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poems about death
Posted by: Megan Kirkwood (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: December 19, 2002 08:03PM

I need to find 10 poems about DEATH for a school project~ also, if you cold give me a brief interpretation of the poem, that wouldbe great!Thanks! smiling smiley


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Chesil (---.neo.rr.com)
Date: December 19, 2002 08:11PM

I am sure you will get 10 suggestions, here's mine:

A Leave-Taking

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as we all love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying, `If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care.

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.


This is not a deep obscure poem and the meaning should be reasonably clear.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Pam Adams (---)
Date: December 19, 2002 08:19PM

Here's another-

pam

There's been a death in the opposite house
by: Emily Dickinson

There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;

Somebody flings a mattress out,--
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that,--
I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;

And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade

Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It's easy as a sign,--
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Pam Adams (---)
Date: December 19, 2002 08:21PM

Whitman's question is 'why am I alive, what am I here to do?' His answer is below.

pam

O Me! O Life!
by: Walt Whitman


O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill'd with the
foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the
struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me
intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O
life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Hugh Clary (---.sdsl.cais.net)
Date: December 20, 2002 11:52AM


A Leave-Taking

Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.


Eliot stole Prufrock from Swinburne?


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Chesil (---.neo.rr.com)
Date: December 21, 2002 02:52AM

And no gratitude either, poor Swinburne was castigated by Eliot in later years.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Stephen Fryer (---.bbd08tcl.dsl.pol.co.uk)
Date: December 21, 2002 03:03AM

Unless they both nicked it from Dowson?


[www.library.utoronto.ca] />

Stephen


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Chesil (---.neo.rr.com)
Date: December 21, 2002 07:30AM

Swinburne was the earlier, the work was published in 1866.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Hugh Clary (---.sdsl.cais.net)
Date: December 21, 2002 02:18PM


Poor Ernest, died at age 33. I read somewhere it was from alcoholism, but I remember his father died of tuberculosis, so it could have been that contagious malady as well. I'm not sure one could drink himself to death in only 33 years, anyway.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Les (---.trlck.ca.charter.com)
Date: December 21, 2002 02:29PM

It could be done,Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, virtually drank himself to death by the age of 27. Although, his death was officially by heroin inhalation, those close to him said his true addiction was to alcohol.


Re: poems about death
Posted by: Chesil (---.neo.rr.com)
Date: December 21, 2002 03:19PM

He was a serious drunk in his lifetime....Dylan Thomas managed it in 39 years.

The story I like about Dowson is his taking Oscar Wilde to a French brothel after Wilde ahd come out of prison. Apparently, Wilde tried but didn't care too much for the experience.


Help to analyze plz!!
Posted by: Lidia (---.theedge.ca)
Date: January 01, 2003 01:58PM

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by: Robert Lee Frost


Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


Re: Help to analyze plz!!
Posted by: Trudee (---.149.146.64.coastaccess.com)
Date: January 02, 2003 01:33AM

Dirge without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This speaks to me of the eternal paradox man faces with death. We all know death is inevitable, yet we can rail at the unfairness of the "wise and the lovely "who are now "one with the indiscriminate dust." It speaks to me of the recognition that death creates beauty(gone to feed the roses) but it still sucks and Edna DOES NOT APPROVE and she is not resigned...she is pissed.(More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world)
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.


Re: Help to analyze plz!!
Posted by: Desi (---.clientlogic.ie)
Date: January 02, 2003 05:34AM

Break, break, break
by: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
-------
This is one of the poems of "In Memoriam". Tennyson wrote them after the death of his best friend Arthur Hallam. He died in Italy and was brought back by ship. Another one is:

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more--
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.




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