Famous Dying Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dying poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dying poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dying poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Yes, the Year is growing old,
And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold,
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow;
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling,
It is a sound of woe,
A sound of woe!
Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses,
Singing, "Pray for this poor...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I've seen a Dying Eye
Run round and round a Room --
In search of Something -- as it seemed --
Then Cloudier become --
And then -- obscure with Fog --
And then -- be soldered down
Without disclosing what it be
'Twere blessed to have seen --...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
In silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage—
The kingdom of sleep.
And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
Oh, wonderful night.
When night doth her glories
Of starshine...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight,
But stay the time till we have bade good-night.
Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way
As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day.
Let us not then so rudely henceforth go
Till we have wept, kiss'd, sigh'd, shook hands, or so.
There's pain in parting, and a kind of hell
When...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Is Death so cunning now that all her blowe
Aymes at the heade? Doth now her wary Bowe
Make surer worke than heertofore? The steele
Slew warlike heroes onely in the heele.
New found out slights, when men themselves begin
To be theyr proper Fates by new found sinne.
Tis cowardize to make a wound so sure;
No Art in killing where no Art can cure.
Was...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Dying! Dying in the night!
Won't somebody bring the light
So I can see which way to go
Into the everlasting snow?
And "Jesus"! Where is Jesus gone?
They said that Jesus -- always came --
Perhaps he doesn't know the House --
This way, Jesus, Let him pass!
Somebody run to the great gate
And see if Dollie's coming! Wait!
I hear her feet upon the stair!
Death won't...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Promise This -- When You be Dying --
Some shall summon Me --
Mine belong Your latest Sighing --
Mine -- to Belt Your Eye --
Not with Coins -- though they be Minted
From an Emperor's Hand --
Be my lips -- the only Buckle
Your low Eyes -- demand --
Mine to stay -- when all have wandered --
To devise once more
If the Life be...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Oh! vous aurez trop dit.")
{Bk. III. xiv., April, 1843.}
Ah, you said too often to your angel
There are other angels in the sky—
There, where nothing changes, nothing suffers,
Sweet it were to enter in on high.
To that dome on marvellous pilasters,
To that tent roofed o'er...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Tis not that Dying hurts us so --
'Tis Living -- hurts us more --
But Dying -- is a different way --
A Kind behind the Door --
The Southern Custom -- of the Bird --
That ere the Frosts are due --
Accepts a better Latitude --
We -- are the Birds -- that stay.
The Shrivers round Farmers' doors --
For whose reluctant Crumb --
We...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Vital spark of heav’nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Dying need but little, Dear,
A Glass of Water's all,
A Flower's unobtrusive Face
To punctuate the Wall,
A Fan, perhaps, a Friend's Regret
And Certainty that one
No color in the Rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone....Read more of this...
by
Richard Hugo
for Hank and Nancy
Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellow
from his cough. These limp days, his anger,
legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,
lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.
Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roam
unattended in the meadow. The gold last leaves
of cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.
His geese grow fat without him. Same...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
in silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage--
The kingdom of sleep
And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
O wonderful night.
When night doth her glories
Of starshine...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Those -- dying then,
Knew where they went --
They went to God's Right Hand --
That Hand is amputated now
And God cannot be found --
The abdication of Belief
Makes the Behavior small --
Better an ignis fatuus
Than no illume at all --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Man knows where first he ships himself; but he
Never can tell where shall his landing be....Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Dying, you have left behind you the great sadness of the Eternal
in my life. You have painted my thought's horizon with the sunset
colours of your departure, leaving a track of tears across the
earth to love's heaven. Clasped in your dear arms, life and death
united in me in a marriage bond.
I think I can see you watching there in the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Dying at my music!
Bubble! Bubble!
Hold me till the Octave's run!
Quick! Burst the Windows!
Ritardando!
Phials left, and the Sun!...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
AS Mailie, an’ her lambs thegither,
Was ae day nibbling on the tether,
Upon her cloot she coost a hitch,
An’ owre she warsl’d in the ditch:
There, groaning, dying, she did lie,
When Hughoc he cam doytin by.
Wi’ glowrin een, and lifted han’s
Poor Hughoc like a statue stan’s;
He saw her days were near-hand ended,
But, wae’s my heart! he could na mend it!
He...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Muir
Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
Go out, go out beyond all doubt,
My father says, is the miracle.
You are so great, and I so small:
I am nothing, you are all:
Being nothing, I can take this way.
Oh I need neither rise nor fall,
For when I do not...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Not all die early, dying young --
Maturity of Fate
Is consummated equally
In Ages, or a Night --
A Hoary Boy, I've known to drop
Whole statured -- by the side
Of Junior of Fourscore -- 'twas Act
Not Period -- that died....Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
To die -- without the Dying
And live -- without the Life
This is the hardest Miracle
Propounded to Belief....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas comfort in her Dying Room
To hear the living Clock --
A short relief to have the wind
Walk boldly up and knock --
Diversion from the Dying Theme
To hear the children play --
But wrong the more
That these could live
And this of ours must die....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Wolfe demanded during dying
"Which obtain the Day"?
"General, the British" -- "Easy"
Answered Wolfe "to die"
Montcalm, his opposing Spirit
Rendered with a smile
"Sweet" said he "my own Surrender
Liberty's beguile"...Read more of this...
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