Famous Dies Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dies poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dies poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dies poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Pinsky
A monosyllabic European called Sax
Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted
Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating
Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone
Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting
Infinitely upward through an upturned
Swollen golden bell rimmed
Like a gloxinia flowering
In Sax's Belgian imagination
And in the unfathomable matrix
Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven
Humming...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I sit in the twilight dim
At the close of an idle day,
And I list to the soft sweet hymn,
That rises far away,
And dies on the evening air.
Oh, all day long,
They sing their song,
Who toil in the valley there.
But never a song sing I,
Sitting with folded hands,
The hours pass me by -
Dropping their...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Beloved! your hair was golden
As tender tints of sunrise,
As corn beside the River
In softly varying hues.
I loved you for your slightness,
Your melancholy sweetness,
Your changeful eyes, that promised
...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs of liars.
Aliar looks ’em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man,...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
Because she wants to touch him,
she moves away.
Because she wants to talk to him,
she keeps silent.
Because she wants to kiss him,
she turns away
& kisses a man she does not want to kiss.
He watches
thinking she does not want him.
He listens
hearing her silence.
He turns away
thinking her distant
& kisses a girl he does not want to kiss.
They marry each other -
A...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Climbing the heights of Berkeley
Nightly I watch the West.
There lies new San Francisco,
Sea-maid in purple dressed,
Wearing a dancer's girdle
All to inflame desire:
Scorning her days of sackcloth,
Scorning her cleansing fire.
See, like a burning city
Sets now the red sun's dome.
See, mystic firebrands sparkle
There on each store and home.
See how...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
Beautiful spirit, come with me
Over the blue enchanted sea:
Morn and evening thou canst play
In my garden, where the breeze
Warbles through the fruity trees;
No shadow falls upon the day:
There thy mother's arms await
Her cherished infant at the gate.
Of Peris I the loveliest far—
...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep, or wish, the coming blow:
No maiden, with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or feign, decorous woe.
But silent let me sink to earth,
With no officious mourners near:
I would not mar...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
He yelled at me in Greek,
my God!-”It's not his language
and I'm no good at-”his Aramaic,
was-”I am a monoglot of English
(American version) and, say pieces from
a baker's dozen others: where's the bread?
but rising in the Second Gospel, pal:
The seed goes down, god dies,
a rising happens,
some crust, and then occurs an eating. He said so,
a Greek idea,
troublesome to imaginary Jews,
like a...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither doth stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth...Read more of this...
by
Raymond Carver
it gets run over by a van.
you find it at the side of the road
and bury it.
you feel bad about it.
you feel bad personally,
but you feel bad for your daughter
because it was her pet,
and she loved it so.
she used to croon to it
and let it sleep in her bed.
you...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring,
Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove,
Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love
Than terrors of red flame and thundering.
The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring:
A bird at evening flying to its nest
Tells me of One who had no place of rest:
I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing.
Come rather...Read more of this...
by
Sir John Suckling
When, dearest I but think of thee,
Methinks all things that lovely be
Are present, and my soul delighted:
For beauties that from worth arise
Are like the grace of deities,
Still present with us, tho’ unsighted.
Thus while I sit and sigh the day
With all his borrow’d lights away,
Till night’s black wings do overtake me,
Thinking on thee, thy beauties then,
As sudden lights do sleepy...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET II. Rotta è l' alta Colonna, e 'l verde Lauro. HE BEWAILS HIS DOUBLE LOSS IN THE DEATHS OF LAURA, AND OF COLONNA. Fall'n that proud Column, fall'n that Laurel tree,Whose shelter once relieved my wearied mind;I'm reft of what I ne'er again shall find,Though ransack'd every shore and every sea:Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
My friend must be a Bird --
Because it flies!
Mortal, my friend must be,
Because it dies!
Barbs has it, like a Bee!
Ah, curious friend!
Thou puzzlest me!...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(* The name of a game, known in English as "Jack's
alight.")
WE young people in the shade
Sat one sultry day;
Cupid came, and "Dies the Fox"
With us sought to play.
Each one of my friends then sat
By his mistress dear;
Cupid, blowing out the torch,
Said: "The taper's here!"
Then we quickly sent around
The expiring brand;
Each one put it hastily
ln his neighbour's hand.
Dorilis then...Read more of this...
by
Laura Riding Jackson
The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,
Though the mind is meek.
To be aware inwardly
of brain and beauty
Is dark too recognizable.
Thought looking out on thought
Makes one an eye:
Which it shall be, both decide.
One is with the mind alone,
The other is with other thoughts gone
To be seen from afar and not known.
When openly these inmost sights
Flash and speak fully,
Each head at...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Beggar Lad -- dies early --
It's Somewhat in the Cold --
And Somewhat in the Trudging feet --
And haply, in the World --
The Cruel -- smiling -- bowing World --
That took its Cambric Way --
Nor heard the timid cry for "Bread" --
"Sweet Lady -- Charity" --
Among Redeemed Children
If Trudging feet may stand
The Barefoot time forgotten -- so --
The Sleet...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadowlands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 5
Had their dwelling...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
Let us quarrel for these reasons:
You detest the salt which seasons
My speech . . . and all my lights go out
In the cold poison of your doubt.
I love Shelley . . . you love Keats
Something parts and something meets.
I love salads . . . you love chops;
Something goes and something stops.
Something...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round,
Must wrestle the right to live or die from the sons of the land she found;
For, as in the days when the buccaneer was abroad on the Spanish Main,
The national honour is one thing dear to the hearts of the Dons of...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Julia, when thy Herrick dies,
Close thou up thy poet's eyes;
And his last breath, let it be
Taken in by none but thee....Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A dewy flower, bathed in crimson light,
May touch the soul—a pure and beauteous sight;
A golden river flashing 'neath the sun,
May reach the spot where life's dark waters run;
Yet, when the sun is gone, the splendor dies,
With drooping head the tender flower lies.
And such is life; a golden mist of light,
A tangled web that glitters in the sun;
When shadows come, the...Read more of this...
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