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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And Yet The Books

...lame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights....Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw


Birth-Dues

...ll of 
 unreason; a torturer, but also
The only foundation and the only fountain.
Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes 
 of hunger; who hides in the grave
To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian
Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in 
 love with the God is washed clean
Of death desired and of death dreaded.


He has joy, but Joy is a trick in the air; and 
 pleasure, but pleasure is contemptible;
And peace; and is based on solider than pain.
He has broke...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

Colloquy

...and an edge
Of cheese, the customary torments,
And the usual wonder why we live
At all, and why the world thins out and perishes
As it has done for me, sieved
As I am toward silences. Where
Are we now? Do we know anything?"
—Now, on another night, his look endures.
"Give me the dish," he said.
I had his answer, wise as yours....Read more of this...
by Kees, Weldon

Heredity

...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...
by Hardy, Thomas

Lucretius

...y's ringlet-snake, and plucks
The mortal soul from out immortal hell
Shall stand. Ay, surely; then it fails at last
And perishes as I must, for O Thou
Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity,
Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise
Who fail to find thee, being as thou art
Without one pleasure and without one pain, 
Howbeit I know thou surely must be mine
Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus 
I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not
How roughly men may woo thee so they win -...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord


Old Pictures In Florence

...hall see them abolished.

XVII.

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven---
The better! What's come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven:
Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.
Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!
Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish,
Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) ``O!''
Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

XVIII.

Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,
But what and whe...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Progress

...e stream of life may roll, 
And no man may the other’s hurt behold; 
Yet each will have one anguish—his own soul 
Which perishes of cold.’ 

Here let that voice make end; then let a strain, 
From a far lonelier distance, like the wind 
Be heard, floating through heaven, and fill again 
These men’s profoundest mind: 

‘Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye 
For ever doth accompany mankind, 
Hath looked on no religion scornfully 
That men did ever find. 

‘Which has not ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

Suspense -- is Hostiler than Death --

...er 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...
by Dickinson, Emily

The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman

...He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishes alone in the Desart; unless he should have the good fortune to fall in with some other Tribes of Indians. It is unnecessary to add that the females are equally, or still more, exposed to the same fate. See that very interesting work, Hearne's Journey from Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean. In the high Northern Latititudes, as t...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Emigrants: Book II

...yet, in Death itself,
True to maternal tenderness, she tries
To save the unconscious infant from the storm
In which she perishes; and to protect
This last dear object of her ruin'd hopes
From prowling monsters, that from other hills,
More inaccessible, and wilder wastes,
Lur'd by the scent of slaughter, follow fierce
Contending hosts, and to polluted fields
Add dire increase of horrors--But alas!
The Mother and the Infant perish both!--
The feudal Chief, whose Gothic battleme...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Future Life

...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 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? 
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given¡ª 10 
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen

The Great Fires

...many kinds 
that are not love. Passion is the paper 
and twigs that kindle the flames 
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes 
because it tries to be love. 
Love is eaten away by appetite. 
Love does not last, but it is different 
from the passions that do not last. 
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk 
in the sweet music of our particular heart....Read more of this...
by Gilbert, Jack

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