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Death.
1.Death is here and death is there,Death is busy everywhere,All around, within, beneath,Above is death - and we are death.2.Death has set his mark and sealOn all we are and all we feel,On all we know and all we fear,...3.First our pleasures die - and thenOur hopes, and then our fears - and whenThese are dead, the debt is due,Dust claims dust - and we die too.4.All things that we love and cherish,Like ourselves must fade and perish;Such is our rude mortal lot -Love itself would, did they not.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Death, In Life.
("Ceux-ci partent.")[Bk. III. v., February, 1843.]We pass - these sleepBeneath the shade where deep-leaved boughsBend o'er the furrows the Great Reaper ploughs,And gentle summer winds in many sweepWhirl in eddying wavesThe dead leaves o'er the graves.And the living sigh:Forgotten ones, so soon your memories die.Ye never more may list the wild bird's song,Or mingle in the crowded city-throng.Ye must ever dwell in gloom,'Mid the silence of the tomb.And the dead reply:God giveth us His life. Ye die,Your barren lives are tilled with tears,For glory, ye are clad with fears.Oh, living ones! oh, earthly shades!We live; your beauty clouds and fades.
Victor-Marie Hugo
A Dialogue.
DEATH:For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod;I offer a calm habitation to thee, -Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair;Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,Dares dispute with grim Silence the empire of Death.I offer a calm habitation to thee, -Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?MORTAL:Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,...
Death
The winds and waters are in his command,Held as a courser in the rider's hand.He lets them loose, they triumph at his will:He checks their course and all is calm and still.Life's hopes waste all to nothingness awayAs showers at night wash out the steps of day.* * * * *The tyrant, in his lawless power deterred,Bows before death, tame as a broken sword.One dyeth in his strength and, torn from ease,Groans in death pangs like tempests in the trees.Another from the bitterness of clayFalls calm as storms drop on an autumn day,With noiseless speed as swift as summer lightDeath slays and keeps her weapons out of sight.The tyrants that do act the God in clayAnd for earth's glories throw the heavens away,Whose breath i...
John Clare
The Suicides Grave
This is the scene of a mans despair, and a souls releaseFrom the difficult traits of the flesh; so, it seeking peace,A shot rang out in the night; deaths doors were wide;And you stood alone, a stranger, and saw inside.Coward flesh, brave soul, which was it? One feared the world,The pity of men, or their scorn; yet carelessly hurledAll on the balance of Chance for a state unknown;Fled the laughter of men for the anger of God-alone.Perhaps when the hot blood streamed on the daisied sod,Poor soul, you were likened to Cain, and you fled from God;Men say you fought hard for your life, when the deed was done;But your body would rise no more neath this worlds sun.Id choose-should I do the act-such a night as this,When the sea throws up white ...
Dora Sigerson Shorter
Nor dread nor hope attendA dying animal;A man awaits his endDreading and hoping all;Many times he died,Many times rose again.A great man in his prideConfronting murderous menCasts derision uponSupersession of breath;He knows death to the bone --Man has created death.
William Butler Yeats
Death's Eloquence.
When I shall goInto the narrow home that leavesNo room for wringing of the hands and hair,And feel the pressing of the walls which bearThe heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,(As the weird earth rolls on),Then I shall knowWhat is the power of destiny. But still,Still while my life, however sad, be mine,I war with memory, striving to divinePhantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;For yet the tears of final, absolute illAnd ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.Even as the frail, instinctive weedTries, through unending shade, to reach at lastA shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,Fain to succeed,I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.
Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
1.They die - the dead return not - MiserySits near an open grave and calls them over,A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye -They are the names of kindred, friend and lover,Which he so feebly calls - they all are gone -Fond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,This most familiar scene, my pain -These tombs - alone remain.2.Misery, my sweetest friend - oh, weep no more!Thou wilt not be consoled - I wonder not!For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's doorWatch the calm sunset with them, and this spotWas even as bright and calm, but transitory,And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary;This most familiar scene, my pain -These tombs - alone remain.NOTE:_5 calls editions 1839; called 1824.
Fragment: Death In Life.
My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,And it is not life that makes me move.
Life And Death
"Death after life" shall we sigh as we say it, Sigh as if death were the end for us all, Pale at the thought, as in silence we weigh it, Yield our dull souls to it, bending in thrall? "Life after death" - look ahead, weakling spirit - Sure is the way to a world that is ours. Death is fruition, why then should we fear it? Death - the fruition of life's budding powers.
Helen Leah Reed
Death And The Dying.
