Death poems
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St. George
© Emile Verhaeren
Opening the mists on a sudden through,
An Avenue!
Then, all one ferment of varied gold,
With foam of plumes where the chamfrom bends
Round his horse's head, that no bit doth hold,
St. George descends!
Morts De Quatre-Vingt-Douze (Dead Of '92)
© Arthur Rimbaud
Morts de Quatre-vingt-douze et de Quatre-vingt-treize,
Qui, pâles du baiser fort de la liberté,
Calmes, sous vos sabots, brisiez le joug qui pèse
Sur l'âme et sur le front de toute humanité ;
The Child Of The Islands - Opening
© Caroline Norton
I.
OF all the joys that brighten suffering earth,
What joy is welcomed like a new-born child?
What life so wretched, but that, at its birth,
August
© Boris Pasternak
This was its promise, held to faithfully:
The early morning sun came in this way
Until the angle of its saffron beam
Between the curtains and the sofa lay,
Ballade Of Old Plays
© Andrew Lang
Ghosts, at your Poet's word ye dare
To break Death's dungeons through,
And frisk, as in that golden air,
When these Old Plays were new!
Municipal
© Rudyard Kipling
"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran
"Thus," quoth that most veracious man: -
For A Child
© Harriet Monroe
Still he lies,
Pale, wan, and strangely wise.
Under the white coverlet
He lies here sleeping yet,
Though it is day,
Though through the window flares the gaudy day.
From Afar
© Rabindranath Tagore
The 'I' that floats along the wave of time,
From a distance I watch him.
With the dust and the water,
With the fruit and the flower,
A Redeemer
© Robinson Jeffers
But when I am dead and all you with whole
hands think of nothing but happiness,
Will you go mad and kill each other? Or horror come over
the ocean on wings and cover your sun?
I wish," he said trembling, "I had never been born."
The Heroic Enthusiasts - Part The Second =Second Dialogue=
© Giordano Bruno
MARICONDO. Here you see a flaming yoke enveloped in knots round which is
written: Levius aura; which means that Divine love does not weigh down,
nor carry his servant captive and enslaved to the lowest depths, but
raises him, supports him and magnifies him above all liberty whatsoever.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter IX - Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius
© Robert Browning
Thus
Would I defend the step,were the thing true
Which is a fable,see my former speech,
That Guido slept (who never slept a wink)
Through treachery, an opiate from his wife,
Who not so much as knew what opiates mean.
For Class Meeting
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
IT is a pity and a shame--alas! alas! I know it is,
To tread the trodden grapes again, but so it has been,
Metamorphoses: Book The First
© Ovid
OF bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 8
© Publius Vergilius Maro
WHEN Turnus had assembled all his powrs,
His standard planted on Laurentums towrs;
Ode
© Frances Anne Kemble
With lighter toil than that of brain or heart,
In the sweet pause of outward life takes part;
And hope, and fear,desire, love, joy, and sorrow,
Wait, 'neath sleep's downy wings, the coming morrow.
Peace upon earth, profoundest peace in heaven,
Praises the God of Peace, by whom 'tis given.
Thebais - Book One - part V
© Pablius Papinius Statius
The king once more the solemn rites requires,
And bids renew the feasts, and wake the fires.
The Ballad Of The Murdered Merchant
© Franklin Pierce Adams
All stark and cold the merchant lay,
All cold and stark lay he.
And who hath killed the fair merchant?
Now tell the truth to me.
