Death poems
/ page 325 of 560 /
Questions Of Life
© John Greenleaf Whittier
A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.
Constancy to an Ideal Object
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The Shipwreck Of Idomeneus
© George Meredith
Amid the din of elemental strife,
No voice may pierce but Deity supreme:
And Deity supreme alone can hear,
Above the hurricane's discordant shrieks,
The cry of agonized humanity.
The New Decalogue
© Ambrose Bierce
Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.
To the Noblest and Best of Ladies, the Countess of Denbigh
© Richard Crashaw
Persuading her to resolution in religion, and to
Render herself without further delay into the
Communion of the Catholic Church
"Needs must I sing"
© Thibaut de Champagne
Lady, relent: thou whom all gifts adorn,
Who dost all worth and every grace display,
More than all other dames that e'er were born,
And give me kindly succour, since you may.
Paradise Lost: Book XII (1674)
© Patrick Kavanagh
AS one who in his journey bates at Noone,
Though bent on speed, so heer the Archangel paus'd
Betwixt the world destroy'd and world restor'd,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Then with transition sweet new Speech resumes.
Swells
© Archie Randolph Ammons
The very longest swell in the ocean, I suspect,
carries the deepest memory, the information of actions
summarized (surface peaks and dibbles and local sharp
The Song Of The Sword--To Rudyard Kipling
© William Ernest Henley
The Sword
Singing -
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging imperious
Forth from Time's battlements
His ancient and triumphing Song.
The Return
© Frank Bidart
As the retreating Bructeri began to burn their own
possessions, to deny to the Romans every sustenance but
ashes,
from The Testament of Love
© John Hall Wheelock
from Book I, Introduction
Man’s Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense,
Singing School
© Seamus Justin Heaney
Ulster was British, but with no rights on
The English lyric: all around us, though
We hadn’t named it, the ministry of fear.
Guinevere
© Alfred Tennyson
`Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.
Too late, too late! ye cannot enter now.
On The Way To Church
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
There is one I know. I see her sometimes pass
In the morning streets upon her way to Mass,
A calm sweet woman with unearthly eyes.
Men turn to look at her, but ever stop,
Reading in those blue depths the death of hope
And a wise chastisement for thoughts unwise.
Talking Of Power And Love
© Paul Eluard
Between all my torments between death and self
Between my despair and the reason for living
There is injustice and this evil of men
That I cannot accept there is my anger
In Time of Plague [Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss]
© Thomas Nashe
Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss;
This world uncertain is;
Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
© John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
On The Death Of Sir Henry Wootton
© Abraham Cowley
What shall we say, since silent now is he
Who when he spoke, all things would silent be?
The Philosopher To His Love
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
DEAREST, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.
