Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1855/feb/23/supply-ministerial-explanations to the House of Commons (23 February 1855) opposing the Crimean War. <br class="br">1850s <br class="br">Context: The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.
“A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools
On Percy Bysshe Shelley, Byron
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 3.
Hebrew Melodies (1815)
Source: Selected Poems
“He who has rejected his demons badgers us to death with his angels”
Henri Michaux (1899–1984) painter, poet, writer
“All has been looted, betrayed, sold;
black death's wing flashed ahead.”
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet
"Looted" (1921), as translated by Dmitri Obolensky
Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law
Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 1, “The Law of Gravitation,” p. 18: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk&t=17m10s
“But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
"A Tribe to Eban C. Ingersoll" (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38812/38812-h/38812-h.htm <br class="br">Context: Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud — and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.
“Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
An American Prayer (1978)
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…
“Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
Context: What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud,
Serenely gazing at the violent abyss,
Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory, Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and
On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space,
Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight,
Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?
