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The spirits of the dead who stood. In life before thee are again. In death around thee—and their will. Shall overshadow thee: be still. III. The night, tho’ clear, shall frown—. And the stars shall look not down. From their high thrones in the heaven, With light like Hope to mortals given—.
Edgar Allan Poe's poems about death continue to captivate and unsettle readers, delving into the darkest corners of the human psyche. Through his eloquent use of language, haunting imagery, and introspective themes, Poe invites us to reflect on mortality, grief, and the transient nature of life.
Known for his dark and macabre themes, Poe’s poems about death delve into the depths of human emotions and the mystery surrounding mortality. His unique writing style and haunting imagery have captivated readers for generations, making him a master of the genre.
- “Thanatopsis,” by William Cullen Bryant
- “Lycidas,” by John Milton
- “The Conqueror Worm,” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “Crossing The Bar,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- “Spring and Fall: to A Young Girl,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- “Elegy in A Country Churchyard,” by Thomas Gray
- “Because I Could Not Stop For Death,” by Emily Dickinson
- “No Longer Mourn For Me,”
- “To An Athlete Dying Young,” by A. E. Housman
- “Death Be Not Proud,” by John Donne
This one belongs on the list not only for its own merits but also because it exerted a great influence on American letters, especially on American Romanticism, for several generations. In this poem, the seventeen-year-old Bryant instructs his readers in a little less than a hundred lines of blank verse how to live and especially how to die—cheerful...
I know Milton is a gigantic figure and this is one of the greatest of all pastoral odes, formally an elegy to boot, but I give it a modest place in this list because it is only perfunctorily about the loss of his classmate and more about religion and art in general. Milton clearly used the occasion of Edward King’s death to lecture his readers abou...
Poe may be the strangest of all the poets in this list; “The Conqueror Worm” is surely the strangest poem. A group of angels, “drowned in tears,” are watching a play in which various characters chase about the stage, depicting “much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot.” Presently, the horrid figure of a worm appears to eat ...
Tennyson on his deathbed requested that this poem end any collection of his work. Its four stanzas present an extended metaphor in which life is a river, flowing endlessly into the “boundless deep” of the sea, and the speaker is a sailor, stoically passing the sandbar that separates the familiarity of the harbor from the unknown realm of the open s...
This poem surely belongs on my list, although it is not specifically about human death but about what in the Middle Ages was called “mutability,” the inevitable process by which all material things beneath the lunar sphere must wear down and decay. The falling leaves that appall the child are symbolic of the universal condition. Hopkins, a Jesuit p...
At one time this was thought to be the best known of all English poems. A meditation about the obscurity of the rural life, the message is that fame or obscurity are matters of chance, and that possibly one of the men interred in this country churchyard might have been a Milton or a Hampden if he had been born in another place or to another fortune...
This strange poem projects an extended metaphor in which a personified Death, as a coachman, takes the poet riding past scenes of life, past a house that evokes a gravestone, and finally, she surmises, toward “Eternity.” The twenty-four lines of this poem maintain, typically for Dickinson, a rickety abcb form, with slant rhymes predominating. But l...
In this sonnet the poet imagines his own death and its effect on a loved one left behind. “Forget about me after I’m gone,” he advises, “because otherwise the world might shame you for your relationship with me.” Of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, this one may be the most intimate, directed most personally toward a particular reader. No longer mourn ...
I boldly put this above Shakespeare because it is a special favorite of mine. As in all of Housman’s poetry, the language is simple, seeming oddly contemporary for a work written more than a hundred years ago. The comparison between the cheering crowd at the race and the mourners at the funeral present a powerful assertion of the disparate similari...
Donne’s bold confrontation with a personified Death deserves the top spot in this list, almost, I imagine, by acclimation. One of the poet’s Holy Sonnets, it presents a remarkable list of all the ways to die (I can’t think of any additions), and ends with what most of us hope will be a final word: “Death, thou shalt die.” Death, be not proud, thoug...
The poem addresses the death of a loved one by reflecting on the pain and loneliness that come with loss. Poe offers comfort by suggesting that the spirits of those who have died remain near, maintaining a connection that reduces the sadness of separation through their ongoing presence and influence.
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness — for then. The spirits of the dead, who stood. In life before thee, are again. In death around thee, and their will. Shall overshadow thee; be still. The night, though clear, shall frown, And the stars shall not look down. From their high thrones in the Heaven.
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Edgar Allan Poe's poetry about death remains as haunting and captivating as ever. Through his exploration of themes such as grief, loss, and the supernatural, Poe created a body of work that continues to resonate with readers.
