Death poems
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The Masters
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
OH, who is the Lord of the land of life,
When hotly goes the fray?
The Witch of Hebron
© Charles Harpur
Of golden lamps, showed many a treasure rare
Of Indian and Armenian workmanship
Which might have seemed a wonder of the world:
And trains of servitors of every clime,
Greeks, Persians, Indians, Ethiopians,
In richest raiment thronged the spacious halls.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter V - Count Guido Franceschini
© Robert Browning
That is a way, thou whisperest in my ear!
I doubt, I will decide, then act, said I
Then beckoned my companions: Time is come!
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
© Rudyard Kipling
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death! "
The Wind At Night
© Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
O SUDDEN blast, that through this silence black
Sweeps past my windows,
Coming and going with invisible track
As death or sin does,--
Langueur
© Paul Verlaine
I am the Empire in the last of its decline,
That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,--the while
Composing indolent acrostics, in a style
Of gold, with languid sunshine dancing in each line.
"Thou That Know'st for Whom I Mourn"
© Henry Vaughan
THOU that know'st for whom I mourn,
And why these tears appear,
The Valley Of Anostan
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
AN Orient legend, which hath all the light
And fragrance of the asphodels of heaven,
Smiles on us from old Ælian's mellowed page;
And thus it runs, smooth as the stream of joy
Shameful Death
© William Morris
There were four of us about that bed;
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,
Over his feet lay the bride;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.
The Approach
© Robert Nichols
In my tired, helpless body
I feel my sunk heart ache;
But suddenly, loudly
The far, the great guns shake.
Coming Home
© Augusta Davies Webster
Anyhow
I've poetry and music too to-day
in the very clatter: it goes "Home, home, home."
The Angel In The House. Book II. Canto I.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
V Perspective
What seems to us for us is true.
The planet has no proper light,
And yet, when Venus is in view,
No primal star is half so bright.
The Third Booke Of Qvodlibets
© Robert Hayman
Kings doe correct those that Rebellious are,
And their good Subjects worthily preferre:
Iust Epigrams reproue those that offend,
And those that vertuous are, she doth commend.
In Egypt
© Virna Sheard
All day the wife of Pharaoh had paced the palace hall
Or the long white pillared court that was open to the sky;
A passion of wild restlessness ensnared her in its thrall
While she fought a fear within her--a thing that would not die.
Ode to Walt Whitman
© Federico Garcia Lorca
By the East River and the Bronx
boys were singing, exposing their waists
with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks
and children drawing stairs and perspectives.
The Rift Within The Lute
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
A TINY rift within the lute
May sometimes make the music mute!
By slow degrees, the rift grows wide,
By slow degrees, the tender tide--
Pelleas And Ettarre
© Alfred Tennyson
King Arthur made new knights to fill the gap
Left by the Holy Quest; and as he sat
In hall at old Caerleon, the high doors
Were softly sundered, and through these a youth,
Pelleas, and the sweet smell of the fields
Past, and the sunshine came along with him.
