Famous Poetry about Dying You will Love to Read Daily
Famous Poetry about Dying You will Love to Read Daily.
Poetry about Dying: Poetry can sometimes help in dealing with grief and loss. The poems here may bring solace and comfort. They may also put into words some of the most difficult and painful emotions and feelings associated with death and bereavement.
The first poem, “Yesterday” has a feeling and this poem seemed to illustrate one’s spirituality.
- Yesterday
- All nature has a feeling
- A Grave
- If I Should Go
- The Sailing Ship
- I Don’t Believe in Death
- The Sadness of Clothes
- Farewell My Friends
- Death
- All Things Will Die
- Briefly, It Enters and Briefly Speaks
- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
- Because I could not stop for Death
- Holy Sonnets X
- When I Am Dead, My Dearest
- My Skeleton
1. Yesterday
My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understandhe says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I knoweven when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yeshe says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my fatherhe says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give meoh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father’s hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me
oh yes I say
but if you are busy he said
I don’t want you to feel that you
have to
just because I’m hereI say nothing
he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don’t want to keep youI look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you knowthough there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to doBy W. S. Merwin
2. All nature has a feeling
All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.By John Clare (1793 – 1864)
3. A Grave
Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look—
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them
for their bones have not lasted:
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away—the blades of the oars
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were no such thing as death.
The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx—beautiful under networks of foam,
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the seaweed;
the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls as heretofore—
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion beneath them;
and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bellbuoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which dropped things are bound to sink—
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor consciousness.
4. If I Should Go
If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known
Weep if you must
Parting is hell
But life goes on
So sing as well.By Joyce Grenfell (1910-1979)
5. The Sailing Ship
What is dying?
I am standing on the seashore.
A ship sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object and I stand watching her
Till at last she fades from the horizon,
And someone at my side says, “She is gone!” Gone where?
Gone from my sight, that is all;
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her,
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her;
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone”,
There are others who are watching her coming,
And other voices take up a glad shout,
“There she comes” – and that is dying.
6. I Don’t Believe in Death
I don’t believe in death
Who comes in silent stealth
He robs us only of a breath
Not of a lifetime’s wealth
I don’t believe in the tomb
Imprisons us in earth
It’s but another loving womb
Preparing our new birth
I do believe in life
Empowered from above
Till freed from stress and worldly strife
We soar through realms above
I do believe that then
In joy that never ends
We’ll meet all those we’ve loved, again
And celebrate our friends.By Pauline Webb
7. The Sadness of Clothes
When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived
their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.
You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming backas when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket
and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.
You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.You explain death to the clothes like that dream.
You tell them how much you miss the spouse
and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,
you will finally let grief out. The ancients etched the words
for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went outand fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power
you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms stubbornly
folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,
they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.
He is gone and no one can tell us where.By Emily Fragos
8. Farewell My Friends
Farewell My Friends
It was beautiful
As long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
I have no regrets
Whatsoever said
The pain I’ll leave behind.
Those dear hearts
Who love and care…
And the strings pulling
At the heart and soul…
The strong arms
That held me up
When my own strength
Let me down.
At the turning of my life
I came across
Good friends,
Friends who stood by me
Even when time raced me by.
Farewell, farewell My friends
I smile and
Bid you goodbye.
No, shed no tears
For I need them not
All I need is your smile.
If you feel sad
Do think of me
For that’s what I’ll like
When you live in the hearts
Of those you love
Remember then
You never die.By Rabindranath Tagore ( 1861 – 1941)
9. Death
What’s a good death? Good about death?
Good about saying goodbye to breath?
I am your land. You are my sky.
How shall we speak a world’s goodbye?
How make good the cosmic ache
Of universes going to break?
How make good the final kiss,
The final friend, the final bliss?
How make good the final sight
Of final day forever night?
You quit the form I slept so near.
And still you’re dear.
But am I, dear?By Lucy Berry
10. All Things Will Die
All Things will Die
Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing
Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing
Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating
Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d-we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.By Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
11. Briefly, It Enters and Briefly Speaks
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years….I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper….
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me…I am food on the prisoner’s plate…
I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills…I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden…I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge…I am the heart contracted by joy…
the longest hair, white
before the rest…I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow…I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit…I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name…By Jane Kenyon
12. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
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.By Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)
13. Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.By Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
14. Holy Sonnets X
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.By John Donne (1572 – 1631)
15. When I Am Dead, My Dearest
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.By Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)
16. My Skeleton
My skeleton,
you who once ached
with your own growing largerare now,
each year
imperceptibly smaller,
lighter,
absorbed by your own
concentration.When I danced,
you danced.
When you broke,
I.And so it was lying down,
walking,
climbing the tiring stairs.
Your jaws. My bread.Someday you,
what is left of you,
will be flensed of this marriage.Angular wristbone’s arthritis,
cracked harp of ribcage,
blunt of heel,
opened bowl of the skull,
twin platters of pelvis—
each of you will leave me behind,
at last serene.What did I know of your days,
your nights,
I who held you all my life
inside my hands
and though they were empty?You who held me all my life
inside your hands
as a new mother holds
her own unblanketed child,
not thinking at all.
Is there any poem hare that helped you cope? Kindly share your thought in the comment section. You can also share these poems with your friends.
Daily Time Poems.
