poems about life and poems about death,

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men
as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
~Helen Keller

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
My friends, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and evr'y highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way.
~Paul Anka

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven,
A time to be born, and a time to die,
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted,
A time to kill, and a time to heal,
A time to break down, and a time to build up,
A time to weep, and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn, and a time to dance,
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together,
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to seek, and a time to lose,
A time to keep, and a time to throw away,
A time to tear, and a time to sew,
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak,
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
~Elie Wiesel, October 1986

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
~Emily Dickinson

A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You're free at last
~Charlie Daniels, written en route to the funeral for his friend,
Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.