Famous Life Or Death Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Life Or 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 or death poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life or death poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.
Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.
The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
He held no dream worth waking; so he said,
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.
But never death for him was dark or dread;
"Look forth," he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep
Vain memory's vision...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;
Yea, before any world had any light,
Or anything called God or man drew breath,
Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night
Moved, and brought forth the strength of life...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
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
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
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
All is in shadow below.
O beautiful, awful summer day,
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
Hearts made sad or gay!
On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXXI. Or che 'l ciel e la terra e 'l vento tace. NIGHT BRINGS PEACE TO ALL SAVE HIM. O'er earth and sky her lone watch silence keeps,And bird and beast in stirless slumber lie,Her starry chariot Night conducts on high,And in its bed the waveless ocean sleeps.I wake, muse,...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
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All that I ask, 'says Love, 'is just to stand
And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
Were still more sweet.
'All that I ask, ' says Love, 'all that I ask,
Is just thy hand clasp. Could I brush thy cheek
As...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account
Have settled with the year! --
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill,
And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light
Beguiled of immortality
Bequeaths him to the night.
Extinct be every hum
In deference to him
Whose garden wrestles with the...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXXVII. Più volte già dal bel sembiante umano. LOVE UNMANS HIS RESOLUTION. Oft as her angel face compassion wore,With tears whose eloquence scarce fails to move,With bland and courteous speech, I boldly stroveTo soothe my foe, and in meek guise implore:But soon her eyes inspire vain hopes no more;For...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
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
Algernon Charles Swinburne
HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.
Her great curled hair makes luminous
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin.
Shall she not have the hearts of us
To shatter, and the loves therein
To shred between her fingers thus?
Small ruined broken...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
John Clare
Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight ?
An absolute Self--an element ungrounded--
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
[Image]By encroach of darkness made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
BY the bivouac’s fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;—but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,
The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Crisis is a Hair
Toward which the forces creep
Past which forces retrograde
If it come in sleep
To suspend the Breath
Is the most we can
Ignorant is it Life or Death
Nicely balancing.
Let an instant push
Or an Atom press
Or a Circle hesitate
In Circumference
It -- may jolt the Hand
That adjusts the Hair
That secures Eternity
From presenting -- Here --...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
By the waters of Babylon we stood up and sang,
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
And with trumpets and thunderings and with morning song
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
In the beginning of time, there rose from the churning of God's
dream two women. One is the dancer at the court of paradise, the
desired of men, she who laughs and plucks the minds of the wise
from their cold meditations and of fools from their emptiness; and
scatters them like seeds with careless hands in the extravagant
winds of March, in the...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
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
Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Life Or Death poems.