Death poems
/ page 210 of 560 /
Charleston Retaken. Dec. 14, 1782
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
AS some half-vanquished lion,
Who long hath kept at bay
A band of sturdy foresters
Barring his blood-stained way--
Unfortunate
© Julia A Moore
Fold her hands upon her breast,
And let her sweetly sleep.
She has found a perfect rest,
Beneath her winding sheet.
The Wheels Of The System
© George Essex Evans
Where is God, whilst all around us sounds the jarring of the wheels,
When the cry of human anguish starwards thro His glory steals?
There is neither hope nor pity underneath the moving wheels.
Woe to him who slips or falters whilst the wheels are moving on!
Woe to him who stays to breathe him when the goal is nearly won!
There they lieand lie for everover whom the wheels have gone!
The Christmas Homes Of England
© Caroline Hayward
The Christmas homes of England!
How far-famed and how dear;
In bright array they ever stand,
That glad day of the year;
Pharsalia - Book IX: Cato
© Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Such were the words he spake; and soon the fleet
Had dared the angry deep: but Cato's voice
While praising, calmed the youthful chieftain's rage.
On Leaving Italy, For The Summer, On Account Of Health
© Richard Monckton Milnes
Thou summer--land! that dost put on the sun
Not as a dress of pomp occasional,
But as thy natural and most fitting one,--
Yet still thy Beauty has its festival,
The Empty Glass
© Henry Lawson
THERE ARE three lank bards in a borrowed room
Ah! The number is one too few
Dirge
© Herman Melville
Stay, Death, Not mine the Christus-wand
Wherewith to charge thee and command:
Expostulation
© William Cowper
Why weeps the muse for England? What appears
In England's case to move the muse to tears?
New Year's Eve
© Mathilde Blind
Poor fool of life! plagued ever with thy vain
Regrets and futile longings! were the years
Not cups o'erbrimming still with gall and tears?
Let go thy puny personal joy and pain!
If youth with all its brief hope disappears,
To deathless hope we must be born again.
Sonnet XIX: Silent Noon
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Modern Greece
© Richard Monckton Milnes
As, in the legend which our childhood loved,
The destined prince was guided to the bed,
Where, many a silent year, the charmèd Maid
Lay still, as though she were not; nor could wake,
Say Goodbye when your Chum is Married
© Henry Lawson
Now this is a rhyme that might well be carried
Gummed in your hat till the end of things:
Life And Death
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Life is not sweet. One day it will be sweet
To shut our eyes and die:
Virgils Gnat
© Edmund Spenser
And whatsoeuer other flowre of worth,
And whatso other hearb of louely hew
The iouyous Spring out of the ground brings forth,
To cloath her selfe in colours fresh and new;
He planted there, and reard a mount of earth,
In whose high front was writ as doth ensue.
Tired
© Augusta Davies Webster
No not to-night, dear child; I cannot go;
I'm busy, tired; they knew I should not come;
you do not need me there. Dear, be content,
and take your pleasure; you shall tell me of it.
There, go to don your miracles of gauze,
and come and show yourself a great pink cloud.
The Coming Of Te Rauparaha.
© Arthur Henry Adams
BLUE, the wreaths of smoke, like drooping banners
From the flaming battlements of sunset
Hung suspended; and within his whare
Hipe, last of Ngatiraukawa's chieftains,
Sonnet IV
© Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa
I could not think of thee as piecèd rot,
Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead;
The Sinking Ship
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
The ship is sinking, come ye one and all.
Stand fast and so this weakness overhaul,
The Borough. Letter XIX: The Parish-Clerk
© George Crabbe
WITH our late Vicar, and his age the same,
His clerk, hight Jachin, to his office came;
The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender
