Poetry of Death

POETRY CENTRAL  Volume 2, Number 5  ~ Poetry of Death ~

[please click on the colored words, as hotlinks, to be taken automatically to poems or reference sites for further explanation]

When I was twelve, one of my best friends called me up and said he had cancer.  It was the first time I’d heard that word.  I didn’t think much of it until about a month later, when he told me they were going to remove his leg.  He was dead within six months.  It was the first time I’d ever thought deeply about death, much less experiencing it first hand with a friend I had romped around with every day.  About a week before he died, I sat on the edge of his bed.  He was not doing well; the cancer had spread to his larger bones.  He told me to come nearer, motioning that he needed to whisper something.   He said that the night before he had seen Jesus Christ, that he’d come into his room and sat on the foot of his bed, just like I was doing, and that he stayed for about an hour.  He had a "silver" face, and told him that everything would be all right.  I can remember shaking as my friend told me this.  We had both been raised in fairly conservative Jewish homes, so this was a striking “revelation” for a twelve year old to hear.  

I’ve written several poems about my friend.  I often think back on those days, and when I do, I see the events and conversations assemble as a kind of visual poem, a long narrative poem.  Not many of us like to think about death, much less about our own demise.  Yet there is a real therapeutic and enlightening release in reading and writing about death.  For me, reading great poetry on death provides a way to confront its harsh reality at an experiential level.  More than that, I can consider it as a tangible eventuality, rather than an abstraction.  I know it sounds trite, but it really can be a great positive force to contemplate one’s finitude (at least at a physical level) and for me, a prompt to live life to  the fullest every day.  As well, it has been a spur for me to think about spiritual or metaphysical powers and realities beyond the normal scope of our temporal experience.

In the short space I have available, I’d like to present a few poems which I’ve found to vividly portray different aspects of death.  Many of these you’ll recognize, perhaps some will be a surprise.

A haunting poem by Emily Bronte,  entitled A Death-Scene, deals (in the third person) with the passing of a lover, Edward, in which the narrator describes in great denial (13 stanzas of quatrains) what she sees, and yet will not accept, as her beloved dying.  Here are s2 and s3:

He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!

Edward, awake, awake--
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden's lake--
Arouse thee from thy dreams!

The poem continues in fitful agony as the description of Edward’s obvious passing expands in greater detail, and finally the narrator herself becomes aware of the unavoidable and ultimate consequence.  The final stanza jolts:

So I knew that he was dying--
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.

 

Death, Always Cruel, by Dante Alighieri, doesn’t give death one modicum degree of benefit.  It is always cruel:

(s.1 out of 4)

Death, always cruel, Pity's foe in chief,

Mother who brought forth grief,

Merciless judgment and without appeal!

Since thou alone hast made my heart to feel

This sadness and unweal,

My tongue upbraideth thee without relief

William Butler Yeats,  in his poem simply entitled, Death,  delves into the psychology of death, as one might contemplate and consider beforehand.  The irony of the last two lines is a reminder that we really don’t know death at all.

Death (complete poem)

Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone
Man has created death.

The famous poem by John Donne,  Death be Not Proud, speaks directly to death as a person, in ridicule, proclaiming it has virtually no power at all.  In fact, the poet pronounces that death itself shall die.   

Death Be Not Proud (complete poem)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
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 then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Who can forget Walt Whitman’s elegiac poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln,O Captain!, My Captain, in which the poet uses the metaphor of a ship approaching its destination as the final passing of the great “father” of the union.

(first stanza)

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered 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 daring.
        But O heart! heart! heart!
        O the bleeding drops of red!
        Where on the deck my Captain lies,
              Fallen cold and dead.

(last stanza)

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
    Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
        But I, with mournful tread,
            Walk the deck my Captain lies,
                Fallen cold and dead.

 

The Lady of Shallot, by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is a marvelous example of Victorian poetry.  It is loosely based on Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and recounts the story of a maiden who falls inescapably in love with Sir Lancelot but dies of grief when her love is unrequited. The poem has been the subject of numerous famous paintings, many by the Pre-Raphaelites  in the mid-nineteenth century, including the incomparable painting by John Waterhouse of Ophelia pictured below (http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/).  

The poem by Tennyson is 19 stanzas each of nine lines.  For a taste, here are the first two lines:

The Lady of Shallot (first two stanzas) 

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.

Here’s a wonderful poem by Emily Dickinson, entitled, The Journey, which displays at once the inevitability of death as well as an entrance into a new beginning.

The Journey (complete poem)

Our journey had advanced;
Our feet were almost come
To that odd fork in Being's road,
Eternity by term.

Our pace took sudden awe,
Our feet reluctant led.
Before were cities, but between,
The forest of the dead.

Retreat was out of hope, --
Behind, a sealed route,
Eternity's white flag before,
And God at every gate.

Langston Hughes, in his witty little poem,  Wake, gives death very little credence:

Wake (complete poem)

Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red --
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.

 

while Carl Sandberg,  in his poem entitled, To a Dead Man,  impresses upon the reader the utter finality and inaccessibility of death:

To a Dead Man (complete poem)

Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.

The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.

I’d love to go on and on, but I have to end this presentation of some selected high spots in poetry dealing with death.  Here’s one last poem, however, which is one of my favorites in this genre, again by John Donne.  Never was so much said with so few words. 

No Man is an Island (complete poem)

 

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

MEDITATION XVII

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

John Donne

It would be fun to hear about some of your favorite poems dealing with death, or ones that have influenced you in some way.  

-------------------------------------------

Written by Edward Nudelman, Books Correspondent for POETRY CENTRAL

Keep up with Ed’s other posting and Gather activity by joining his Gather network-just click here and select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page.

You can also find also find a convenient index to all of the POETRY CENTRAL articles published on the Books Channel by simply clicking here.