Death poems
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Elegy IV
© Rainer Maria Rilke
O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
The Exiles' Line
© Rudyard Kipling
Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less -
Oh slothful mother of much idleness,
Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?
A Sonnet Upon The Pitiful Burning Of The Globe Playhouse In
© Anonymous
Now sit thee down, Melpomene,
Wrapp'd in a sea-coal robe,
And tell the doleful tragedy
That late was play'd at Globe;
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 05 - part 01
© Torquato Tasso
THE ARGUMENT.
Gernando scorns Rinaldo should aspire
Queen Mab: Part IV.
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
'How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
The Tomb of Love
© Thomas Love Peacock
By the mossy weed-flowered column,
Where the setting moonbeam's glance
The Dream
© Giacomo Leopardi
It was the morning; through the shutters closed,
Along the balcony, the earliest rays
Sonnet III. Canzone. (Translated From Milton)
© William Cowper
They mock my toil--the nymphs and am'rous swains--
And whence this fond attempt to write, they cry,
Love, Dreaming of Death
© Charles Harpur
Sat on the earth as on a bier,
Where loss and ruin lived alone,
Without the comfort of a tear
Without a passing groan.
Fragments
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
THE wounded hart and the dying swan
Were side by side
Where the rushes coil with the turn of the tide
The hart and the swan.
The Monk
© Edith Nesbit
WHEN in my narrow cell I lie,
The long day's penance done at last,
I see the ghosts of days gone by,
And hear the voices of the past.
Crumbs Or The Loaf
© Robinson Jeffers
If one should tell them what's clearly seen
They'd not understand; if they understood they would not believe;
The Ballad of the "Britain's Pride"
© William Watson
It was a skipper of Lowestoft
That trawled the northern sea,
A Song In Passing
© Yvor Winters
Where am I now? And what
Am I to say portends?
Death is but death, and not
The most obtuse of ends.
The House Of Dust: Part 02: 11:
© Conrad Aiken
Snow falls. The sky is grey, and sullenly glares
With purple lights in the canyoned street.
The fiery sign on the dark tower wreathes and flares . . .
The trodden grass in the park is covered with white,
The streets grow silent beneath our feet . . .
The city dreams, it forgets its past to-night.
Ruth
© Henry Lawson
Are the fields of my fancy less fair through a window thats narrowed and barred?
Are the morning stars dimmed by the glare of the gas-light that flares in the yard?
No! And what does it matter to me if to-morrow I sail from the land?
I am free, as I never was free! I exult in my loneliness grand!
On Sarah Stonhouse, Second Wife Of The Rev. Sir James Stonhouse, Bart.
© Hannah More
Oh! if thy living excellence could teach,
Death has a loftier emphasis of speech:
Let death thy strongest lesson then impart,
And write, prepare to die on every heart.
Epitaph of Eusthenes
© Theocritus
Here the shrewd physiognomist Eusthenes lies,
Who could tell all your thoughts by a glance at your eyes.
A stranger, with strangers his honoured bones rest;
They valued sweet song, and he gave them his best.
All the honours of death doth the poet possess:
If a small one, they mourned for him nevertheless.
The Song Of Iron
© Lola Ridge
Not yet hast Thou sounded
Thy clangorous music,
Whose strings are under the mountains…
Not yet hast Thou spoken
The blooded, implacable Word…
When A Lover Clasps His Fairest
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
I.
When a lover clasps his fairest,
Then be our dread sport the rarest.
Their caresses were like the chaff
In the tempest, and be our laugh
His despairher epitaph!
