Death poems
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Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
© William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Santa Christina
© Robert Laurence Binyon
At Tiro, in her father's tower,
The young Cristina had her bower,
Over blue Bolsena's lake,
Where small frolic ripples break
Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth
© William Shakespeare
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
My sinful earth these rebel powers array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
On Olympus.
© Robert Crawford
The high noises,
The great voices,
They of the sky
In the clouds wrangle,
A Vision of Poesy - Part 01
© Henry Timrod
In a far country, and a distant age,
Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth,
A boy was born of humble parentage;
The stars that shone upon his lonely birth
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame -
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
Sonnet 140: Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
© William Shakespeare
Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
The Canoe
© Isabella Valancy Crawford
My masters twain made me a bed
Of pine-boughs resinous, and cedar;
The Tragedy
© Richard Harris Barham
Quæque ipse miserrima vidi.- VIRGIL.
Catherine of Cleves was a Lady of rank,
Sonnet 13: O, that you were your self! But, love, you are
© William Shakespeare
O, that you were your self! But, love, you are
No longer yours than you yourself here live.
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
October, 1803
© William Wordsworth
. These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air
The Ballad of St. Barbara
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
When the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,
We stood and drank of the last free air we never could taste again;
They had led us back from a lost battle, to halt we knew not where,
And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.
The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands,
And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands:
The Anvil
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Burned from the ores rejected dross,
The iron whitens in the heat.
Sonet LIV
© William Shakespeare
O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)
© William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55)
© William Shakespeare
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
Ausonius Lib. I. Epig.
© Richard Lovelace
Thesauro invento qui limina mortis inibat,
Liquit ovans laqueum, quo periturus erat;
At qui, quod terrae abdiderat, non repperit aurum,
Quem laqueum invenit nexuit, et periit.
A Grecian Thunder-Storm
© Richard Monckton Milnes
The Thunder came not with one awful pulse,
When the wide Heaven seems quaking to its heart,
But in a current of tumultuous noise,
Crash upon crash,--a multitudinous clang
The Poor
© Jones Very
I walk the streets and though not meanly drest,
Yet none so poor as can with me compare;
Dirge
© William Shakespeare
COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
