O Lady, he is dead and gone!

Lady, he's dead and gone!

And at his head a green grass turfe,

And at his heels a stone.

Thomas Percy (1728-1811): The Friar of Orders Gray.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,

And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Venus and Adonis. Line 1019.

Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:

Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,

Can touch him further.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 2.

On Fame's eternal camping-ground

Their silent tents are spread,

And Glory guards with solemn round

The bivouac of the dead.

Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867): The Bivouac of the Dead. (August, 1847.)

The heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule

Our spirits from their urns.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Manfred. Act iii. Sc. 4.

There studious let me sit,

And hold high converse with the mighty dead.

James Thomson (1700-1748): The Seasons. Winter. Line 431.

Ho! stand to your glasses steady!

'T is all we have left to prize.

A cup to the dead already,—

Hurrah for the next that dies!

Bartholomew Dowling: Revelry in India.

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): Break, break, break.

My days among the dead are passed;

Around me I behold,

Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

The mighty minds of old;

My never-failing friends are they,

With whom I converse day by day.

Robert Southey (1774-1843): Occasional Pieces. xxiii.

O fading honours of the dead!

O high ambition, lowly laid!

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto ii. Stanza 10.

'T is a fault to Heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

Dead, for a ducat, dead!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night ii. Line 24.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act i. Sc. 1.

The languages, especially the dead,

The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,

The arts, at least all such as could be said

To be the most remote from common use.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto i. Stanza 40.

Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!

What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!

What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,

Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea:

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes

Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,

As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 4.

Who waite for dead men shall goe long barefoote.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part i. Chap. xi.

The air is full of farewells to the dying,

And mournings for the dead.

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): Resignation.

When I am dead, no pageant train

Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,

Nor worthless pomp of homage vain

Stain it with hypocritic tear.

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.

Those that he loved so long and sees no more,

Loved and still loves,—not dead, but gone before,—

He gathers round him.

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855): Human Life.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,

And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

Mrs Barbauld (1743-1825): A Summer's Evening Meditation.

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act i. Sc. 1.

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, act in the living present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): A Psalm of Life.

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Resolution and Independence. Stanza 17.

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said;

Tie up the knocker! say I'm sick, I'm dead.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 1.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 1.

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping but never dead,

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): Sonnet iv.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,

Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse

When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live—such virtue hath my pen—

Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet lxxxi.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.

There is

One great society alone on earth:

The noble living and the noble dead.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Prelude. Book xi.

This earth that bears thee dead

Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act v. Sc. 4.

He thought it happier to be dead,

To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Beauty.

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

When I am dead let fire destroy the world;

It matters not to me, for I am safe.

Of Unknown Authorship: Frag. 430.

When I am dead, no pageant train

Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,

Nor worthless pomp of homage vain

Stain it with hypocritic tear.

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.

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.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: The Giaour. Line 68.

Oh would I were dead now,

Or up in my bed now,

To cover my head now,

And have a good cry!

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): A Table of Errata.