Famous Mourning(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Mourning(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous mourning(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous mourning(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Keats
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
To give the glow-worm light?
Or, on...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Charle! ô mon fils!")
{March, 1871.}
Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me?
Must all fade, naught endure?
Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee,
But still for us obscure?
My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines!
Sweet mutual love we've known;
For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN wild war’s deadly blast was blawn,
And gentle peace returning,
Wi’ mony a sweet babe fatherless,
And mony a widow mourning;
I left the lines and tented field,
Where lang I’d been a lodger,
My humble knapsack a’ my wealth,
A poor and honest sodger.
A leal, light heart was in my breast,
My hand unstain’d wi’ plunder;
And for fair Scotia hame...Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In color black why wrapp'd she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight,
Lest if no veil those brave gleams did disguise,...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
The Saviour hides His face;
My spirit thirsts to prove
Renew'd supplies of pardoning grace,
And never-fading love.
The favor'd souls who know
What glories shine in Him,
Pant for His presence as the roe
Pants for the living stream.
What trifles tease me now!
They swarm like summer flies!
They cleave to everything I do,
And swim before my eyes.
How dull the Sabbath day,
Without the Sabbath's Lord!
How toilsome then...Read more of this...
by
Khosrovidukht
More astonishing to me
than the lyrics made for you
more amazing than the music composed
for your death
is the sound of the sobbing mourning
you, Lord Vahan, chosen of God
...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
At night, when Passion's ebbing tide
Left bare the Sands of Truth,
Yasmini, resting by my side,
Spoke softly of her youth.
"And one" she said "was tall and slim,
Two crimson rose leaves made his mouth,
And I...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bronte
'O cast away your sorrow; --
A while, at least, be gay!
If grief must come tomorrow,
At least, be glad today!
'How can you still be sighing
When smiles are everywhere?
The little birds are flying
So blithely through the air;
'The sunshine glows so brightly
O'er all the blooming earth;
And every heart beats lightly, --
Each face is full of mirth.'
'I always feel the deepest gloom
When...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend,
Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth
Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend
Mourning on earth.
The soul wherein her songs of death and birth,
Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend,
Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth.
Winds that make moan and triumph, skies that bend,
Thunders, and sound of...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare. 5
No flower upon the ground
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound. ...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
And their noble words and actions,
Made at length a league against them,
To molest them and destroy them.
Hiawatha, wise and wary,
Often said to Chibiabos,
"O my brother! do not leave me,
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!"
Chibiabos, young and heedless,
Laughing shook his coal-black...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
Paul Laurence Dunbar
You ask why I am sad to-day,
I have no cares, no griefs, you say?
Ah, yes, 't is true, I have no grief—
But—is there not the falling leaf?
The bare tree there is mourning left
With all of autumn's gray bereft;
It is not what has happened me,
Think of the bare, dismantled tree.
The birds go South along the sky,
I hear their lingering, long good-bye.
Who...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
LYke as the Culuer on the bared bough,
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate;
and in her songs sends many a wishfull vew,
for his returne that seemes to linger late.
So I alone now left disconsolate,
mourne to my selfe the absence of my loue:
and wandring here and there all desolate,
seek with my playnts to match that mournful doue
Ne ioy of...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
The air lay soffly on the green fur
of the almond, it was April
and I said, I begin again
but my hands burned in the damp earth
the light ran between my fingers
a black light like no other
this was not home, the linnet
settling on the oleander
the green pod swelling
the leaf slowly untwisting
the...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Our efforts are those of the unfortunate;
our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
Somewhat we succeed; somewhat
we regain confidence; and we start
to have courage and high hopes.
But something always happens and stops us.
Achilles in the trench before us
emerges and with loud cries terrifies us.--
Our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We believe that with resolution and daring
we will alter...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
You, that decipher out the Fate
Of humane Off-springs from the Skies,
What mean these Infants which of late
Spring from the Starrs of Chlora's Eyes?
Her Eyes confus'd, and doubled ore,
With Tears suspended ere they flow;
Seem bending upwards, to restore
To Heaven, whence it came, their Woe.
When, molding of the watry Sphears,
Slow drops unty themselves away;
As if she, with those precious Tears,
Would strow...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Alas my brother! the cry of the mourners of old
That cried on each other,
All crying aloud on the dead as the death-note rolled,
Alas my brother!
As flashes of dawn that mists from an east wind smother
With fold upon fold,
The past years gleam that linked us one with another.
Time sunders hearts as of brethren whose eyes behold
No more their mother:
But a...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
If your own satisfaction consists in casting grief into a
heart free from all care, you could, friend, make mourning
with your wisdom during your whole life. Go, be
unhappy, then, for you are a person strangely ignorant....Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Alas! Prince Henry of Battenberg is dead!
And, I hope, has gone to heaven, its streets to tread,
And to sing with God's saints above,
Where all is joy and peace and love.
'Twas in the year of 1896, and on the 5th of February,
Prince Henry was buried at Whippingham- a solemn sight to see.
As the funeral moved off, it was a...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
It is what recurs that we believe,
your face not at one moment looking
sideways up at me anguished or
elate, but the old words welling up by
gravity rearranged:
two weeks before you died in
pain worn out, after my usual casual sign-off
with All my love, your simple
solemn My love to you, Frank....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Yes, sad one of Sion, if closely resembling,
In shame and in sorrow, thy wither'd-up heart --
If drinking deep, deep, of the same "cup of trembling"
Could make us thy children, our parent thou art.
Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken,
And fall'n from her head is the once royal crown;
In her streets, in...Read more of this...
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