Famous Dead And Gone Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Dead And Gone 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 and gone poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dead and gone poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Autumn

...rful spells 
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. 
Alone, alone, 
Upon a mossy stone, 
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone 
With the last leaves for a love-rosary, 
Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily, 
Like a dim picture of the drownèd past 
In the hush'd mind's mysterious far away, 
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last 
Into that distance, gray upon the gray. 

O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded 
Under the languid downfall of her hair: 
...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas


Easter Week

...(In memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett)

("Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.")

William Butler Yeats.

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."
Then, Yeats, what gave that Easter dawn
A hue so radiantly brave?
There was a rain of blood that day,
Red rain in gay blue April weather.
It blessed the earth till it gave birth
To valour thick as blooms of heather.
Rom...Read more of this...
by Kilmer, Joyce

Endymion: Book I

...uld watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee
And frantic gape of lonely Niobe,
Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young
Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue
Lay a lost thing upon her paly lip,
And very, very deadliness did nip
Her motherly cheeks. Arous'd from this sad mood
By one, who at a distance loud halloo'd,
Uplifting his strong bow into the air,
Many might after brighter visions stare:
After the Argonauts, in blind amaze
Tossing about on Neptune's restless ways,
Unt...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Hate

...art
To spit upon my tomb. 

The other day I chanced to go
To where he lies alone.
'Tis easy to forgive a foe
When he is dead and gone. . . .
Poor devil! Now his day is done,
(Though bright it was and brave,)
Yet I am happy there is none
To dance upon my grave....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book

...et confest
Your people, Sir, are partial in the rest:
Foes to all living worth except your own,
And advocates for folly dead and gone.
Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;
It is the rust we value, not the gold.
Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote,
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote:
One likes no language but the Faery Queen ;
A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green:
And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,
He swears the Muses met him at the...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Lines On The Mermaid Tavern

...Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

 I have hear...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Longevity

...you may divide my den,
And make a mess, which (more or less) I clean up now and then.
But I prefer the doom to share of dead and gone compeers,
Than parrot be, and live to see ten times a hundred years....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Old Schooldays

...nose knocked sideways in his country's cause. 

Before the mind quaint visions rise and fall, 
Old jokes, old students dead and gone: 
And some that lead us still, while some toil on 
As rank and file, but "Grammar" children all. 

And he, the pilot, who has laid the course 
For all to steer by, honest, unafraid -- 
Truth is his beacon light, so he has made 
The name of the old School a living force....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue

...they
Expressed it not in words, but said,
Each in its heart, how every day
Will pass in happy work and play,
Now he is dead and gone away!

After the funeral all our kin
Assembled, and the will was read.
My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, 
To blast and torture. Those who live
Still fear the living, but a corse
Is merciless, and Power doth give
To such pale tyrants half the spoil
He rends from those who groan and toil,
Because th...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

September 1913

...shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for thi...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Stepping Backward

...Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make ...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Telling the Bees

...song she was singing ever since 
In my ear sounds on: -- 
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Death Of Marie Toro

...Despair.
She looked and looked, as to her breast she held some withered bloom;
"Too late! Too late! . . . they all are dead and gone," I heard her say.
And once again her weary eyes went round and round the room;
"Not one of all I used to know . . ." she turned to go away . . .
But quick I saw the old man start: "Ah no!" he cried, "not all.
Oh Marie Toro, queen of queens, don't you remember Paul?"

"Oh Marie, Marie Toro, in my garret next the sky,
Where many a day and night ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Earthly Paradise: The Lady of the Land

...could I say
For three years; till of grief and misery,
The lingering pest, the cruel enemy,
My father and his folk were dead and gone,
And in this castle I was left alone:


"And then the doom foreseen upon me fell,
For Queen Diana did my body change
Into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell,
And through the island nightly do I range,
Or in the green sea mate with monsters strange,
When in the middle of the moonlit night
The sleepy mariner I do affright.


"But all day long u...Read more of this...
by Morris, William

The Federal Bus Conductor and the Old Lady

...r which he's cheered and praised, 
For after all he took the track, the same my husband blazed! 

"My poor old husband, dead and gone with never a feast nor cheer; 
He's buried by the railway line! -- I wonder can he hear 
When by the very track he marked, and close to where he's laid, 
The cattle trains go roaring down the one-in-thirty grade. 
I wonder does he hear them pass, and can he see the sight 
When, whistling shrill, the fast express goes flaming by at night. 

"I t...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The First Surveyor

...r which he's cheered and praised, 
For after all he took the track, the same my husband blazed! 

"My poor old husband, dead and gone with never a feast nor cheer; 
He's buried by the railway line! -- I wonder can he hear 
When by the very track he marked, and close to where he's laid, 
The cattle trains go roaring down the one-in-thirty grade. 
I wonder does he hear them pass, and can he see the sight 
When, whistling shrill, the fast express goes flaming by at night. 

"I t...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Storm

...woman's heart my grieve
Itself to death; return it never will,
And like the sun, a shadow it may leave
Whose glory, dead and gone, will haunt you still."
Her eyes were filled with grief, her head bent low,
Upon the shore the waves crept to and fro,
Their moan was vaguely echoed in her breast
That vainly struggled with its great unrest.
Her heart was throbbing with the heavy pain
His words had caused; on each fair cheek a stain
Of crimson lay, as that which softly f...Read more of this...
by Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle

This Night

...This night, as I sit here alone,
And brood on what is dead and gone,
The owl that's in this Highgate Wood,
Has found his fellow in my mood;
To every star, as it doth rise -
Oh-o-o! Oh-o-o! he shivering cries.

And, looking at the Moon this night,
There's that dark shadow in her light.
Ah! Life and death, my fairest one,
Thy lover is a skeleton!
"And why is that?" I question - "why?"
Oh-o-o! Oh-o-o! the owl doth...Read more of this...
by Davies, William Henry

Upon a Fit of Sickness

...ste,
and then we go to th' tomb.
O bubble blast, how long can'st last?
that always art a breaking,
No sooner blown, but dead and gone,
ev'n as a word that's speaking.
O whilst I live this grace me give,
I doing good may be,
Then death's arrest I shall count best,
because it's Thy decree;
Bestow much cost there's nothing lost,
to make salvation sure,
O great's the gain, though got with pain,
comes by profession pure.
The race is run, the field is won,
the victory's mine I see;...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

Virginity

...My mother she had children five and four are dead and gone;
While I, least worthy to survive, persist in living on.
She looks at me, I must confess, sometimes with spite and bitterness.

My mother is three-score and ten, while I am forty-three,
You don't know how it hurts me when we go somewhere to tea,
And people tell her on the sly we look like sisters, she and I.

It hurts to see her secret glee; bu...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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