Famous Sepulchre Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sepulchre poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sepulchre poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sepulchre poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Denise Levertov
Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on the...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Un bouffon manquait à cette fête.")
{LES BURGRAVES, Part II.}
The EMPEROR FREDERICK BARBAROSSA, believed to be dead, appearing
as a beggar among the Rhenish nobility at a castle, suddenly reveals
himself.
HATTO. This goodly masque but lacked a fool!
First gypsy; next a beggar;—good! Thy name?
BARBAROSSA. Frederick...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
I wandered through Scoglietto's far retreat,
The oranges on each o'erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
Laughed i' the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
Outside the...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
Young palmer sun, that to these shining sands
Pourest thy pilgrim's tale, discoursing still
Thy silver passages of sacred lands,
With news of Sepulchre and Dolorous Hill,
Canst thou be he that, yester-sunset warm,
Purple with Paynim rage and wrack desire,
Dashed ravening out of a dusty lair of Storm,
Harried the west, and set the world on fire?
Hast thou perchance repented, Saracen Sun?
Wilt warm the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As far from pity, as complaint --
As cool to speech -- as stone --
As numb to Revelation
As if my Trade were Bone --
As far from time -- as History --
As near yourself -- Today --
As Children, to the Rainbow's scarf --
Or Sunset's Yellow play
To eyelids in the Sepulchre --
How dumb the Dancer lies --
While Color's Revelations break --
And blaze...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
He parts Himself -- like Leaves --
And then -- He closes up --
Then stands upon the Bonnet
Of Any Buttercup --
And then He runs against
And oversets a Rose --
And then does Nothing --
Then away upon a Jib -- He goes --
And dangles like a Mote
Suspended in the Noon --
Uncertain -- to return Below --
Or settle in the Moon --
What come...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile
And eloquence of beauty and she glides 5
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
If anybody's friend be dead
It's sharpest of the theme
The thinking how they walked alive --
At such and such a time --
Their costume, of a Sunday,
Some manner of the Hair --
A prank nobody knew but them
Lost, in the Sepulchre --
How warm, they were, on such a day,
You almost feel the date --
So short way off it seems --
And now --...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Dérision! que cet amour boiteux.")
{HERNANI, Act III.}
O mockery! that this halting love
That fills the heart so full of flame and transport,
Forgets the body while it fires the soul!
If but a youthful shepherd cross my path,
He singing on the way—I sadly musing,
He in his fields,...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How baseless is the mightiest earthly pride,
The diamond is but charcoal purified,
The lordliest pearl that decks a monarch’s breast
Is but an insect’s sepulchre at best....Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
O blessed body! Whither are thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
Receive thee?
Sure there is room within our hearts' good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
They leave thee.
But that which shows them large,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.
I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;
Further...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times --
When Dimness -- looks the Oddity --
Distinctness -- easy -- seems --
The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms --
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes --
In just the Jacket that he wore --
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we -- old mornings, Children -- played --
Divided -- by...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The warm sun is falling, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth is her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling,...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The gyres! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;
Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.
What matter though numb...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!
Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
For well the funeral song
Befits this solemn hour.
But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
This consecrated day,
To Mirth and Indolence.
Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
The Drunkards in the street are calling one another,
Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay, —
Publicans and wantons —
Calling, laughing, calling,
While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away.
Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory,
This comforter, this fitful wind divine?
I the cautious Pharisee, the scribe, the whited sepulchre...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is
shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that
thunder
Abreast and ahead.
At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Prior
Releas'd from the noise of the butcher and baker
Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her,
And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker,
From chiding the footmen and watching the lasses,
From Nell that burn'd milk, and Tom that broke glasses
(Sad mischiefs thro' which a good housekeeper passes!)
From some real care...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being¡ª
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!¡ªO thou 5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wing¨¨d seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,...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
Edgar Allan Poe
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
WHAT domination of what darkness dies this hour,
And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal power
O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear?
Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear
O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare.
The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair
Than these blue flickering glades, where childhood in its glee
Re-echoes with fresh voice the heaven-lit...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
Idmen gar toi panth, hos eni troie
Caught in...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Campbell
1 On Linden, when the sun was low,
2 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
3 And dark as winter was the flow
4 Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
5 But Linden saw another sight
6 When the drum beat at dead of night,
7 Commanding fires of death to light
8 The darkness of her scenery.
9 By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
10 Each horseman drew his...Read more of this...
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