Death poems
/ page 375 of 560 /
Trivia ; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London : Book II.
© John Gay
Of Walking the Streets by Day.
Thus far the Muse has trac'd in useful lays
The Love Of God The End Of Life
© William Cowper
Since life in sorrow must be spent,
So be it--I am well content,
And meekly wait my last remove,
Seeking only growth in love.
Possession
© Edith Nesbit
THE child was yours and none of mine,
And yet you gave it me to keep,
And bade me sew it raiment fine,
And wrap my kisses round its sleep.
Sonnet 72: O lest the world should task you to recite
© William Shakespeare
O lest the world should task you to recite,
What merit lived in me that you should love
Mummy Wheat
© Edith Nesbit
LAID close to Death, these many thousand years,
In this small seed Life hid herself and smiled;
So well she hid, Death was at least beguiled,
Set free the grain--and lo! the sevenfold ears!
Outside The Village Church
© Alfred Austin
``The old Church doors stand open wide,
Though neither bells nor anthems peal.
Gazing so fondly from outside,
Why do you enter not and kneel?
Tribute
© Aline Murray Kilmer
DEBORAH and Christopher brought me dandelions,
Kenton brought me buttercups with summer on their breath,
But Michael brought an autumn leaf, like lacy filigree,
A wan leaf, a ghost leaf, beautiful as death.
Lights Along the Mile
© Alfred Thomas Chandler
THE NIGHT descends in glory, and adown the purple west
The young moon, like a crescent skiff, upon some fairy quest,
Faris
© Adam Mickiewicz
In vain, in vain they threaten me!
I speed on with redoubled blows.
The haughty crags have I outgazed,
And, where such hostile front they raised,
Now in a long defile they flee,
Nor one behind another shows.
Peace
© Rupert Brooke
Oh! we who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Nought broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
Mary Ambree
© Andrew Lang
When captaines couragious, whom death cold not daunte,
Did march to the siege of the citty of Gaunt,
They mustred their souldiers by two and by three,
And the formost in battle was Mary Ambree.
Morgan
© Edward Harrington
When Morgan crossed the Murray to Peechelba and doom
A sombre silent shadow rode with him through the gloom.
The wild things of the forest slunk from the outlaw's track,
The boobook croaked a warning, "Go back, go back, go back!"
It woke no answering echo in Morgan's blackened soul,
As onward through the darkness he rode towards his goal.
Ballade Of Unfortunate Mammals
© Dorothy Parker
Prince, a precept I'd leave for you,
Coined in Eden, existing yet:
Skirt the parlor, and shun the zoo-
Women and elephants never forget.
Violets
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
A GUSTY wind o'ersweeps the garden close,
And, where the jonquil, with the white-rod glows,
Riots like some rude hoyden uncontrolled.
But here, where sunshine and coy shadows meet,
Out gleam the tender eyes of violets sweet,
Touched by the vapory noontide's fleeting gold.
Sonnet XXXIII. Life And Death. 5.
© Christopher Pearse Cranch
YET in all facts of sense life stands revealed;
And from a thousand symbols hope may take
Its charter to escape the Stygian lake,
And find existence in an ampler field.
Are You Content?
© William Butler Yeats
I CALL on those that call me son,
Grandson, or great-grandson,
Z---------'s dream
© Anne Brontë
Unwonted weakness o'er me crept;
I sighed - nay, weaker still - I wept!
Wept, like a woman o'er the deed
I had been proud to do: -
As I had made his bosom bleed;
My own was bleeding too.
The Fever-Dream
© Caroline Norton
IT was a fever-dream; I lay
Awake, as in the broad bright day,
But faint and worn I drew my breath
Like those who wait for coming death;
