Death poems
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Metamorphoses: Book The Ninth
© Ovid
The End of the Ninth Book.
Translated into English verse under the direction of
Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison,
William Congreve and other eminent hands
The Mystery Of Life
© Harriet Beecher Stowe
Life's mystery - deep, restless as the ocean -
Hath surged and wailed for ages to and fro;
Earth's generations watch its ceaseless motion,
As in and out its hollow moanings flow.
Shivering and yearning by that unknown sea,
Let my soul calm itself, O Christ, in thee!
Longfellow
© Henry Van Dyke
In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour
and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and
shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise,
I heard the voice of one singing.
Do You Not Father Me
© Dylan Thomas
Do you not father me, nor the erected arm
For my tall tower's sake cast in her stone?
Come down, O Maid
© Alfred Tennyson
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
Cousin Rufus' Story
© James Whitcomb Riley
My little story, Cousin Rufus said,
Is not so much a story as a fact.
The Grave By The Lake
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
Dimple round its hundred isles,
And the mountain's granite ledge
Cleaves the water like a wedge,
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
Rest the giant's mighty bones.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter IV - Tertium Quid
© Robert Browning
Is so far clear? You know Violante now,
Compute her capability of crime
By this authentic instance? Black hard cold
Crime like a stone you kick up with your foot
I the middle of a field?
The Sword Of Pain
© George Essex Evans
The Lights burn dim and make weird shadow-play,
The white walls of the ward are changed to grey,
Abner And The Widow Jones
© Robert Bloomfield
Well! I'm determin'd; that's enough:-
Gee, Bayard! move your poor old bones,
I'll take to-morrow, smooth or rough,
To go and court the Widow Jones.
Farewell Old War Horse
© Anonymous
The struggle for freedom has ended they say,
The days of fatigue and Remorse,
But our hearts one and all are in memory today,
We are losing our old friend, the Horse.
The Explorer
© John Le Gay Brereton
So we soared and the earth fell away, and the region of night
Was melted in limitless day of ineffable light
Till the myriad souls of the dead were united as we,
Themselves, and yet merged in the spread of an infinite sea
The joy that is life, and around us, below and above,
The One that all lovers have found, our eternity, Love.
Maha-Bharata, The Epic Of Ancient India - Book III - Rajasuya - (The Imperial Sacrifice)
© Romesh Chunder Dutt
A curious incident followed the bridal of Draupadi. The five sons of
Pandu returned with her to the potter's house, where they were
Supernatural Songs
© William Butler Yeats
Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
Before Actium.
© Robert Crawford
Life is up and takes the morning;
Why should love still lie abed?
Lo! the charms of slumber scorning,
Tramps the troop that must be led.
Er Caffettiere Fisolofo (The Philosophizing Barman)
© Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli
L'ommini de sto monno sò l'istesso
Che vaghi de caffè ner macinino:
C'uno prima, uno doppo, e un'antro appresso,
Tutti quanti però vanno a un distino.
The Two Prayers
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
And new alarm I found did some sharp cry
Come from the street, or did a foot pass by
Swift in its going. All did threaten him.
Hear me, O Lord, who sip at sorrow's brim.
Take thou these eyes, these ears, this strength, this breath.
All that he hath not, who hath tasted death."
Testament
© Dorothy Parker
Kinder the busy worms than ever love;
It will be peace to lie there, empty-eyed,
My bed made secret by the leveling showers,
My breast replenishing the weeds above.
And you will say of me, "Then has she died?
Perhaps I should have sent a spray of flowers."
Mogg Megone - Part III.
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Ah! weary Priest! - with pale hands pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
