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Best Famous Shrinking Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Shrinking poems. This is a select list of the best famous Shrinking poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Shrinking poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of shrinking poems.

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Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

Pauls Wife

 To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife, And hated to be twitted on the subject; Others because he'd come within a day Or so of having one, and then been Jilted; Others because he'd had one once, a good one, Who'd run away with someone else and left him; And others still because he had one now He only had to be reminded of-- He was all duty to her in a minute: He had to run right off to look her up, As if to say, "That's so, how is my wife? I hope she isn't getting into mischief.
" No one was anxious to get rid of Paul.
He'd been the hero of the mountain camps Ever since, just to show them, he bad slipped The bark of a whole tamarack off whole As clean as boys do off a willow twig To make a willow whistle on a Sunday April by subsiding meadow brooks.
They seemed to ask him just to see him go, "How is the wife, Paul?" and he always went.
He never stopped to murder anyone Who asked the question.
He just disappeared-- Nobody knew in what direction, Although it wasn't usually long Before they beard of him in some new camp, The same Paul at the same old feats of logging.
The question everywhere was why should Paul Object to being asked a civil question-- A man you could say almost anything to Short of a fighting word.
You have the answers.
And there was one more not so fair to Paul: That Paul had married a wife not his equal.
Paul was ashamed of her.
To match a hero She would have had to be a heroine; Instead of which she was some half-breed squaw.
But if the story Murphy told was true, She wasn't anything to be ashamed of.
You know Paul could do wonders.
Everyone's Heard how he thrashed the horses on a load That wouldn't budge, until they simply stretched Their rawhide harness from the load to camp.
Paul told the boss the load would be all right, "The sun will bring your load in"--and it did-- By shrinking the rawhide to natural length.
That's what is called a stretcher.
But I guess The one about his jumping so's to land With both his feet at once against the ceiling, And then land safely right side up again, Back on the floor, is fact or pretty near fact.
Well, this is such a yarn.
Paul sawed his wife Out of a white-pine log.
Murphy was there And, as you might say, saw the lady born.
Paul worked at anything in lumbering.
He'd been bard at it taking boards away For--I forget--the last ambitious sawyer To want to find out if he couldn't pile The lumber on Paul till Paul begged for mercy.
They'd sliced the first slab off a big butt log, And the sawyer had slammed the carriage back To slam end-on again against the saw teeth.
To judge them by the way they caught themselves When they saw what had happened to the log, They must have had a guilty expectation Something was going to go with their slambanging.
Something bad left a broad black streak of grease On the new wood the whole length of the log Except, perhaps, a foot at either end.
But when Paul put his finger in the grease, It wasn't grease at all, but a long slot.
The log was hollow.
They were sawing pine.
"First time I ever saw a hollow pine.