[1]Death never taketh by surpriseThe well-prepared, to wit, the wise -They knowing of themselves the timeTo meditate the final change of clime.That time, alas! embraces allWhich into hours and minutes we divide;There is no part, however small,That from this tribute one can hide.The very moment, oft, which bidsThe heirs of empire see the lightIs that which shuts their fringèd lidsIn everlasting night.Defend yourself by rank and wealth,Plead beauty, virtue, youth, and health, -Unblushing Death will ravish all;The world itself shall pass beneath his pall.No truth is better known; but, truth to say,No truth is oftener thrown away.A man, well in his second century,Complain'd that Death had call'd him su...
Jean de La Fontaine
Why should man's high aspiring mindBurn in him with so proud a breath,When all his haughty views can findIn this world yields to death?The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,The rich, the poor, the great, and small,Are each but worm's anatomiesTo strew his quiet hall.Power may make many earthly gods,Where gold and bribery's guilt prevails,But death's unwelcome, honest oddsKick o'er the unequal scales.The flattered great may clamours raiseOf power, and their own weakness hide,But death shall find unlooked-for waysTo end the farce of pride,An arrow hurtled eer so high,From een a giant's sinewy strength,In Time's untraced eternityGoes but a pigmy length;Nay, whirring from the tortured string,With all its ...
In Mortem Meditare.
DYING THOUGHTS.As Life's receding sunset fades And night descends,I calmly watch the gathering shades,As darkness stealthily invades And daylight ends.Earth's span is drawing to its close, With every breath;My pain-racked brain no respite knows,Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose It feels in death.The curtain falls on Life's last scene, The end is neared;At last I face death's somber screen,The fleeting joys which intervene Have disappeared.And as a panoramic scroll The past unreels;The mocking past, beyond control,Though buried, as a parchment roll, Its tale reveals.I stand before the dread, unknown, Yet solemn fact;I see the seeds of foll...
Alfred Castner King
On Death.
THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST. - Ecclesiastes.The pale, the cold, and the moony smileWhich the meteor beam of a starless nightSheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,Is the flame of life so fickle and wanThat flits round our steps till their strength is gone.O man! hold thee on in courage of soulThrough the stormy shades of thy worldly way,And the billows of cloud that around thee rollShall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee freeTo the universe of destiny.This world is the nurse of all we know,This world is the mother of all we feel,And the coming of death is a fearful blowTo a brain unenco...
The Dead Child
All silent is the room,There is no stir of breath,Save mine, as in the gloomI sit alone with Death.Short life it had, the sweet,Small babe here lying dead,With tapers at its feetAnd tapers at its head.Dear little hands, too frailTheir grasp on life to hold;Dear little mouth so pale,So solemn, and so cold;Small feet that nevermoreAbout the house shall run;Thy little life is oer!Thy little journey done!Sweet infant, dead too soon,Thou shalt no more beholdThe face of sun or moon,Or starlight clear and cold;Nor know, where thou art gone,The mournfulness and mirthWe know who dwell uponThis sad, glad, mad, old earth.The foolish hopes and fondThat cheat us to th...
Victor James Daley
Intercession
Ave Caesar Imperator, moriturum te saluto.1O Death, a little more, and then the worm;A little longer, O Death, a little yet,Before the grave gape and the grave-worm fret;Before the sanguine-spotted hand infirmBe rottenness, and that foul brain, the germOf all ill things and thoughts, be stopped and set;A little while, O Death, ere he forget,A small space more of life, a little term;A little longer ere he and thou be met,Ere in that hand that fed thee to thy mindThe poison-cup of life be overset;A little respite of disastrous breath,Till the soul lift up her lost eyes, and findNor God nor help nor hope, but thee, O Death.2Shall a man die before his dying day,Death? and for him though the utter day...
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Death Is A Dialogue Between
Death is a dialogue betweenThe spirit and the dust."Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,I have another trust."Death doubts it, argues from the ground.The Spirit turns away,Just laying off, for evidence,An overcoat of clay.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Disenchantment Of Death.
Hush! She is dead! Tread gently as the lightFoots dim the weary room. Thou shalt behold.Look: - In death's ermine pomp of awful white,Pale passion of pulseless slumber virgin cold:Bold, beautiful youth proud as heroic Might -Death! and how death hath made it vastly old.Old earth she is now: energy of birthGlad wings hath fledged and tried them suddenly;The eyes that held have freed their narrow mirth;Their sparks of spirit, which made this to be,Shine fixed in rarer jewels not of earth,Far Fairylands beyond some silent sea.A sod is this whence what were once those eyesWill grow blue wild-flowers in what happy air;Some weed with flossy blossoms will surprise,Haply, what summer with her affluent hair;Blush roses bask those cheeks; and...
Madison Julius Cawein