Or as William Dunbar said in his Lament for the Makers:
Sen for the deid remeid is none,
Best is that we for dede dispone,
Eftir our deid that lif may we;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Excellent Blog every one can get lots of information for any topics from this blog nice work keep it up.

Don't forget Karl Malden - he just passed away a couple of days ago too!

Two others I just remembered: St. Francis's wonderful juxtaposition of words - "Sister Death" and Ben Franklin's cute personal epitath (perhaps not his real one):
Benjamin Franklin Potter
(Like the cover of an old book,
its contents torn out
And stripped of its
lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms;
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believed)
appear once more In a new
And more elegant edition,
released and recorrected
by the Author.

Two more poems I enjoy re: 'death' are Poe's The Conqueror Wurm (more for its lyrical qualities since it seems to fly against Christian Hope), and Frost's The Disused Graveyard which asks the poignant question: "What is it men are shrinking from?"

On this topic, whether you agree or not, Dylan Thomas makes a powerful statement with his Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, and Cardinal Newman considers what happens afterward in his Dream of Gerontius.
And if you're going to be in Chicago at the end of July/beginning of August, you can go to Millennium Park to hear the Grant Park Orchestra And Chorus performing Elgar's setting of Gerontius in person.

Adieu, farewell earth's bliss,
This world uncertain is :
Fond are life's lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys.
None from his darts can fly :
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us !
Rich men, trust not in wealth,
Gold cannot buy you health ;
Physic himself must fade,
All things to end are made ;
The plague full swift goes by :
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us !
Beauty is but a flower,
Which wrinkles will devour ;
Brightness falls from the air,
Queens have died young and fair,
Dust hath closèd Helen's eye :
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us !
Strength stoops unto the grave,
Worms feed on Hector brave,
Swords may not fight with fate,
Earth still holds ope her gate.
Come, come, the bells do cry,
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us !
Haste therefore each degree
To welcome destiny ;
Heaven is our heritage
Earth but a player's stage,
Mount we unto the sky :
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us !

Death is like the thief in the night. The accounting of what has been stolen, however, can only be done in the daylight.
Oh, death is a rightly sorta topic for a'posting, I reckon. Too much, too much to say. Must process.
The Chicken

Dear Tim J.
You wrote:
(This post has been carefully cross-posted by hand at Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)
How did you get your hands into the Internet :)
The idea of cross-posting reminds one of the famous Poem by John Donne,
VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
"Whose soul is sense"cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
The Chicken
P. S. I originally pulled the whole poem off of a site on the Internet and since the poem is in the public domain, could it be copyrighted on the site I pulled it off of? Oh, the absurdities of rightly copying copyrighted material. In order not to offend either Da Rulz or the U. S. copyright law, instead of using my original cribbed copy, I have, instead, used a copy from a book on Project Gutenberg, all of whose works are in the public domain. Nevertheless the copy posted, above is virtually indistinguishable from the first one, sigh.

Great Post Tim.