That comes of having Paul around the place.
Take it to bell for me," the sawyer said.
Everyone had to have a look at it And tell Paul what he ought to do about it.
(They treated it as his.
) "You take a jackknife, And spread the opening, and you've got a dugout All dug to go a-fishing in.
" To Paul The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees.
There was no entrance for them to get in by.
It looked to him like some new kind of hollow He thought he'd better take his jackknife to.
So after work that evening be came back And let enough light into it by cutting To see if it was empty.
He made out in there A slender length of pith, or was it pith? It might have been the skin a snake had cast And left stood up on end inside the tree The hundred years the tree must have been growing.
More cutting and he bad this in both hands, And looking from it to the pond nearby, Paul wondered how it would respond to water.
Not a breeze stirred, but just the breath of air He made in walking slowly to the beach Blew it once off his hands and almost broke it.
He laid it at the edge, where it could drink.
At the first drink it rustled and grew limp.
At the next drink it grew invisible.
Paul dragged the shallows for it with his fingers, And thought it must have melted.
It was gone.
And then beyond the open water, dim with midges, Where the log drive lay pressed against the boom, It slowly rose a person, rose a girl, Her wet hair heavy on her like a helmet, Who, leaning on a log, looked back at Paul.
And that made Paul in turn look back To see if it was anyone behind him That she was looking at instead of him.
(Murphy had been there watching all the time, But from a shed where neither of them could see him.
) There was a moment of suspense in birth When the girl seemed too waterlogged to live, Before she caught her first breath with a gasp And laughed.
Then she climbed slowly to her feet, And walked off, talking to herself or Paul, Across the logs like backs of alligators, Paul taking after her around the pond.
Next evening Murphy and some other fellows Got drunk, and tracked the pair up Catamount, From the bare top of which there is a view TO other hills across a kettle valley.
And there, well after dark, let Murphy tell it, They saw Paul and his creature keeping house.
It was the only glimpse that anyone Has had of Paul and her since Murphy saw them Falling in love across the twilight millpond.
More than a mile across the wilderness They sat together halfway up a cliff In a small niche let into it, the girl Brightly, as if a star played on the place, Paul darkly, like her shadow.
All the light Was from the girl herself, though, not from a star, As was apparent from what happened next.
All those great ruffians put their throats together, And let out a loud yell, and threw a bottle, As a brute tribute of respect to beauty.
Of course the bottle fell short by a mile, But the shout reached the girl and put her light out.
She went out like a firefly, and that was all.
So there were witnesses that Paul was married And not to anyone to be ashamed of Everyone had been wrong in judging Paul.
Murphy told me Paul put on all those airs About his wife to keep her to himself.
Paul was what's called a terrible possessor.
Owning a wife with him meant owning her.
She wasn't anybody else's business, Either to praise her or much as name her, And he'd thank people not to think of her.
Murphy's idea was that a man like Paul Wouldn't be spoken to about a wife In any way the world knew how to speak.


