Death poems
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The Character Of A Happy Life
© Sir Henry Wotton
How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his highest skill;
Happiness of a Country Life
© James Thomson
Oh! knew he but his happiness, of men
The happiest he, who, far from public rage,
Alfred And Janet
© Robert Bloomfield
At thirteen she was all that Heaven could send,
My nurse, my faithful clerk, my lively friend;
Last at my pillow when I sunk to sleep,
First on my threshold soon as day could peep:
I heard her happy to her heart's desire,
With clanking pattens, and a roaring fire.
The Circling Hearths
© Roderic Quinn
MY Countrymen, though we are young as yet
With little history, nought to show
Griselda: A Society Novel In Verse - Chapter III
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
How long they sat thus silent who shall say?
Griselda knew not. Time was far away;
She wanted courage to prepare her heart
For that last bitterest word of all, ``We part.''
And he cared naught for time. His Heaven was there,
Nor needed thought, nor speech, nor even prayer.
Young Man by John Haines: American Life in Poetry #95 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Literature, and in this instance, poetry, holds a mirror to life; thus the great themes of life become the great themes of poems. Here the distinguished American poet, John Haines, addresses—and celebrates through the affirmation of poetry—our preoccupation with aging and mortality.
Invective Against Swans
© Wallace Stevens
The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.
The Washers of the Shroud
© James Russell Lowell
Along a riverside, I know not where,
I walked one night in mystery of dream;
A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair,
To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam
Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.
Tekel
© Edith Nesbit
WHEN on the West broke light from out the East,
Then from the splendour and the shame of Rome--
The Oldest Inhabitant
© Augusta Davies Webster
"AND when came I to this town?" did he say!
A question asked for the asking's sake,
William House and Family
© Julia A Moore
Come all kind friends, both far and near,
Come listen to me and you shall hear -
It's of a family and their fate,
All about them I will relate.
The Irish Emigrants Mother
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
"Oh! come, my mother, come away, across the sea-green water;
Oh! come with me, and come with him, the husband of thy daughter;
Oh! come with us, and come with them, the sister and the brother,
Who, prattling climb thy ag'ed knees, and call thy daughter-mother.
Ode To Naples
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
EPODE 1a.
I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
Edith: A Tale Of The Woods
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
"Thou'rt passing from the lake's green side,
And the hunter's hearth away;
For the time of flowers, for the summer's pride,
Daughter! thou canst not stay.
Winter the Season For the Exercise of Charity
© Eliza Cook
We know 'tis good that old Winter should come,
Roving awhile from his Lapland home;
'Tis fitting that we should hear the sound
Of his reindeer sledge on the slippery ground.
Wasp
© Zbigniew Herbert
When the honey, fruit and flowery tablecloth were whisked from the table in one sweep, it flew of with a start. Entangled in the suffocating smoke of the curtains, it buzzed for a long time. At last it reached the window. It beat its weakening body repeatedly against the cold, solid air of the pane. In the last flutter of its wings drowsed the faith that the bodys unrest can awaken a wind carrying us to longed-for worlds.
You who stood under the window of your beloved, who saw your happiness in a shop windowdo you know how to take away the sting of this death?
Vanity of Vanities
© Michael Wigglesworth
Vain, frail, short liv'd, and miserable Man,
Learn what thou art when thine estate is best:
A restless Wave o'th' troubled Ocean,
A Dream, a lifeless Picture finely drest:
The Call Of Liberty. May 1809
© Felicia Dorothea Hemans
YE nations of Europe! arising to war,
And scorning submission to tyranny's might
Oh! follow the track of my bright blazing car,
Diffusing a path-way of radiance afar,
Dispelling the shadows of night!
The Gift Of Life
© Edith Nesbit
Life is a night all dark and wild,
Yet still stars shine:
This moment is a star, my child -
Your star and mine.
