Famous Dead(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dead(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dead(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dead(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Marvell, Andrew
...That Providence which had so long the care
Of Cromwell's head, and numbred ev'ry hair,
Now in its self (the Glass where all appears)
Had seen the period of his golden Years:
And thenceforth onely did attend to trace,
What death might least so sair a Life deface.
The People, which what most they fear esteem,
Death when more horrid so more noble deem;
An...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...CANZONE I. Nel dolce tempo della prima etade. HIS SUFFERINGS SINCE HE BECAME THE SLAVE OF LOVE. In the sweet season when my life was new,Which saw the birth, and still the being seesOf t...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes
they slid like wonder, women tall & small,
of every shape & size,
in many languages to lisp 'We do'
to Henry almost waking. What is the night at all,
his closed eyes beckon you.
In the Marriage of the Dead, a new routine,
he gasped his crowded vows past lids shut tight
and a-many rings fumbled on.
His c...Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...And what is life?—a pleasure and a pain,
A vision of the sun—a day of rain.
And what is love?—a dream, a chain of gold
That turns to iron bands when love is cold.
What matters they?—the visions of our youth,
Through years of sorrow we must pass to truth.
A woman's life is full of longing days,
Her heart is not content to live on praise;
She must hav...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again,
this
soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.
TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just me...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear the solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek
is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands implo...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring,...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...That odd old man is dead a year --
We miss his stated Hat.
'Twas such an evening bright and stiff
His faded lamp went out.
Who miss his antiquated Wick --
Are any hoar for him?
Waits any indurated mate
His wrinkled coming Home?
Oh Life, begun in fluent Blood
And consummated dull!
Achievement contemplating thee --
Feels transitive and cool....Read more of this...
by
Brooke, Rupert
...He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thin...Read more of this...
by
Po, Li
...The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green ...Read more of this...
by
Celan, Paul
...In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.
Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.Read more of this...
by
Gluck, Louise
...In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.
Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.Read more of this...
by
Clark, Badger
...My tired hawse nickers for his own home bars;
A hoof clicks out a spark.
The dim creek flickers to the lonesome stars;
The trail twists down the dark.
The ridge pines whimper to the pines below.
The wind is blowin' and I want you so.
The birch has yellowed since I saw you last,
The Fall haze blued the creeks,
The big pine b...Read more of this...
by
Hall, Donald
...when my father had been dead a week
I woke with his voice in my ear
I sat up in bed
and held my breath
and stared at the pale closed door
white apples and the taste of stone
if he called again
I would put on my coat and galoshes...Read more of this...
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