Written by Sarojini Naidu | Create an image from this poem

Past and Future

 The new hath come and now the old retires: 
And so the past becomes a mountain-cell, 
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell 
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet 
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget 
Old longings in fulfilling new desires.
And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense Expectancy and anguish of suspense, On the dim chamber-threshold .
.
.
lo! he sees Like a strange, fated bride as yet unknown, His timid future shrinking there alone, Beneath her marriage-veil of mysteries.
Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

Dæmonic Love

 Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand;
Names from awful childhood heard,
Throbs of a wild religion stirred,
Their good was heaven, their harm was vice,
Till Beauty came to snap all ties,
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus-wine obliterates
Dear memory's stone-incarved traits,
And by herself supplants alone
Friends year by year more inly known.
When her calm eyes opened bright, All were foreign in their light.
It was ever the self-same tale, The old experience will not fail,— Only two in the garden walked, And with snake and seraph talked.
But God said; I will have a purer gift, There is smoke in the flame; New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, And love without a name.
Fond children, ye desire To please each other well; Another round, a higher, Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair, And selfish preference forbear; And in right deserving, And without a swerving Each from your proper state, Weave roses for your mate.
Deep, deep are loving eyes, Flowed with naphtha fiery sweet, And the point is Paradise Where their glances meet: Their reach shall yet be more profound, And a vision without bound: The axis of those eyes sun-clear Be the axis of the sphere; Then shall the lights ye pour amain Go without check or intervals, Through from the empyrean walls, Unto the same again.
Close, close to men, Like undulating layer of air, Right above their heads, The potent plain of Dæmons spreads.
Stands to each human soul its own, For watch, and ward, and furtherance In the snares of nature's dance; And the lustre and the grace Which fascinate each human heart, Beaming from another part, Translucent through the mortal covers, Is the Dæmon's form and face.
To and fro the Genius hies, A gleam which plays and hovers Over the maiden's head, And dips sometimes as low as to her eyes.
Unknown, — albeit lying near, — To men the path to the Dæmon sphere, And they that swiftly come and go, Leave no track on the heavenly snow.
Sometimes the airy synod bends, And the mighty choir descends, And the brains of men thenceforth, In crowded and in still resorts, Teem with unwonted thoughts.
As when a shower of meteors Cross the orbit of the earth, And, lit by fringent air, Blaze near and far.
Mortals deem the planets bright Have slipped their sacred bars, And the lone seaman all the night Sails astonished amid stars.
Beauty of a richer vein, Graces of a subtler strain, Unto men these moon-men lend, And our shrinking sky extend.
So is man's narrow path By strength and terror skirted, Also (from the song the wrath Of the Genii be averted! The Muse the truth uncolored speaking), The Dæmons are self-seeking; Their fierce and limitary will Draws men to their likeness still.
The erring painter made Love blind, Highest Love who shines on all; Him radiant, sharpest-sighted god None can bewilder; Whose eyes pierce The Universe, Path-finder, road-builder, Mediator, royal giver, Rightly-seeing, rightly-seen, Of joyful and transparent mien.
'Tis a sparkle passing From each to each, from me to thee, Perpetually, Sharing all, daring all, Levelling, misplacing Each obstruction, it unites Equals remote, and seeming opposites.
And ever and forever Love Delights to build a road; Unheeded Danger near him strides, Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
But Cupid wears another face Born into Dæmons less divine, His roses bleach apace, His nectar smacks of wine.
The Dæmon ever builds a wall, Himself incloses and includes, Solitude in solitudes: In like sort his love doth fall.
He is an oligarch, He prizes wonder, fame, and mark, He loveth crowns, He scorneth drones; He doth elect The beautiful and fortunate, And the sons of intellect, And the souls of ample fate, Who the Future's gates unbar, Minions of the Morning Star.
In his prowess he exults, And the multitude insults.
His impatient looks devour Oft the humble and the poor, And, seeing his eye glare, They drop their few pale flowers Gathered with hope to please Along the mountain towers, Lose courage, and despair.
He will never be gainsaid, Pitiless, will not be stayed.
His hot tyranny Burns up every other tie; Therefore comes an hour from Jove Which his ruthless will defies, And the dogs of Fate unties.
Shiver the palaces of glass, Shrivel the rainbow-colored walls Where in bright art each god and sibyl dwelt Secure as in the Zodiack's belt; And the galleries and halls Wherein every Siren sung, Like a meteor pass.
For this fortune wanted root In the core of God's abysm, Was a weed of self and schism: And ever the Dæmonic Love Is the ancestor of wars, And the parent of remorse.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Lui Et Elle

