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    Immortality 

Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep,
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.

Poem by Clare Harner, (Published in "The Gypsy", December 1934 - page 16). The poem is often attributed to anonymous or incorrect sources. Harner, wrote the verses in late 1934, attempting to cope with her grief, after the unexpected death of her brother.by presenting death, not as an ending but a transformation.

Plant, above my lifeless heart
Crimson roses, red as blood.
As if the love, pent there so long
Were pouring forth its flood.

Then, through them, my heart may tell,
Its Past of Love and Grief,
And I shall feel them grow from it,
And know a vague relief.

Through rotting shroud shall feel their roots,
And unto them myself shall grow,
And when I blossom at her feet,
She, on that day, shall know!

(Poem is in the public domain) 

Anne Reeve Aldrich (1866 – 1892) was an American poet and novelist. Her works include The Rose of Flame (1889) and Other and The Feet of Love (1890) and Songs about Life, Love, and Death (published posthumously in 1892). Aldrich was born in New York City. Her father died when she was eight; her mother moved to the country, where she educated Aldrich. By the time she was a teenager, Aldrich was proficient in composition and rhetoric, was able to translate French and Latin. She wrote poetry constantly from a young age.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

John Keats - (1795-1821) English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets. He published only fifty-four poems during his short life time, having died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Although his poems were indifferently received in his lifetime, his fame grew rapidly after his death. Today his poems and letters remain among the most popular and analyzed in English literature.

Sweet pink of northern wood and glen,
E’er first to greet the eyes of men
In early spring,—a tender flower
Whilst still the wintry wind hath power.
How welcome, in the sunny glade,
Or hazel copse, thy pretty head
Oft peeping out whilst still the snow,
Doth here and there, its presence show
Soon leaf and bud quick opening spread
Thy modest petals—white with red
Like some sweet cherub—love’s kind link,
With dress of white, adorned with pink

“One of the first spring wildflowers, the miskodeed or miscodeed (in Ojibwe), or Spring Beauty or Claytonia virginica (in Latin). Typically white with pink veins, though sometimes it is all pink"

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, (1800 –1842) also known as Bamewawagezhikaquay is one of earliest Native American literary writers. She was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry and was fluent in both English and Ojibwe. In 1823, she married Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft wrote poetry and translated Ojibwe stories, legends and songs. Most of her was published in adapted, unattributed versions by her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an explorer, ethnologist and writer who eventually became Superintendent for Indian Affairs.
In 2007 Robert Dale Parker A University of Illinois professor of English and American Indian Studies, published a book named after Jane Johnson Schoolcraf,t Ojibwe name translated to English "Woman of the Sound Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft" where "he presents a collection of all Schoolcraft's extant writings along with a cultural and biographical history".This poem is is a translation of an original poem written in Ojibwe. The Poem is in the public domain More

A Feather from an Angel
Floats gently down to earth,
Announcing the demise
Of another mortal life,
Portending the finality
That awaits all of us.

When April's here and meadows wide
Once more with spring's sweet growths are pied
I close each book, drop each pursuit,
And past the brook, no longer mute,
I joyous roam the countryside.

Look, here the violets shy abide
And there the mating robins hide—
How keen my sense, how acute,
When April's here!

And list! down where the shimmering tide
Hard by that farthest hill doth glide,
Rise faint strains from shepherd's flute,
Pan's pipes and Berecyntian lute.
Each sight, each sound fresh joys provide
When April's here.

This poem by Jessie Redmon Fause is in the public domain.

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882 – 1961) was a poet, essayist, novelist, educator and editor from the Harlem Renaissance. Her literary work helped sculpt African-American literature in the 1920s as she focused on portraying a true image of African-American life and history. She wrote several novels, including There Is Confusion (1924) and Plum Bun (1928). Fauset also served as the editor of The Crisis from 1919–26.... Wikipedia

I shall gather myself into myself again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
Fusing them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go,
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In restless self-importance to and fro.

Sara Teasdale (1884 – 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. She is the author of many poetry collections. In 1918 she was awarded both the Columbia Poetry Prize (now the Pulitzer) and the Poetry Society of America Prize for her "Love Songs" collection published in 1917 .... Read more

             A Wise Old Owl

A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke the more he heard,
Why can’t we all be like that bird?

Image by Erik Karits