In Memory of Anyone Unknown to Me

Related poetry:

1. The Unknown Ye aspiring ones, listen to the story of the unknown Who lies here with no stone to mark the place. As a boy reckless and wanton, Wandering with gun in hand through the forest Near the mansion of Aaron Hatfield, I shot a hawk perched on the top Of a dead tree. He fell with […]...
2. This Life My friend tells me A man in my house jumped off the roof The roof is the eighth floor of this building The roof door was locked how did he manage? His girlfriend had said goodbye I’m leaving He was 22 His mother and father were hurrying At that very moment From upstate to help […]...
3. On The Death Of Anne Bronte There’s little joy in life for me, And little terror in the grave; I’ve lived the parting hour to see Of one I would have died to save. Calmly to watch the failing breath, Wishing each sigh might be the last; Longing to see the shade of death O’er those beloved features cast; The cloud, […]...
4. In Memory of Jane Fraser When snow like sheep lay in the fold And wind went begging at each door, And the far hills were blue with cold, And a cloud shroud lay on the moor, She kept the siege. And every day We watched her brooding over death Like a strong bird above its prey. The room filled with […]...
5. Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward Child, the current of your breath is six days long. You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed; Lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong At my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed With love. At first hunger is not wrong. The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded Down […]...
6. To the Unknown Warrior You whom the kings saluted; who refused not The one great pleasure of ignoble days, Fame without name and glory without gossip, Whom no biographer befouls with praise. Who said of you “Defeated”? In the darkness The dug-out where the limelight never comes, Nor the big drum of Barnum’s show can shatter That vibrant stillness […]...
7. In Memory of Maggie A pussy-cat who was the household pet for seventeen years. Naught but a little cat, you say; Yet we remember her, A creature loving, loyal, kind, With merry, mellow purr; The faithful friend of many years, Shall we not give her meed of tears? Sleek-suited in her velvet coat, White-breasted and bright-eyed, Feeling when she […]...
8. To The Memory Of Mr Oldham Farewell, too little and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own; For sure our souls were near allied, and thine Cast in the same poetic mould with mine. One common note on either lyre did strike, And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike. To the same goal did both […]...
9. For An Unknown Lady Lady, if you’d slumber sound, Keep your eyes upon the ground. If you’d toss and turn at night, Slip your glances left and right. Would the mornings find you gay, Never give your heart away. Would they find you pale and sad, Fling it to a whistling lad. Ah, but when his pleadings burn, Will […]...
10. Cassius Hueffer They have chiseled on my stone the words: ‘His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him That nature might stand up and say to all the world, This was a man.’ Those who knew me smile As they read this empty rhetoric. My epitaph should have been: ‘Life was not gentle to […]...
11. Agnostic The chapel looms against the sky, Above the vine-clad shelves, And as the peasants pass it by They cross themselves. But I alone, I grieve to state, Lack sentiment divine: A citified sophisticate, I make no sign. Their gesture may a habit be, Mechanic in a sense, Yet somehow it awakes in me Strange reverence. […]...
12. The Faces of Memory DREAM faces bloom around your face Like flowers upon one stem; The heart of many a vanished race Sighs as I look on them. The sun rich face of Egypt glows, The eyes of Eire brood, With whom the golden Cyprian shows In lovely sisterhood. Your tree of life put forth these flowers In ages […]...
13. For My Lover, Returning To His Wife She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you And cast up from your childhood, Cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is, in fact, exquisite. Fireworks in the dull middle of February And as real as a cast-iron pot. Let’s face it, I […]...
14. Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person? I blame the soup:I’m a primordially Stirred person. Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings. The apparatus of his selves made an ab- Surd person. The sound I make is sympathy’s:sad dogs are tied afar. But howling I become an ever more un- […]...
15. In Memory Of My Mother I do not think of you lying in the wet clay Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see You walking down a lane among the poplars On your way to the station, or happily Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday You meet me and you say: ‘Don’t forget to see about the cattle ‘ […]...
16. First Memory Long ago, I was wounded. I lived To revenge myself Against my father, not For what he was For what I was: from the beginning of time, In childhood, I thought That pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved....
17. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
18. Greedy Richard “I think I want some pies this morning,” Said Dick, stretching himself and yawning; So down he threw his slate and books, And saunter’d to the pastry-cook’s. And there he cast his greedy eyes Round on the jellies and the pies, So to select, with anxious care, The very nicest that was there. At last […]...
19. Men They hail you as their morning star Because you are the way you are. If you return the sentiment, They’ll try to make you different; And once they have you, safe and sound, They want to change you all around. Your moods and ways they put a curse on; They’d make of you another person. […]...
20. Richard Bone When I first came to Spoon River I did not know whether what they told me Was true or false. They would bring me an epitaph And stand around the shop while I worked And say “He was so kind,” “He was wonderful,” “She was the sweetest woman,” “He was a consistent Christian.” And I […]...
21. To H Thank you so much, I can’t thank you all enough For this most beautiful epitaph: “Here lies the body Of a young man Who never lived his life.” It’s so much better Than the Baa Baa blacksheep sign You always had round my collar. (05 March, 2006)...
22. To The Memory Of My Beloved, The Author, Mr William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; While I confess thy writings to be such As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much. ‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; For silliest ignorance […]...
23. Rose Leaves When they shall close my careless eyes And look their last upon my face, I fear that some will say: “her lies A man of deep disgrace; His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, He dreamed so much, he did so little. When they shall seal y coffin lid And this worn mask I […]...
24. Memory One had a lovely face, And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain....
25. PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin On a ten year old’s body and Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face. The enormous shire horses neighed In warning if […]...
26. In Memory of a Happy Day in February Blessed be Thou for all the joy My soul has felt today! O let its memory stay with me And never pass away! I was alone, for those I loved Were far away from me, The sun shone on the withered grass, The wind blew fresh and free. Was it the smile of early spring […]...
27. Jack JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, And his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight children And the woman died and the children grew up and Went away and wrote the old man every two years. […]...
28. 247. Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive DWELLER in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation! mark, Who in widow-weeds appears, Laden with unhonour’d years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse? STROPHE View the wither’d Beldam’s face; Can thy keen inspection trace Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace? Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows; Pity’s flood there […]...
29. Unknown God FAR up the dim twilight fluttered Moth-wings of vapour and flame: The lights danced over the mountains, Star after star they came. The lights grew thicker unheeded, For silent and still were we; Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see....
30. In Memory of M. B 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 stranger in, And stayed with her alone. Now you’re gone, and nobody says […]...
31. The Cross of Snow In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face the face of one long dead Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; […]...
32. Unknown Bird Out of the dry days Through the dusty leaves Far across the valley Those few notes never Heard here before One fluted phrase Floating over its Wandering secret All at once wells up Somewhere else And is gone before it Goes on fallen into Its own echo leaving A hollow through the air That is […]...
33. To the Unknown Goddess Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar? Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind? Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind? […]...
34. The Locker All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review...
35. Monody to the Memory of Chatterton Chill penury repress’d his noble rage, And froze the genial current of his soul. GRAY. IF GRIEF can deprecate the wrath of Heaven, Or human frailty hope to be forgiven! Ere now thy sainted spirit bends its way To the bland regions of celestial day; Ere now, thy soul, immers’d in purest air Smiles at […]...
36. The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknown God Much wonder I here long low-laid – That this dead wall should be Betwixt the Maker and the made, Between Thyself and me! For, say one puts a child to nurse, He eyes it now and then To know if better ’tis, or worse, And if it mourn, and when. But Thou, Lord, giv’st us […]...
37. TO ROBIN RED-BREAST Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me; And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: HERE, HERE THE TOMB OF ROBIN HERRICK IS!...
38. The Onion, Memory Divorced, but friends again at last, We walk old ground together In bright blue uncomplicated weather. We laugh and pause To hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs, Prehistoric, crenelated, cast Between the tractor ruts in mud. On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks, Swinging on the chestnut’s unlit chandelier, Defies the corporation spears A single […]...
39. An Argument I’ve oft been told by learned friars, That wishing and the crime are one, And Heaven punishes desires As much as if the deed were done. If wishing damns us, you and I Are damned to all our heart’s content; Come, then, at least we may enjoy Some pleasure for our punishment!...
40. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...