Death poems
/ page 452 of 560 /
To Baynard Taylor
© Sidney Lanier
To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;
The Wedding
© Sidney Lanier
O marriage-bells, your clamor tells
Two weddings in one breath.
SHE marries whom her love compels:
-- And I wed Goodman Death!
The Dying Hour
© Caroline Norton
OH! watch me; watch me still
Thro' the long night's dreary hours,
Uphold by thy firm will
Worn Nature's sinking powers!
II.
The Symphony
© Sidney Lanier
And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word."
The Vanity of All Worldly Things
© Anne Bradstreet
As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! Vanity, O vain all under sky;
The Stirrup-Cup
© Sidney Lanier
Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.
The Revenge Of Hamish
© Sidney Lanier
It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.
The Mocking-Bird
© Sidney Lanier
Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew,
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay
The Jacquerie A Fragment
© Sidney Lanier
Chapter I.Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright
Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night,
And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world,
Then back into the historic moat was hurled
Agamemnon's Warrior
© Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
A queer and fearful question is tight,
Oppresses my soul and tosses:
Can one be alive if Atreus has died -
Has died on a bed of roses.
The Hard Times In Elfland
© Sidney Lanier
Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,
The Dying Words Of Stonewall Jackson
© Sidney Lanier
"Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle."
"Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train."
"Let us cross the river and rest in the shade."
Holy Sonnet IV: Oh my black soul!
© John Donne
Oh my black soul! now art thou summoned
By sickness, death's herald, and champion;
The Crystal
© Sidney Lanier
Thee, Socrates,
Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive
Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies
That were but dandy upside-down, thy words
Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought.
Street Cries
© Sidney Lanier
Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
Sonnett - XXVII
© James Russell Lowell
I thought our love at full, but I did err;
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see
Strange Jokes
© Sidney Lanier
Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad
Grim squatting on a twilight road.
He catcheth all that Circumstance
Hath tossed to him.
He curseth all who upward glance
As lost to him.
Rose-Morals
© Sidney Lanier
Would that my songs might be
What roses make by day and night --
Distillments of my clod of misery
Into delight.
Owl Against Robin
© Sidney Lanier
Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.
"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,
