a Beam is left
But her Eternal House –
The Asterisk is for the Dead,
The Living, for the Stars –
- Living
- Funerals
I dwell in Possibility – (466)
By Emily Dickinson
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For...
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)
By Emily Dickinson
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A...
Sunday Morning
By Wallace Stevens

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of...
O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and...
- Living
- Death
- Sorrow & Grieving
- Mythology & Folklore
- Heroes & Patriotism
- Funerals
- Types/Modes
- Elegy
- Grief
- + 2 more
An Arundel Tomb
By Philip Larkin
Side by sideSide by side To see a recent photograph of this tomb of the Earl and Countess of Arundel that Larkin is describing, click here. , their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habitshabits Clothes ...
Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead
By William Shakespeare
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell;
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand...
Psalm 23
By Robert Alter
A David psalm.
    The LORD is my shepherd,
                              I shall not want.
    In grass meadows He makes me lie down,
                              by quiet waters guides me.
    My life He brings back.
                              He leads me on pathways of justice
                                             for His name's...
For a Father
By Elise Partridge
Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,
crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;
wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,
you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?
We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!

Or that August night you swept us to the...
Memorial
By Clifton Gachagua
To the young and able man who lets his death come in
with veils in his face that say you can come in and claim
a place among us. To the young man who closes his eyes
to the parting of clouds and...
Making a Fist
By Naomi Shihab Nye
We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert,...
Kaddish
By Allen Ginsberg
I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray...
Your Clothes
By Judith Kroll
Of course they are empty shells, without hope of animation.
Of course they are artifacts.

Even if my sister and I should wear some,
or if we give others away,

they will always be your clothes without you,...
The Lost Pilot
By James Tate
Your face did not rot
like the others—the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the...

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Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor

Sunday Morning

Your Clothes