On Grizzle Grim

    Robert Burns (1759-1796)

    Here lies with death auld Grizzel Grim
    Rineluden's ugly witch.
    O death how horrid is thy taste,
    To lie with such a bitch!

    The Aesthetic Point of View

    W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

    As the poets have mournfully sung,
    Death takes the innocent young,
    The rolling-in-money,
    The screamingly-funny,
    And those who are very well hung.

    Thought For a Sunshiny Morning

    Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

    It costs me never a stab nor squirm
    To tread by chance upon a worm.
    ‘Aha, my little dear, I say,
    Your clan will pay me back one day.’

    Titanic

    David Slavitt (1935- )

    Who does not love the Titanic?
    If they sold passage tomorrow for that same crossing,
    who would not buy?

    To go down. . . We all go down, mostly
    alone. But with crowds of people, friends, servants,
    well fed, with music, with lights! Ah!

    And the world, shocked, mourns, as it ought to do
    and almost never does. There will be the books and movies
    to remind our grandchildren who we were
    and how we died, and give them a good cry.

    Not so bad, after all. The cold
    water is anaesthetic and very quick.
    The cries on all sides must be a comfort.

    We all go: only a few, first class.

    Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton's Wife

    Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)

    He first deceased; she for a little tried
    To live without him, liked it not, and died

    Everything Passes and Vanishes

    William Allingham (1824-1889)

    Everything passes and vanishes;
    Everything leaves its trace;
    And often you see in a footstep
    What you could not see in a face.

    No Funeral Gloom

    William Allingham (1824-1889)

    No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,
    Corpse-gazing, tears, black raiment, graveyard grimness;
    Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,
    Yours still, you mine; remember all the best
    Of our past moments, and forget the rest;
    And so, to where I wait, come gently on.

    Corpse - Bearing

    Thomas Ashe (1836-1889)

    I remember, they sent
    Some one to me, who said,
    ‘You were his friend while he lived:
    Be so now he is dead.’

    So I went next day to the house;
    And a woman nodded to me,
    As I sat alone in thought: —
    Said, ‘Sir, would you like to see

    The poor dead body upstairs,
    Before we rivet the lid?’
    But I said, ‘I would rather not:
    For the look would never be hid

    From my sight, day after day,
    From my soul, year after year.
    Enough to look on the pall:
    Enough to follow the bier.’

    So the mourners gather'd at last;
    And the poor dead body was put
    In a hearse with mournful plumes,
    And the door of the hearse was shut.

    And when the mourners were all
    In the coaches, ready to start,
    The sorrowing parent came
    To me, and whisper'd apart.

    He smiled as well as he could;
    And the import of what he said
    Was, that I should bear at the feet,
    And his son would bear at the head.

    He was ever my friend;
    And I was happy to be
    Of ever so small use still
    To one who had so loved me.

    But, what a weight, O God!
    Was that one coffin to bear!
    Like a coffin of lead!
    And I carry it everywhere

    About, wherever I go!
    If I lift the slightest thing,
    That requires an effort to lift,
    The effort at once will bring

    The whole weight into my hands,
    And I carry the corpse at the feet;
    And feel as if it would drop,
    And slip out of its winding-sheet.

    I have made a vow in my heart,
    Whatever the friends may say,
    Never to carry a corpse
    Again, to my dying day.

    I Have Trod

    Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

    I have trod the upward and the downward slope;
    I have endured and done in days before;
    I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
    And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.

    To W.R.

    William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

    Madam Life's a piece in bloom
    Death goes dogging everywhere:
    She's the tenant of the room,
    He's the ruffian on the stair.

    You shall see her as a friend,
    You shall bilk him once or twice;
    But he'll trap you in the end,
    And he'll stick you for her price.

    With his kneebones at your chest,
    And his knuckles in your throat,
    You would reason – plead – protest!
    Clutching at her petticoat;

    But she's heard it all before,
    Well she knows you've had your fun,
    Gingerly she gains the door,
    And your little job is done.

    To W.R.

    William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

    Madam Life's a piece in bloom
    Death goes dogging everywhere:
    She's the tenant of the room,
    He's the ruffian on the stair.

    You shall see her as a friend,
    You shall bilk him once or twice;
    But he'll trap you in the end,
    And he'll stick you for her price.

    With his kneebones at your chest,
    And his knuckles in your throat,
    You would reason – plead – protest!
    Clutching at her petticoat;

    But she's heard it all before,
    Well she knows you've had your fun,
    Gingerly she gains the door,
    And your little job is done.

    To W.R.

    William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

    Madam Life's a piece in bloom
    Death goes dogging everywhere:
    She's the tenant of the room,
    He's the ruffian on the stair.

    You shall see her as a friend,
    You shall bilk him once or twice;
    But he'll trap you in the end,
    And he'll stick you for her price.

    With his kneebones at your chest,
    And his knuckles in your throat,
    You would reason – plead – protest!
    Clutching at her petticoat;

    But she's heard it all before,
    Well she knows you've had your fun,
    Gingerly she gains the door,
    And your little job is done.

    Epitaph of an Unimportant Person Who Died in Bed

    Amy Levy (1861-1889)

    This is the end of him, here he lies:
    The dust in his throat, the worm in his eyes,
    The mould in his mouth, the turf on his breast;
    This is the end of him, this is best.
    He will never lie on his couch awake,
    Wide-eyed, tearless, till dim daybreak.
    Never again will he smile and smile
    When his heart is breaking all the while.
    He will never stretch out his hands in vain
    Groping and groping—never again.
    Never ask for bread, get a stone instead,
    Never pretend that the stone is bread.
    Never sway and sway 'twixt the false and true,
    Weighing and noting the long hours through.
    Never ache and ache with chok'd-up sighs;
    This is the end of him, here he lies.

    Query

    George Farewell (fl. 1730)

    Whether at Doomsday (tell, ye reverend wise)
    My friend Priapus with myself shall rise?

    On an Alderman

    John Cunningham (1729-1773)

    That he was born, it cannot be denied,
    He ate, drank, slept, talked politics, and died.

    Comets

    Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

    If at your coming princes disappear,
    Comets! come every day — and stay a year.

    Epitaph

    Bert Lee (1880-1945)

    Beneath this stone lies William Burke,
    A decent man entirely.
    The stone was bought in a second-hand shop,
    And his name wasn’t Burke, it was Reilly.

    Epitaph on a Waiter

    David McCord ( 1897-1997)

    By and by
    God caught his eye.

    An Epitaph

    C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

    Erected by her sorrowing brothers
    In memory of Martha Clay.
    Here lies one who lived for others;
    Now she has peace. And so have they.

    On Himself

    Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)

    At Eton with Orwell, at Oxford with Waugh,
    He was nobody afterwards and nothing before.

With Grace