Famous Coffin Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Coffin poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous coffin poems. These examples illustrate what a famous coffin poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hikmet, Nazim
...rete in half a year
at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours
I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24
in '61 the tomb I visit is his books
they tried to tear me away from my party
it didn't work
nor was I crushed under the falling idols
in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death
in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart
waiting to die
I was jealous of the women I loved
I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bi...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...e washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.
It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,
The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.
(5)
The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,
The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats
Full of dresses and hats and china and ...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ditch is below me and fate is above.
What did I want? Well, a life of contentment.
What did I get? Just a coffin and wreath...
Under the cradle a grave has been latent.
Fate is above me, a ditch is beneath.
Up in the sky my soul, like a hound,
howls, despaired,
the trigger to pull it was keen.
Fate has come over my family background,
and on the earth where fate is my kin.
What have I done, apart from the simple
poe...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...iddish, then Aramaic. He prayed
In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician
For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin
In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes
Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer
Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition
He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man's face.
Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture
And said, "Arise and breathe!" And still the body
Lay as before. Impossible to tell
...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ot to upset her in any way
Or brag ahead of time how I'd avenge myself.
Living with her was like living with my own coffin:
Yet I still depended on her, though I did it regretfully.
I used to think we might make a go of it together --
After all, it was a kind of marriage, being so close.
Now I see it must be one or the other of us.
She may be a saint, and I may be ugly and hairy,
But she'll soon find out that that doesn't matter a bit.
I'm collecting my s...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...from a lion's meal,
a couple of shins and the bit of an ear';
turn to the letter M
and you will find
that `a wife is a coffin,'
that severe object
with the pleasing geometry
stipulating space and not people,
refusing to be buried
and uniquely disappointing,
revengefully wrought in the attitude
of an adoring child
to a distinguished parent."
She says, "This butterfly,
this waterfly, this nomad
that has `proposed
to settle on my hand for life.' --
What can one do with ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ll me that,
I hear you saying, and I’ll tell you the name
Of Samson’s mother. But why shroud yourself
Before the coffin comes? For all you know,
The tree that is to fall for your last house
Is now a sapling. You may have to wait
So long as to be sorry; though I doubt it,
For you are not at home in your new Eden
Where chilly whispers of a likely frost
Accumulate already in the air.
I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton,
Would be for you in your autumnal mood...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...> Uh-huh . . . Yes . . . You say
that you want to bury your aunt with a Christmas tree in her
coffin? Uh-huh . . . She wanted it that way . . . I'11 see
what I can do for you, sir. Oh, you have the measurements
of the coffin with you? Very good . . . We have our coffin-
sized Christmas trees right over here, sir. "
Finally he was paid off and he came over to San Francis-
co and had a good meal, a stea...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ng and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
AVIGNON...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...rkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.
A shroud I see, and I am the shroud—I wrap a body, and lie in the coffin,
It is dark here under ground—it is not evil or pain here—it is blank here, for
reasons.
It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
10
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer, swimming naked through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair l...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...square,
gouge,
and
bead-plane.
10
The shapes arise!
The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d,
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud;
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride’s bed;
The shape of the little trough, the shape of the rockers beneath, the shape of the babe’s
cradle;
The shape of the floor-planks, the floor-planks for dancers’ feet;
The shape of the planks of the family home, the home...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed l...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...been taken from the new church,
Joiners have been called from shaping pews and lecterns
To work of greater urgency.
Coffins!
Coffins is what they are making this bright Summer morning.
Coffins -- and all to measurement.
There is a tin coffin,
A deal coffin,
A lead coffin,
And Captain Bennett's best mahogany dining-table
Has been sawed up for the grand outer coffin.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Sunshine outside in the square,
But inside, only hollow coffins and the tapping u...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...forgive her!
Sometimes she almost thought Paul really loved her . . .
She saw him look reproachfully at her coffin.
And then she closed her eyes and walked again
Those nightmare streets that she had walked so often:
Under an arc-lamp swinging in the wind
She stood, and stared in through a drug-store window,
Watching a clerk wrap up a little pill-box.
But it was late. No customers were there,—
Pitiless eyes would freeze her secret in her!
And then—what...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...traction, and the black the woe.
There throbbed not there a thought which pierced the pall;
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seamed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.
XI
So mix his body with the dust! It might
Return to what it must far sooner, were
The natural compound left alone to fight
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air;
But the unnatural balsams merely blight
What nature made him at his birth, as ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...imic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery
Of second childhood's swaddling-bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch,
And there the body lay, age after age,
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,--
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ev...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ttles the death-bell, the gate is pass’d, the
new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses,
The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin,
the
earth is swiftly shovel’d in,
The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence,
A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done,
He is decently put away—is there anything more?
He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking, able to
take his
own part, wit...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...old disunity.
The map that's colour-coded Ulster/Eire's
flashed on again as almost every night.
Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers
men in masks with arms show off their might.
The day's last images recede to first a glow
and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen.
Turning to love, and sleep's oblivion, I know
what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.
Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood
may and apple petals, browned and crease...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...knees, I did before thee vow
That your way will be my way
Wherever it will go.
Thus heard Yaroslav in a white coffin
And angels made of gold in his stead.
Like pigeons, weave the simple words
And now near the sunny heads.
And if I get weak, I dream of an icon
And there are ten steps on it, all are blessed.
In menacing voice of the Sofian ringing
I hear the sound of your unrest.
x x x
City vanished, the last house's window
Stared...Read more of this...
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