Death poems
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The Vanity of Human Wishes (excerpts)
© Samuel Johnson
45 Yet still one gen'ral cry the skies assails,
46 And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales,
47 Few know the toiling statesman's fear or care,
48 Th' insidious rival and the gaping heir.
On The Death Of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser In Physic
© Samuel Johnson
CONDEMN'D to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away.
Sordello: Book the Third
© Robert Browning
Whereat he rose.
The level wind carried above the firs
Clouds, the irrevocable travellers,
Onward.
October
© Madison Julius Cawein
I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
The Palace Gate
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
The soldier closed the clanging palace gate
Upon the crowd who murmured still to wait.
"Take back your gifts, you may not pass," he said.
"Hear the bell tollthe little king is dead."
Scum O' The Earth
© Robert Haven Schauffler
Newcomers all from the eastern seas,
Help us incarnate dreams like these.
Forget, and forgive, that we did you wrong.
Help us to father a nation, strong
In the comradeship of an equal birth,
In the wealth of the richest bloods of earth.
Paradise Lost : Book II.
© John Milton
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress dance drama)
© Rg Gregory
his home in ruins
his parents gone
frederick seeks
to reclaim his throne
the man the gun and the dog
© Rg Gregory
yesterday the man was pleased
the sun sat in the tree and all
upon the land held to the harmony
his coming then expected
against the ladling of doom
© Rg Gregory
crisis has a fact to get straight
it needn't be the end of the world
beginnings too are coated with death
A Story Of Doom: Book VI.
© Jean Ingelow
"Now to-day
One cometh, yea, an harmless man, a fool,
Who boasts he hath a message from our God,
And lest that you, for bravery of heart
And stoutness, being angered with his prate,
Should lift a hand, and kill him, I am here."
milano
© Rg Gregory
wandering around milan my father
i know that (bred in the bone) i'm you
i walk and think - my legs roll onwards
i take in the atmosphere but not the view
At Rheims
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Their hearts were burning in their breasts
Too hot for curse or cries.
They stared upon the towers that burned
Before their smarting eyes.
The River of Life
© Thomas Campbell
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.
transformations
© Rg Gregory
and the swords came in their varying degrees
of shininess and sharpness some never
having lost their pristine feel others with blunt
tips and broken blades a few so steeped in blood
a dried rustiness still stained them - and those wilted
at the hilt (weary of the code that bred them)
Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned
© John Donne
Oh my black Soule! Now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,
Revenge
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
'Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill,
Its blast wanders mournfully over the hill,
The thunders wild voice rattles madly above,
You will not then, cannot then, leave me my love.'--
