Poetry

Poetry is obtained from reading a poetry book. It has no known purpose. Characters who belong to the player group The Last Poets often recite poetry from the poetry book.

Known Poetry

"My eyes mist
And my ears desist,
And my nose colds
And my tongue folds,
And my cheeks crack
And my lips black
And my mouth grins
And my spit runs."
- Anonymous: How Death Comes

"I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while."
- A E Housman: When I Watch The Living Meet

"The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave."
- A E Housman: XXIII more poems

"For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man."
[- Algernon C Swinburne: Hymn To Proserpine]

"I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I lookt for life and saw it was a shade,
I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I am but made.
The glass is full, and now the glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done."
- Chidiock Tichborne: On The Eve Of His Execution

"And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;"
- Dylan Thomas: And Death Shall Have No Dominion

"Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality."
- Emily Dickinson: Death

"He heard the snow falling faintly through the universe
and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end,
upon all the living and the dead."
- James Joyce: The Dead

"Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me."
- John Donne: Holy Sonnets

"At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities."
- John Donne: Holy Sonnets

"What sudden fearful fate
Will prevent my shade wandering next year
From a return? Whistle and I will hear."
- Keith Douglas:

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn."
- Laurence Binyon: For The Fallen

"Do not stand at my grave and forever weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep."
- Melinda Sue Pacho: I Did Not Die

"Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover."
- Michael Drayton: Sonnet 61 idea

"Long since had the dead become untroubled in the light soil."
- Philip Larkin: Night-Music

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;"
- Rudyard Kipling: If

"If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:"
- Rudyard Kipling: If

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'"
- Rudyard Kipling: If

"The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

"They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

"The body of my brother's son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said nought to me."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

"'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom."
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 55

"When all the breathers of this world are dead
You still shall live."
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 81

"So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then."
- William Shakepeare: Sonnet 146

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river"
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

"A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many."
- T S Eliot: The Waste Land

"E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
- Thomas Gray: Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

"Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind."
- Wilfred Owen: Dulce Et Decorum Est

"They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead."
- William Johnson Cory: Heraclitus
"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."
- T S Eliot: The Hollow Men