Famous Ague Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Ague poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ague poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ague poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Sappho - A Monodrama

by Robert Southey
 Argument.

To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.


SAPPHO

(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)

This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love...Read more of this...

Cain

by Victor Hugo
 ("Lorsque avec ses enfants Cain se fût enfui.") 
 
 {Bk. II} 


 Then, with his children, clothed in skins of brutes, 
 Dishevelled, livid, rushing through the storm, 
 Cain fled before Jehovah. As night fell 
 The dark man reached a mount in a great plain, 
 And his tired wife and his sons, out of breath,...Read more of this...

Ancient Music

by Ezra Pound
 Winter is icummen in, 
Lhude sing Goddamm. 
Raineth drop and staineth slop, 
And how the wind doth ramm! 
Sing: Goddamm. 

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, 
An ague hath my ham. 
Freezeth river, turneth liver, 
Damn you, sing: Goddamm. 

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm, 
So 'gainst the winter's balm. 

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. 
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm,...Read more of this...

S. I. W

by Wilfred Owen
 "I will to the King,
 And offer him consolation in his trouble,
 For that man there has set his teeth to die,
 And being one that hates obedience,
 Discipline, and orderliness of life,
 I cannot mourn him."
 W. B. Yeats.


Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad
He'd always show the Hun a brave man's face;
Father would sooner him dead than...Read more of this...

A Boston Ballad 1854

by Walt Whitman
 TO get betimes in Boston town, I rose this morning early; 
Here’s a good place at the corner—I must stand and see the show. 

Clear the way there, Jonathan! 
Way for the President’s marshal! Way for the government cannon! 
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons—and the apparitions copiously tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes—I hope...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XIX: Oh To Vex Me Contraries Meet In One

by John Donne
 Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I...Read more of this...

Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos

by George (Lord) Byron
 If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!

If, when the wintry tempest roared,
He sped to Hero, nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current poured,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think...Read more of this...

The Haunted House

by Thomas Hood
 Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The...Read more of this...

The Sinner

by George Herbert
 Lord, how I am all ague, when I seek
What I have treasur'd in my memory! 
Since, if my soul make even with the week, 
Each seventh note by right is due to thee.
I find there quarries of pil'd vanities, 
But shreds of holiness, that dare not venture
To show their face, since cross to thy decrees: 
There the circumference earth...Read more of this...

April Byeway

by Edmund Blunden
    Friend whom I never saw, yet dearest friend,
    Be with me travelling on the byeway now
    In April's month and mood: our steps shall bend
    By the shut smithy with its penthouse brow
    Armed round with many a felly and crackt plough:
  ...Read more of this...

Forest Of Europe

by Derek Walcott
 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you...Read more of this...

Whispers of Immortality

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He...Read more of this...

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