 She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a year And put up with her husband, I don't know.
She likes to eat.
She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.
She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great mouthfuls, Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine face Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth Like sudden curved scissors, And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue, And having the bread hanging over her chin.
O Mistress, Mistress, Reptile mistress, Your eye is very dark, very bright, And it never softens Although you watch.
She knows, She knows well enough to come for food, Yet she sees me not; Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything, Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless, Reptile mistress.
Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless mouth, She has no qualm when she catches my finger in her steel overlapping gums, But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking are nothing to her.
She does not even know she is nipping me with her curved beak.
Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag it in horror away.
Mistress, reptile mistress, You are almost too large, I am almost frightened.
He is much smaller, Dapper beside her, And ridiculously small.
Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look, His, poor darling, is almost fiery.
His wimple, his blunt-prowed face, His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long, scaled, striving legs, So striving, striving, Are all more delicate than she, And he has a cruel scar on his shell.
Poor darling, biting at her feet, Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, splay feet, Nipping her ankles, Which she drags apathetic away, though without retreating into her shell.
Agelessly silent, And with a grim, reptile determination, Cold, voiceless age-after-age behind him, serpents' long obstinacy Of horizontal persistence.
Little old man Scuffling beside her, bending down, catching his opportunity, Parting his steel-trap face, so suddenly, and seizing her scaly ankle, And hanging grimly on, Letting go at last as she drags away, And closing his steel-trap face.
His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face.
Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle.
And how he feels it! The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker through chaos, The immune, the animate, Enveloped in isolation, Fore-runner.
Now look at him! Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation.
His adolescence saw him crucified into sex, Doomed, in the long crucifixion of desire, to seek his consummation beyond himself.
Divided into passionate duality, He, so finished and immune, now broken into desirous fragmentariness, Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himself In his effort toward completion again.
Poor little earthy house-inhabiting Osiris, The mysterious bull tore him at adolescence into pieces, And he must struggle after reconstruction, ignominiously.
And so behold him following the tail Of that mud-hovel of his slowly rambling spouse, Like some unhappy bull at the tail of a cow, But with more than bovine, grim, earth-dank persistence.
Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches out to walk, Roaming over the sods, Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tail Beneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell.
Their two shells like domed boats bumping, Hers huge, his small; Their splay feet rambling and rowing like paddles, And stumbling mixed up in one another, In the race of love -- Two tortoises, She huge, he small.
She seems earthily apathetic, And he has a reptile's awful persistence.
I heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mère Tortue.
While I, I pity Monsieur.
"He pesters her and torments her," said the woman.
How much more is he pestered and tormented, say I.
What can he do? He is dumb, he is visionless, Conceptionless.
His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds not As her earthen mound moves on, But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery skin, Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell, And drags at these with his beak, Drags and drags and bites, While she pulls herself free, and rows her dull mound along.
Written by Edna St Vincent Millay | Create an image from this poem

Renascence

 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And—sure enough!—I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity Came down and settled over me; Forced back my scream into my chest, Bent back my arm upon my breast, And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core, Lay open to my probing sense That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence But could not,—nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out.
—Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret.
Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire,— Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each,—then mourned for all! A man was starving in Capri; He moved his eyes and looked at me; I felt his gaze, I heard his moan, And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank Between two ships that struck and sank; A thousand screams the heavens smote; And every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death That was not mine; mine each last breath That, crying, met an answering cry From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod; Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity Pressed down upon the finite Me! My anguished spirit, like a bird, Beating against my lips I heard; Yet lay the weight so close about There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I And suffered death, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death, When quietly the earth beneath Gave way, and inch by inch, so great At last had grown the crushing weight, Into the earth I sank till I Full six feet under ground did lie, And sank no more,—there is no weight Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll, And as it went my tortured soul Burst forth and fled in such a gust That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now; Cool is its hand upon the brow And soft its breast beneath the head Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all The pitying rain began to fall; I lay and heard each pattering hoof Upon my lowly, thatched roof, And seemed to love the sound far more Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound To one who's six feet underground; And scarce the friendly voice or face: A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, That I shall never more behold! Sleeping your myriad magics through, Close-sepulchred away from you! O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain, down-poured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me! I ceased; and through the breathless hush That answered me, the far-off rush Of herald wings came whispering Like music down the vibrant string Of my ascending prayer, and—crash! Before the wild wind's whistling lash The startled storm-clouds reared on high And plunged in terror down the sky, And the big rain in one black wave Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be; I only know there came to me A fragrance such as never clings To aught save happy living things; A sound as of some joyous elf Singing sweet songs to please himself, And, through and over everything, A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear, Whispering to me I could hear; I felt the rain's cool finger-tips Brushed tenderly across my lips, Laid gently on my sealed sight, And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see,— A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,— I know not how such things can be!— I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky, Till at my throat a strangling sob Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb Sent instant tears into my eyes; O God, I cried, no dark disguise Can e'er hereafter hide from me Thy radiant identity! Thou canst not move across the grass But my quick eyes will see Thee pass, Nor speak, however silently, But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way Through the cool eve of every day; God, I can push the grass apart And lay my finger on Thy heart! The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by.


