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Famous Winding Sheet Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...THE LOVELY lass o’ Inverness,
 Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;
For, e’en to morn she cries, alas!
 And aye the saut tear blin’s her e’e.


“Drumossie moor, Drumossie day—
 A waefu’ day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear,
 My father dear, and brethren three.


“Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay,
 Their graves are growin’ green to see;
And by ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...bler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
To which the...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. 


I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes 
On the way of the wind in the treetops,...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendou...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...BE those few hours, which I have yet to spend, 
Blest with the meditation of my end; 
Though they be few in number, I'm content; 
If otherwise, I stand indifferent, 
Nor makes it matter, Nestor's years to tell, 
If man lives long, and if he live not well. 
A multitude of days still heaped on 
Seldom brings order, but confusion. 
Might I make choice, long l...Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert
...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 battle blade,
11 A...Read more of this...
by Campbell, Thomas
...How many paltry foolish painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.
Virgins and matrons, re...Read more of this...
by Drayton, Michael
...
 ("Un jour, Kanut mourut.") 
 
 {Bk. X. i.} 


 King Canute died.{1} Encoffined he was laid. 
 Of Aarhuus came the Bishop prayers to say, 
 And sang a hymn upon his tomb, and held 
 That Canute was a saint—Canute the Great, 
 That from his memory breathed celestial perfume, 
 And that they saw him, they the priests, in glory, 
 Seated at...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread;
For Love is dead--
All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
And Faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Weep, neighbours, weep; do you not hear it said
That Love is...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...ft them all.

"I will return, Sir Abbot of Vere,
I will return as is meet,
And see my honoured brother dear
Laid in his winding sheet.

And I will stay, for to go were a sin,
For all a woman's tears,
And see the noble Gamelyn
Laid low with the De Veres."

The lady went with a sick heart out
Into the kind fresh air,
And told her Robin all about
The abbot whom he saw there:

And how his uncle must have been
Disturbed in his failing sense,
To leave his wealth to these artful men...Read more of this...
by Hunt, James Henry Leigh
...up on it.
But remember I don't make too much noise.
And frankly no one has to lug me out
and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.
I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie
eating my eight loaves in a row
and in a certain order as in
the laying on of hands
or the black sacrament.
It's a ceremony
but like any other sport
it's full of rules.
It's like a musical tennis match where
my mouth keeps catching the ball.
Then I lie on; my altar
elevated by the eight chemical kiss...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die--
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalan...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...(In memoriam
C. T. W.
Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obiit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire
July 7, 1896)

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...dful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.

"Weave, the warp! and weave, the woof!
The winding sheet of Edward's race:
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year and mark the night
When Severn shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death, thro' Berkley's roof that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king!
She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate,
From thee be bor...Read more of this...
by Gray, Thomas
...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 ancient flask is brought to light again, 
And for...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles
...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 ancient flask is brought to light again, 
And for...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles
...,
With its deserted portal!

The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding sheet the maggot slept
At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps has old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.

As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider’s tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas
...The skyline, staining the green gulf crimson
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun
That strikes through his stormy winding sheet.

Oh, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, or your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never a man has ridden
In your sleepy swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow'd, through straits forbidden,
Where no light wearies and no ...Read more of this...
by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter ke...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things