Death poems
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The Final Reckoning
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Twas a wild and stormy sunset, changing tints of lurid red
Flooded mountain top and valley and the low clouds overhead;
And the rays streamed through the windows of a building stately, high,
Whose wealthy, high-born master had lain him down to die.
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Elegy I
© Henry James Pye
O Happiness! thou wish of every mind,
Whose form, more subtle than the fleeting air,
My Boating Song
© Horace Smith
Hurrah, boys, or losing or winning,
Feel your stretchers and make the blades bend;
Hard on to it, catch the beginning,
And pull it clean through to the end.
Translation Of The Epitaph On Virgil And Tibullus By Domitius Marsus
© George Gordon Byron
He who sublime in epic numbers roll'd,
And he who struck the softer lyre of love,
By Death's unequal hand alike controll'd,
Fit comrades in Elysian regions move!
The Cities Of The Plain
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
A Town
© Jane Taylor
A BUSY town mid Britain's isle,
Behold in fancy's eye ;
With tower, and spire, and civic pile,
Beneath a summer sky :
Splendidis longum valedico Nugis
© Sir Philip Sidney
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Unrecorded
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
Ere over him too darkly lay
The prophet shadow of Calvary,
I think he talked in very truth
With the innocent gayety of youth,
Laughing upon some festal day,
Gently, with sinless boyhood's glee.
The Passing of the Elder Bards
© William Wordsworth
THE MIGHTY Minstrel breathes no longer,
Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow
Has closed the Shepherd-poets eyes:
The Swan Song of Parson Avery
© John Greenleaf Whittier
When the reaper's task was ended, and the summer wearing late,
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with his wife and children eight,
Dropping down the river-harbor in the shallop "Watch and Wait."
Astrophel and Stella VII
© Sir Philip Sidney
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?Or did she else that sober hue devise,In object best to knit and strength our sight;Lest, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?Or would she her miraculous power show,That, whereas black seems beauty's contrary,She even in black doth make all beauties flow?Both so, and thus,--she, minding Love should bePlac'd ever there, gave him this mourning weedTo honour all their deaths who for her bleed
O Star Of France
© Walt Whitman
The brightness of thy hope and strength and fame,
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so long,
Beseems to-day a wreck, driven by the gale-a mastless hulk;
And 'mid its teeming, madden'd, half-drown'd crowds,
Nor helm nor helmsman.
Sonnet VII: When Nature
© Sir Philip Sidney
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In color black why wrapp'd she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?
Sonnet VI: Some Lovers Speak
© Sir Philip Sidney
Some lovers speak when they their Muses entertain,
Of hopes begot by fear, of wot not what desires:
Of force of heav'nly beams, infusing hellish pain:
Of living deaths, dear wounds, fair storms, and freezing fires.
Song
© Sir Philip Sidney
But who hath fancies pleased
With fruits of happy sight,
Let here his eyes be raised
On Nature's sweetest light!
Sonnet XX: Fly, Fly, My Friends
© Sir Philip Sidney
Fly, fly, my friends, I have my death wound; fly!
See there that boy, that murthering boy I say,
Who like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie,
Till bloody bullet get him wrongful prey.
Ring Out Your Bells
© Sir Philip Sidney
Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread;
For Love is dead--
All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
