Death poems
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The Sphinx
© Mathilde Blind
The heart grows hushed before it. Nay, methinks
That Man, and all on which Man wastes his breath,
The World, and all the World inheriteth,
With infinite, inexorable links
Grappling the soul; that love, hate, birth and death
Dwindle to nothingness before thee-Sphinx.
Maha-Bharata, The Epic Of Ancient India - Book X - Karna-Badha - (Fall Of Karna)
© Romesh Chunder Dutt
After the death of Karna, Salya led the Kuru troops on the eighteenth
and last day of the war, and fell. A midnight slaughter in the Pandav
camp, perpetrated by the vengeful son of Drona, concludes the war.
Duryodhan, left wounded by Bhima, heard of the slaughter and died
happy.
AN ELEGY Upon the immature loss of the most vertuous Lady Anne Rich
© Henry King
I envy not thy mortal triumphs, Death,
(Thou enemy to Vertue as to Breath)
Nor do I wonder much, nor yet complain
The weekly numbers by thy arrow slain.
Eternities
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: "Swear not by thy head.
Thou knowest not the hairs," though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.
Sappho III
© Sara Teasdale
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower-face
Amor Vitae
© Archibald Lampman
I love the warm bare earth and all
That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
I love the ages gone,
Shakespeare
© Charles Harpur
How oft, in Austral woods, the parting day
Has gone through western golden gates away
While sweetest Shakespeare, fancys darling child,
Warbled for me his native woodnotes wild.
The Things That Make A Soldier Great
© Edgar Albert Guest
The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth, nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great. He's fighting for them all.
Wherefore
© Madison Julius Cawein
I would not see, yet must behold
The truth they preach in church and hall;
And question so,--Is death then all,
And life an idle tale that's told?
On Leaving Newstead Abbey
© George Gordon Byron
Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;
In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle
Have choked up the rose which late bloom'd in the way.
The Tear
© George Gordon Byron
'O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater
Felix! in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit.'~GRAY
The New Exodus
© John Greenleaf Whittier
BY fire and cloud, across the desert sand,
And through the parted waves,
From their long bondage, with an outstretched hand,
God led the Hebrew slaves!
On The Palatine
© Arthur Symons
I have lived, loved, and lost; I crave
Nothing again of all life gave;
I only crave to find
Oblivion for the mind.
Consolation
© Francois de Malherbe
Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal?
And shall the sad discourse
Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,
Only augment its force?
The Song Of The Bower
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
SAY, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
Voyages VI
© Hart Crane
Where icy and bright dungeons lift
Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
And ocean rivers, churning, shift
Green borders under stranger skies,
Chant Before Battle
© Madison Julius Cawein
EVER since man was man a Fiend has stood
Outside his House of Good,
War, with his terrible toys, that win men's hearts
To follow murderous arts.
The Shepheardes Calender: November
© Edmund Spenser
November: Ægloga vndecima. Thenot & Colin.
Thenot.
Colin my deare, when shall it please thee sing,
As thou were
Bianca's Dream - A Venetian Story
© Thomas Hood
BIANCA!fair Bianca!who could dwell
With safety on her dark and hazel gaze,
