Requiescam
I am for sleeping and forgetting
All that has gone before;
I am for lying still and letting
Who will beat at my door;
I would my life’s cold sun were setting
To rise for me no more.
Sad poems
Sad poems — a collection of the best works on Poemship.
Sacrament
She gave her body for my meat,
Her soul to be my wine,
And prayed that I be made complete
In sunlight and starshine.
With such abandoned grace she gave
Of all that passion taught her,
She never knew her tidal wave
Cast bread on stagnant water.
For Myself
What’s in this grave is worth your tear;
There’s more than the eye can see;
Folly and Pride and Love lie here
Buried alive with me.
For a Wanton
To men no more than so much cover
For them to doff or try,
I found in Death a constant lover:
Here in his arms I lie.
For a Fatalist
Life ushers some as heirs-elect
To weather wind and gale;
Here lies a man whose ships were wrecked
Ere he could hoist a sail.
A Brown Girl Dead
With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing
To see herself tonight.
For a Philosopher
Here lies one who tried to solve
The riddle of being and breath:
The wee blind mole that gnaws his bones
Tells him the answer is death.
For a Lovely Lady
A creature slender as a reed,
And sad-eyed as a doe
Lies here (but take my word for it,
And do not pry below).
For a Virgin
For forty years I shunned the lust
Inherent in my clay;
Death only was so amorous
I let him have his way.
For a Singer
Death clogged this flute
At its highest note;
Song sleeps here mute
In this breathless throat.
The Barrier
I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
Your sun-illumined way;
I hear but I must never heed
The fascinating note,
Which, fluting like a river reed,
Comes from your trembling throat;
I must not see upon your face
Love’s softly glowing spark;
For there’s the barrier of race,
You’re fair and I am dark.
Futility
Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather.
But the old fever seizes me to-day,
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather.
I have given up myself to every urge,
With not a care of precious powers spent,
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge,
To soothe and deaden my heart’s unhealing rent.
But you have torn a nerve out of my frame,
A gut that no physician can replace,
And reft my life of happiness and aim.
Oh what new purpose shall I now embrace?
What substance hold, what lovely form pursue,
When my thought burns through everything to you?
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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