Written by Richard Brautigan | Create an image from this poem

Love Poem

 My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror, Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars— Misfit in any space.
And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system.
Only With words and people and love you move at ease; In traffic of wit expertly maneuver And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel, Your lipstick grinning on our coat, So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late.
Smash glasses— I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty All the toys of the world would break.
Written by Charlotte Turner Smith | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet XLIV: Pressd by the Moon

 Press'd by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its power combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o'er the shrinking land sublimely rides.
The wild blast, rising from the Western cave, Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed; Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead, And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave! With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave; But vain to them the winds and waters rave; They hear the warring elements no more: While I am doom'd—by life's long storm opprest, To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

A Boy ScoutsPatrol Song

  1913
These are our regulations-- 
 There's just one law for the Scout 
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,
 And the future and the perfect is "Look out!"
 I, thou and he, look out!
 We, ye and they, look out!
 Though you didn't or you wouldn't
 Or you hadn't or you couldn't;
 You jolly well must look out!


Look out, when you start for the day
 That your kit is packed to your mind;
There is no use going away 
 With half of it left behind.
Look out that your laces are tight, And your boots are easy and stout, Or you'll end with a blister at night.
(Chorus) All Patrols look out! Look out for the birds of the air, Look out for the beasts of the field-- They'll tell you how and where The other side's concealed.
When the blackbird bolts from the copse, Or the cattle are staring about, The wise commander stops And (chorus) All Patrols look out! Look out when your front is clear, And you feel you are bound to win.
Look out for your flank and your rear-- That's where surprises begin.
For the rustle that isn't a rat, For the splash that isn't a trout, For the boulder that may be a hat (Chorus) All Patrols look out! For the innocent knee-high grass, For the ditch that never tells, Look out! Look out ere you pass-- And look out for everything else A sign mis-read as you run May turn retreat to a rout-- For all things under the sun (Chorus) All Patrols look out! Look out where your temper goes At the end of a losing game; When your boots too tight for your toes; And you answer and argue and blame.
It's the hardest part of the Low, But it has to be learned by the Scout-- For whining and shrinking and "jaw" (Chorus) All Patrols look out!
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Irony

 Always, sweetheart,
Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry,
Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very
Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring
Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting
In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting
Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her, then bid her depart.
A come and go of March-day loves Through the flower-vine, trailing screen; A fluttering in of doves.
Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves Over the waste where no hope is seen Of open hands: Dance in and out Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love, With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your glove.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

The Ship of Death

 I 

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit 
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell to one's own self, and find an exit from the fallen self.
II Have you built your ship of death, O have you? O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes! Ah! can't you smell it? And in the bruised body, the frightened soul finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold that blows upon it through the orifices.
III And can a man his own quietus make with a bare bodkin? With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make a bruise or break of exit for his life; but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus? Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder ever a quietus make? IV O let us talk of quiet that we know, that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet of a strong heart at peace! How can we this, our own quietus, make? V Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death that lies between the old self and the new.
Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised, already our souls are oozing through the exit of the cruel bruise.
Already the dark and endless ocean of the end is washing in through the breaches of our wounds, Already the flood is upon us.
Oh build your ship of death, your little ark and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine for the dark flight down oblivion.
VI Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.
We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.
We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying and our strength leaves us, and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood, cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.
VII We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food and little dishes, and all accoutrements fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith with its store of food and little cooking pans and change of clothes, upon the flood's black waste upon the waters of the end upon the sea of death, where still we sail darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go only the deepening blackness darkening still blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood darkness at one with darkness, up and down and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet somewhere she is there.
Nowhere! VIII And everything is gone, the body is gone completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower, between them the little ship is gone It is the end, it is oblivion.
IX And yet out of eternity a thread separates itself on the blackness, a horizontal thread that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume A little higher? Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn the cruel dawn of coming back to life out of oblivion Wait, wait, the little ship drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
X The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing on the pink flood, and the frail soul steps out, into the house again filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death.
Oh build it! for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

Book: Shattered Sighs