Death poems
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Harpalus. An Ancient English Pastoral
© Henry Howard
Phylida was a faire mayde,
As fresh as any flowre;
Whom Harpalus the herdman prayde
To be his paramour.
The Bell Buoy
© Rudyard Kipling
1896
They christened my brother of old--
And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
The Bees and the Flies
© Rudyard Kipling
The egregious rustic put to death
A bull by stopping of its breath,
Disposed the carcass in a shed
With fragrant herbs and branches spread,
And, having well performed the charm,
Sat down to wait the promised swarm.
My After-Dinner Cloud
© Henry Sambrooke Leigh
Some sombre evening, when I sit
And feed in solitude at home,
Perchance an ultra-bilious fit
Paints all the world an orange chrome.
The Ballad of the King's Mercy
© Rudyard Kipling
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills -- his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South -- his glory reacheth far,
And they tell the tale of his charity from Balkh to Kandahar.
The Ballad of the King's Jest
© Rudyard Kipling
When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
Lord I Owe Thee a Death
© Alice Meynell
Man pays the debt with new munificence,
Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old;
Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence,
But greatly and in gold.
A Ballad of Jakkko Hill
© Rudyard Kipling
One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
You climbed a year ago with me.
The Ballad of East and West
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
The Ballad of the "Bolivar"
© Rudyard Kipling
Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away --
We that took the Bolivar out across the Bay!
The Ballad Of The Battle Of Gibeon
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Sudden and still as a bolt shot right
Up on the city we went by night.
Never a bird of the air could say,
'This was the children of Israel's way.'
On A Portrait Of Dante By Giotto
© James Russell Lowell
Can this be thou who, lean and pale,
With such immitigable eye
To Jane: The Invitation
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
Best and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
The Vagaries of Fishes
© Judith Skillman
After they passed beneath us I could tell
more would be coming, beneath the sand,
under the bejeweled sky, under the first
layer of earth where water exists
My Love, Oh, She Is My Love
© Douglas Hyde
SHE casts a spell, oh, casts a spell!
Which haunts me more than I can tell.
Bourne
© Judith Skillman
When the Cherry
rustles above her head
she hardly realizes
why she leaves
her clothes on the rocks,
Field Thistle
© Judith Skillman
A raucous noise,
the dawn of great beauty
and he with his tripod
matting the grasses as he walked.
