Death poems
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A Ripple Song
© Rudyard Kipling
Once red ripple came to land
In the golden sunset burning--
Lapped against a maiden's hand,
By the ford returning.
Winter-Solitude
© Archibald Lampman
I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming of night between,
And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.
Rimini
© Rudyard Kipling
Marching Song of a Roman Legion of the Later Empire Enlarged From "Puck of Pook's Hill"
When I left Rome for Lalage's sake,
By the Legions' Road to Rimini,
She vowed her heart was mine to take
The Rhyme of the Three Sealers
© Rudyard Kipling
Away by the lands of the Japanee
Where the paper lanterns glow
And the crews of all the shipping drink
In the house of Blood Street Joe,
The Quesion
© Rudyard Kipling
Brethren, how shall it fare with me
When the war is laid aside,
If it be proven that I am he
For whom a world has died?
Aubade
© Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
The Queen's Men
© Rudyard Kipling
They did not stay to ask
What prize should crown their task--
Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;
But passed into eclipse,
Her kiss upon their lips--
Even Belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for!
Funeral Libation (At Gautiers Tomb)
© Stéphane Mallarme
To you, gone emblem of our happiness!
Greetings, in pale libation and madness,
Prelude
© Rudyard Kipling
I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
In deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.
Possibilities
© Rudyard Kipling
Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
A fortnight fully to be missed,
Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.
The Outlaws
© Rudyard Kipling
Through learned and laborious years
They set themselves to find
Fresh terrors and undreamed-of fears
To heap upon mankind.
Confession
© Boris Pasternak
Life returned with a cause-the way
Some strange chance once interrupted it.
Just as on that distant summer day,
I am standing in the same old street.
One Viceroy Resigns
© Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
The Vision Of The Maid Of Orleans - The First Book
© Robert Southey
The plumeless bat with short shrill note flits by,
And the night-raven's scream came fitfully,
Borne on the hollow blast. Eager the Maid
Look'd to the shore, and now upon the bank
Leaps, joyful to escape, yet trembling still
In recollection.
An Old Song
© Rudyard Kipling
So long as 'neath the Kalka hills
The tonga-horn shall ring,
So long as down the Solon dip
The hard-held ponies swing,
The Triumph
© Siegfried Sassoon
When life was a cobweb of stars for Beauty who came
In the whisper of leaves or a bird's lone cry in the glen,
On dawn-lit hills and horizons girdled with flame
I sought for the triumph that troubles the faces of men.
The Native-Born
© Rudyard Kipling
And the children nine and ten (Stand up!),
And the life we live and know,
Let a fellow sing o' the little things he cares about,
If a fellow fights for the little things he cares about
With the weight of a two-fold blow!
