1. TO LAURELS - written by Robert Herrick
Read 934 times on Poetry Connection.

A funeral stone
Or verse, I covet none;
But only crave
Of you that I may have
A sacred laurel springing from my grave:
Which being seen
Blest with perpetual green,
May grow to be
Not so much call'd a tree,
As the eternal monument of me.(Read full poem)

THEY bear him to his resting-place--
In slow procession sweeping by;
I follow at a stranger's space;
His kindred they, his sweetheart I.
Unchanged my gown of garish dye,
Though sable-sad is their attire;
But they stand round with griefless... (Read full poem)

3. A Prayer For Old Age - written by William Butler Yeats
From Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems. Published in 1935. Read 4911 times on Poetry Connection.

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I... (Read full poem)

Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began, 
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man; 
Jack Denver's wife bowed down her head -- her daughter's grief was wild, 
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a... (Read full poem)

5. Church And State - written by William Butler Yeats
From Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems. Published in 1935. Read 1233 times on Poetry Connection.

Here is fresh matter, poet,
Matter for old age meet;
Might of the Church and the State,
Their mobs put under their feet.
O but heart's wine shall run pure,
Mind's bread grow sweet.

That were a cowardly song,
Wander in dreams no more;
What if the... (Read full poem)

To bear a weight that cannot be borne, 
Sisyphus, even you aren't that strong, 
Although your heart cannot be torn 
Time is short and Art is long. 
Far from celebrated sepulchers 
Toward a solitary graveyard 
My heart, like a drum muffled hard... (Read full poem)

7. THE FUNERAL RITES OF THE ROSE - written by Robert Herrick
Read 1021 times on Poetry Connection.

The Rose was sick, and smiling died;
And, being to be sanctified,
About the bed, there sighing stood
The sweet and flowery sisterhood.
Some hung the head, while some did bring,
To wash her, water from the spring;
Some laid her forth, while... (Read full poem)

Ye living Lamps, by whose dear light
The Nightingale does sit so late,
And studying all the Summer-night,
Her matchless Songs does meditate;

Ye Country Comets, that portend
No War, nor Princes funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Then to... (Read full poem)

9. A Piece Of The Storm - written by Mark Strand
From Blizzard Of One. Published in 2000. Read 5110 times on Poetry Connection.

For Sharon Horvath

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That's all... (Read full poem)

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is pewter
And afternoon mist
Brings lights on in shops
Above race-guides and rosaries,
A funeral passes.

The hearse is ahead,
But after there follows
A troop of streetwalkers
In wide flowered hats,
Leg-of-mutton... (Read full poem)

11. Parnell's Funeral - written by William Butler Yeats
From Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems. Published in 1935. Read 2826 times on Poetry Connection.

I

Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd.
A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown
About the sky; where that is clear of cloud
Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down;
What shudders run through all that animal blood?
What is this... (Read full poem)

On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.

In the times when Christ was seeded around,
More than one illustrious... (Read full poem)

13. The Rose Of The World - written by William Butler Yeats
From The Rose. Published in 1893. Read 2068 times on Poetry Connection.

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing... (Read full poem)

Whoever comes to shroud me, do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
For 'tis my outward Soul,
Viceroy to that which then to heaven being gone
Will leave this to... (Read full poem)

15. Sonnet 18 - I never gave a lock of hair away - written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From Sonnets from the Portuguese. Published in 1850. Read 1987 times on Poetry Connection.

XVIII

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully,
I ring out to the full brown length and say
'Take it.' My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot's... (Read full poem)

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible... (Read full poem)

17. Poem: The Grave Of Keats - written by Oscar Wilde
From Poems. Published in 1881. Read 2147 times on Poetry Connection.

Poem: The Grave Of Keats



Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early... (Read full poem)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, 
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, 
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum 
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead 
Scribbling on the sky the... (Read full poem)

19. Nettles - written by Vernon Scannell
From The Very Best of Vernon Scannell, Macmillan Children's Books 6 April 2001. Read 2391 times on Poetry Connection.

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest.  With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his... (Read full poem)

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered... (Read full poem)

21. Marvel of Marvels - written by Christina Rossetti
Read 636 times on Poetry Connection.

MARVEL of marvels, if I myself shall behold 
With mine own eyes my King in His city of gold; 
Where the least of lambs is spotless white in the fold, 
Where the least and last of saints in spotless white is stoled, 
Where the dimmest head beyond... (Read full poem)

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in... (Read full poem)

23. Funeral Of Youth, The: Threnody - written by Rupert Brooke
Read 638 times on Poetry Connection.

The day that YOUTH had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country's ends,
Those scatter'd friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and... (Read full poem)

The Day that Youth had died,
There came to his grave-side, 
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends, 
Those scatter’d friends 
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted, 
In feast and... (Read full poem)

25. Rebecca - written by Hilaire Belloc
Read 1395 times on Poetry Connection.

Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
A wealthy banker's little daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this furious... (Read full poem)