Elegies
Definition: a song or poem expressing sorrow especially for one who is dead
Example:
Elegy
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,
I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead
Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,
I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.
The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.
Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go
Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'
Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.
O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.
Free verse
Definition: poetry whose lines do not have a regular pattern
Example:
Religion
I am more an ancient Grecian than a Christian
As they say it, in accents of exclusion and
Brimstone. What kind of fool do I take myself for,
Forcing first one side and then the other
Between my double-praying lips and expecting
Not to choke? They don't ask the
Questions to my answers, they add or subtract
As their hearts dictate what will happen when
The beats stop.
Frank words
Are the enemy of long thick walls, and
More now would cause mental lockjaw.
What do they say about me when two seats are empty?
What if infinite universes lie above and below,
A pair for every thought ever formed in every head?
We are great because we think we are
But believing is not in thought--
The verbal lance is still sticking out, and in as
Well, and I don't want him in hell either--
But my mind is racing, not rationalizing
And the pain is radiating from
My heart.
As they say it, in accents of exclusion and
Brimstone. What kind of fool do I take myself for,
Forcing first one side and then the other
Between my double-praying lips and expecting
Not to choke? They don't ask the
Questions to my answers, they add or subtract
As their hearts dictate what will happen when
The beats stop.
Frank words
Are the enemy of long thick walls, and
More now would cause mental lockjaw.
What do they say about me when two seats are empty?
What if infinite universes lie above and below,
A pair for every thought ever formed in every head?
We are great because we think we are
But believing is not in thought--
The verbal lance is still sticking out, and in as
Well, and I don't want him in hell either--
But my mind is racing, not rationalizing
And the pain is radiating from
My heart.
Significance: make listeners or readers feel the events in the story thanks to the rhyme scheme.
