Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing'
The rude wind is singing
The dirge of the music dead;
The cold worms are clinging
Where kisses were lately fed.
Poems on the topic: death
Poems on the topic “death” on Poets.by.
Fragment: 'I Faint, I Perish With My Love!'
I faint, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose pale
Under the evening's ever-changing glow:
I die like mist upon the gale,
And like a wave under the calm I fail.
Fragment: Life Rounded With Sleep
The babe is at peace within the womb;
The corpse is at rest within the tomb:
We begin in what we end.
Fragment on Keats
ON KEATS, WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED--
'Here lieth One whose name was writ on water.
But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,
Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,
Death, the immortalizing winter, flew
Athwart the stream,--and time's printless torrent grew
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name
Of Adonais!
The Dirge
Old winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night;--
If the land, and the air, and the sea,
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra!
She is still, she is cold
On the bridal couch,
One step to the white deathbed,
And one to the bier,
And one to the charnel--and one, oh where?
The dark arrow fled
Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon
What! alive and so bold, O Earth?
Art thou not overbold?
What! leapest thou forth as of old
In the light of thy morning mirth,
The last of the flock of the starry fold?
Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?
Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,
And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?
How! is not thy quick heart cold?
What spark is alive on thy hearth?
How! is not HIS death-knell knolled?
And livest THOU still, Mother Earth?
Thou wert warming thy fingers old
O'er the embers covered and cold
Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled--
What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?
304. Song—I Murder hate
I MURDER hate by flood or field,
Tho’ glory’s name may screen us;
In wars at home I’ll spend my blood—
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I’m better pleas’d to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.
I would not die like Socrates,
For all the fuss of Plato;
Nor would I with Leonidas,
Nor yet would I with Cato:
The zealots of the Church and State
Shall ne’er my mortal foes be;
But let me have bold Zimri’s fate,
Within the arms of Cozbi!
Dirge for the Year
Orphan Hours, the Year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry Hours, smile instead,
For the Year is but asleep.
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold Year to-day;
Solemn Hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the Year:--be calm and mild,
247. Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive
DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation! mark,
Who in widow-weeds appears,
Laden with unhonour’d years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse?
STROPHE View the wither’d Beldam’s face;
Can thy keen inspection trace
Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace?
Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows;
Pity’s flood there never rose,
See these hands ne’er stretched to save,
Hands that took, but never gave:
Keeper of Mammon’s iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest,
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest!
234. A Mother’s Lament for her Son’s Death
FATE gave the word, the arrow sped,
And pierc’d my darling’s heart;
And with him all the joys are fled
Life can to me impart.
By cruel hands the sapling drops,
In dust dishonour’d laid;
So fell the pride of all my hopes,
My age’s future shade.
The mother-linnet in the brake
Bewails her ravish’d young;
So I, for my lost darling’s sake,
Lament the live-day long.
Death, oft I’ve feared thy fatal blow.
Now, fond, I bare my breast;
O, do thou kindly lay me low
With him I love, at rest!
279. Epigram on Francis Grose the Antiquary
THE DEVIL got notice that Grose was a-dying
So whip! at the summons, old Satan came flying;
But when he approached where poor Francis lay moaning,
And saw each bed-post with its burthen a-groaning,
Astonish’d, confounded, cries Satan—“By G—,
I’ll want him, ere I take such a damnable load!”
352. The Song of Death
FAREWELL, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies,
Now gay with the broad setting sun;
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties,
Our race of existence is run!
Thou grim King of Terrors; thou Life’s gloomy foe!
Go, frighten the coward and slave;
Go, teach them to tremble, fell tyrant! but know
No terrors hast thou to the brave!
Thou strik’st the dull peasant—he sinks in the dark,
Nor saves e’en the wreck of a name;
Thou strik’st the young hero—a glorious mark;
He falls in the blaze of his fame!
In the field of proud honour—our swords in our hands,
Our King and our country to save;
While victory shines on Life’s last ebbing sands,—
O! who would not die with the brave!
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