These three poems on death by three of the greatest poets in English—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), W B Yeats (1865-1939), and T S Eliot (1888-1965)—are all very familiar to me—and probably to you. If you are reading even one of them for the first time you are in for a treat.

I came across the three poems juxtaposed in A Choice of Shakespeare’s Verse by Ted Hughes. Hughes puts the three poems side by side to make the point that a poem wrenched from “the sacred precincts” of Shakespeare’s drama can easily stand along poems written as stand-alone poems.

He didn’t need to make the point to me, or you’d have thought to most people familiar with Shakespeare’s plays, but anthologists before him have tended to include only Shakespeare’s sonnets or songs: they thought it somehow wrong, an abuse, to take passages from his dramas. But when I watch his plays, I resent the magnificent poetry flashing by, allowing almost no time to appreciate it. That’s why I usually read the play the next day—to pick out the poetry. But the poetry is mixed with lines that are inserted not for the poetry but to move the drama along, which is why I’m grateful to have found Hughes’s anthology where he extracts poems from the drama.

And the one he selects first from Macbeth is a great favourite of mine. Ever since when as a teenager I encountered “ Life is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing” I’ve been quoting it regularly. And I remember hearing the great Shakespearean actor Paul Schofield slowly speak the lines “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” with each “tomorrow” dropping like a pearl.

There’s not a weak line in the poem, nor in the other two.

Speech: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” by Willam Shakespeare

(from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Death by W B Yeats

NOR dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone —
Man has created death.

Death by Water from The Wasteland by T S Eliot

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

                                   A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

                                   Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.