Quotes
Quotes about Death
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.
Death rides on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower.
Napoleon's troops fought in bright fields, where every helmet caught some gleams of glory; but the British soldier conquered under the cool shade of aristocracy. No honours awaited his daring, no despatch gave his name to the applauses of his countrymen; his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his death unnoticed.
Heaven gives its favourites--early death.
He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,--
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.
Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels
For the first time her first-born's breath!
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke!
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm!
Come when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet song, and dance, and wine!
And thou art terrible!--the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,
And all we know or dream or fear
Of agony are thine.
How wonderful is Death!
Death and his brother Sleep.
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath,
And stars to set; but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Death has shaken out the sands of thy glass.
One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death.
His death, which happened in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton tolled the bell.
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?
The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.
There is a reaper whose name is Death,
And with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler,
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
The surest pledge of a deathless name
Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
The long mysterious exodus of death.
Life is ever lord of Death
And Love can never lose its own.
For death and life, in ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world's shore,
And all our calm is in that balm--
Not lost but gone before.
From a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
All in the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
