Famous Perishes Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Perishes poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous perishes poems. These examples illustrate what a famous perishes poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Suspense -- is Hostiler than Death --

by Emily Dickinson
 Suspense -- is Hostiler than Death --
Death -- tho'soever Broad,
Is Just Death, and cannot increase --
Suspense -- does not conclude --

But perishes -- to live anew --
But just anew to die --
Annihilation -- plated fresh
With Immortality --...Read more of this...

The Great Fires

by Jack Gilbert
 Love is apart from all things. 
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. 
It is not the body that finds love. 
What leads us there is the body. 
What is not love provokes it. 
What is not love quenches it. 
Love lays hold of everything we know. 
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness 
at...Read more of this...

Colloquy

by Weldon Kees
 In the broken light, in owl weather,
Webs on the lawn where the leaves end,
I took the thin moon and the sky for cover
To pick the cat's brains and descend
A weedy hill. I found him groveling
Inside the summerhouse, a shadowed bulge,
Furred and somnolent.—"I bring,"
I said, "besides this dish of liver, and an edge
Of cheese, the customary torments,
And the usual wonder...Read more of this...

The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman

by William Wordsworth
[When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his journey with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with Deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel if the situation of the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or...Read more of this...

Progress

by Matthew Arnold
 The Master stood upon the mount, and taught. 
He saw a fire in his disciples’ eyes; 
‘The old law’, they said, ‘is wholly come to naught! 
Behold the new world rise!’ 

‘Was it’, the Lord then said, ‘with scorn ye saw 
The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees? 
I say unto you, see ye keep that law 
More...Read more of this...

Birth-Dues

by Robinson Jeffers
 Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely 
 contemptible, the dangled
Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;
But limitary pain -- the rock under the tower 
 and the hewn coping
That takes thunder at the head of the turret-
Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish 
 carving himself
With knives will seem to have conquered the world.


The...Read more of this...

Heredity

by Thomas Hardy
 I am the family face; 
Flesh perishes, I live on, 
Projecting trait and trace 
Through time to times anon, 
And leaping from place to place 
Over oblivion. 

The years-heired feature that can 
In curve and voice and eye 
Despise the human span 
Of durance -- that is I; 
The eternal thing in man, 
That heeds no call to die...Read more of this...

And Yet The Books

by Czeslaw Milosz
 And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away...Read more of this...

The Future Life

by William Cullen Bryant
HOW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
The disembodied spirits of the dead  
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
And perishes among the dust we tread? 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 5 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not; 
Nor hear the voice I love nor read again...Read more of this...

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