Famous Mortuary Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Mortuary poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous mortuary poems. These examples illustrate what a famous mortuary poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

The Snow

by Emile Verhaeren
Uninterruptedly falls the snow,
Like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow,
O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate.
Cold with lovelessness, warm with hate.


Infinite, infinite falls the snow.
Like a moment's time.
Monotonously, in a moment's time;
On the houses it falls and drops, the snow.
Monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime;
It falls on the sheds and their palings below.
And myriad-wise, it falls and lies
In ridgèd waves
In the...Read more of this...

Belated Bard

by Robert William Service
 The songs I made from joy of earth
 In wanton wandering,
Are rapturous with Maytime mirth
 And ectasy of Spring.
But all the songs I sing today
 Take tediously the ear:
Novemberishly dark are they
 With mortuary fear.

For half a century has gone
 Since first I rang a rhyme;
And that is long to linger on
 The tolerance of Time.
This blue-veined hand with...Read more of this...

The Albion Battleship Calamity

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1898, ond on the 21st of June,
The launching of the Battleship Albion caused a great gloom,
Amongst the relatives of many persons who were drowned in the River Thames,
Which their relatives will remember while life remains. 

The vessel was christened by the Duchess of York,
And the spectators' hearts felt light as cork
As the Duchess cut...Read more of this...

Nocturne III

by Jose Asuncion Silva
 One night 
one night all full of murmurings, of perfumes and music of wings;
one night 
in which fantastic fireflies burnt in the humid nuptial shadows, 
slowly by my side, pressed altogether close, silent and pale, 
as if a presentiment of infinite bitternesses 
agitated you unto the most hidden fibers of your being,
along the flowering path which crosses the plain
you...Read more of this...

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