Famous Life After Death Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Life After Death poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous life after death poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life after death poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Herbert
How soon doth man decay!
When clothes are taken from a chest of sweets
To swaddle infants, whose young breath
Scarce knows the way;
Those clouts are little winding-sheets,
Which do consign and send them unto Death.
When boyes go first to bed,
They step into their voluntarie graves;
Sleep binds them fast; onely their breath
Makes them not dead:
Successive nights, like rolling waves,
Convey them quickly who are...Read more of this...
by
Helen Hunt Jackson
Old as the world--no other things so old;
Nay, older than the world, else, how had sprung
Such lusty strength in them when earth was young?--
Stand valor and its passion hot and bold,
Insatiate of battle. How, else, told
Blind men, born blind, that red was fitting tongue
Mute, eloquent, to show how trumpets rung
When armies charged...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
LXXX. ? OF LIFE AND DEATH. The ports of death are sins ; of life, good deeds ; Through which our merit leads us to our meeds. How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray, And hath it, in his powers, to make his way ! This world death's region is, the other life's ; And here, it should...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an Old Person of Tartary,Who divided his jugular artery;But he screeched to his Wife, and she said, "Oh, my life!Your death will be felt by all Tartary!" ...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,
To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;
That thou wake not the wild one, all silently tread--
Let thy lip breathe no breath in the pathway of dread!
High over the marge of the horrible deep
Hangs and hovers a...Read more of this...
by
Marcin Malek
Poets
In literal meaning
Are not responsive
To normative rules of dying
Moreover
Just like the Saints
They do not fit into a
Written conventions
Of the existence
Of the survival
At all costs
At the cost of their own greatness
They rather resemble
Orphaned fortresses
Which has to be taken
Meter by meter - as in the past
With the severe blood loss
Or permanently straining
Among the yellow fields
Mossy towers with no vaults
But with the...Read more of this...
by
Delmira Agustini
Spanish –Eros: acaso no sentiste nuncaPiedad de las estatuas?Se dirían crisálidas de piedraDe yo no sé qué formidable razaEn una eterna espera inenarrable.Los cráteres dormidos de sus bocasDan la ceniza negra del Silencio,Mana de las columnas de sus hombrosLa mortaja copiosa de la CalmaY fluye de sus órbitas la noche;Victimas del Futuro o del Misterio,En capullos terribles y magníficosEsperan a la...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
GREAT are the myths—I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve—I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers,
warriors,
and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
I bowed my head in anguish sore
When Life made Death his bride;
“Soul, we are lost forever more!”
Unto my soul I cried.
“Nay, waste in wailing not thy breath,”
My soul replied to me,
“Behold! The child of Life and Death
Is Immortality!”...Read more of this...
by
Sir Thomas Wyatt
I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not--yet can I scape no wise--
Nor letteth me live...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
There trudges one to a merry-making
With sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.
To fetch the saving medicament
Is another bent,
On whom the rain comes down.
One slowly drives his herd to the stall
Ere ill befall,
On whom the rain comes down.
This bears his missives of life and death
With quickening breath,
On whom the rain comes...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Heavy and solemn,
A cloudy column,
Through the green plain they marching came!
Measure less spread, like a table dread,
For the wild grim dice of the iron game.
The looks are bent on the shaking ground,
And the heart beats loud with a knelling sound;
Swift by the breasts that must bear the brunt,
Gallops the major along the front--
"Halt!"
And fettered they stand at the stark...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I've seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o'er its wall to watch the dashing spray
As their old stations would be washed away
Crash came the ice against the jambs and then
A shudder jarred the arches—yet once more
It breasted raving waves and stood agen
To wait...Read more of this...
by
Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
>From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Life, and Death, and Giants --
Such as These -- are still --
Minor -- Apparatus -- Hopper of the Mill --
Beetle at the Candle --
Or a Fife's Fame --
Maintain -- by Accident that they proclaim --...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line
Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine,
Were centred; and to him with loyal awe
The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish'd with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore:
In life and death a chainless...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
and Tian the low speaking
And "we are unknown," said Kung,
"You will take up charioteering?
"Then you will become known,
"Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery?
"Or the practice of public speaking?"
And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the...Read more of this...
by
Katharine Tynan
St. Austin, going in thought
Along the sea-sands gray,
Into another world was caught,
And Carthage far away.
He saw the City of God
Hang in the saffron sky;
And this was holy ground he trod,
Where mortals come not nigh.
He saw pale spires aglow,
Houses of heavenly sheen;
All in a world of rose and snow,
A sea...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
THERE are some powerful odours that can pass
Out of the stoppard flagon; even glass
To them is porous. Oft when some old box
Brought from the East is opened and the locks
And hinges creak and cry; or in a press
In some deserted house, where the sharp stress
Of odours old and dusty fills the brain;
An...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
Not the great nor well-bespoke,
But the mere uncounted folk
Of whose life and death is none
Report or lamentation.
Lay that earth upon thy heart,
And thy sickness shall depart!
It shall sweeten and make whole
Fevered breath and festered soul.
It shall mightily...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
While thou canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods...Read more of this...
by
Ingeborg Bachmann
The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
An' pick'd the eacorns green, a-shed
In wrestlen storms from his broad head,
An' down below's the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an' hook,
An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream,...Read more of this...
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