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I Have a Rendezvous with Death
Alan Seeger

I HAVE a rendezvous with Death 
At some disputed barricade, 
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Bitterness of Death
D.H. Lawrence 

AH, stern, cold man,
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water! 
Do you set your face against the daughter 
Of life? Can you never discard 
Your curt pride’s ban?

You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
You want at last, ah me!
To break my heart

Evader!

You know your mouth
Was always sooner to soften
Even than your eyes.
Now shut it lies

Relentless, however often
I kiss it in drouth.
It has no breath
Nor any relaxing. Where,
Where are you, what have you done?

What is this mouth of stone?
How did you dare
Take cover in death!

Once you could see,
The white moon show like a breast revealed
By the slipping shawl of stars.
Could see the small stars tremble
As the heart beneath did wield
Systole, diastole.

All the lovely macrocosm
Was woman once to you,
Bride to your groom.
No tree in bloom
But it leaned you a new
White bosom.

And always and ever
Soft as a summering tree
Unfolds from the sky, for your good,
Unfolded womanhood;
Shedding you down as a tree
Sheds its flowers on a river.

I saw your brows
Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,
And I shed my very soul down into your thought;
Like flowers I fell, to be caught
On the comforted pool, like bloom
That leaves the boughs.

Oh, masquerader,
With a hard face white-enamelled,
What are you now?
Do you care no longer how
My heart is trammelled,
Evader?

Is this you, after all,
Metallic, obdurate
With bowels of steel?
Did you never feel?—
Cold, insensate,
Mechanical!

Ah, no!—you multiform,
You that I loved, you wonderful,
You who darkened and shone,
You were many men in one;
But never this null
This never-warm!

Is this the sum of you?
Is it all nought?
Cold, metal-cold?
Are you all told
Here, iron-wrought?
Is this what’s become of you?

The Triumph of Death
W. Shakespeare 

NO longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay;

Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

To Death
Caroline Southey

COME not in terrors clad, to claim
An unresisting prey:
Come like an evening shadow, Death!
So stealthily, so silently!
And shut mine eyes, and steal my breath;

Then willingly, O willingly,
With thee I'll go away!
What need to clutch with iron grasp
What gentlest touch may take?
What need with aspect dark to scare,

So awfully, so terribly,
The weary soul would hardly care,
Call'd quietly, call'd tenderly,
From thy dread power to break?
'Tis not as when thou markest out

The young, the blest, the gay,
The loved, the loving—they who dream
So happily, so hopefully;
Then harsh thy kindest call may seem,
And shrinkingly, reluctantly,

The summon'd may obey.
But I have drunk enough of life—
The cup assign'd to me
Dash'd with a little sweet at best,
So scantily, so scantily—

To know full well that all the rest
More bitterly, more bitterly,
Drugg'd to the last will be.
And I may live to pain some heart
That kindly cares for me:

To pain, but not to bless. O Death!
Come quietly—come lovingly—
And shut mine eyes, and steal my breath;
Then willingly, O willingly,
I'll go away with thee!

There is a Knot
Poem by a Turkish Girl

There is a know inside o fmen
A knot which cannot be untied
Strong
It hurts
As if they have put a stone
Inside of me

I always remember the old days
Playing at our summer home
Going to grandmothers
Staying at grandmother’s
I want those days to return

Perhaps the know will be untied
when they return
Buth there is a knot inside of me
So strong
And it hurts
as if there is a stone inside of me