Famous Annihilate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke
The First Elegy


Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me 
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel...Read more of this...

John Brown

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...

Indeed indeed I cannot tell

by Henry David Thoreau
 Indeed, indeed, I cannot tell,
Though I ponder on it well,
Which were easier to state,
All my love or all my hate.
Surely, surely, thou wilt trust me
When I say thou dost disgust me.
O, I hate thee with a hate
That would fain annihilate;
Yet sometimes against my will,
My dear friend, I love thee still.
It were treason to our love,
And a sin to God...Read more of this...

Prometheus

by George (Lord) Byron
 Titan! to whose immortal eyes 
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so...Read more of this...

Because that you are going

by Emily Dickinson
 Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track --

Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality --

Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate

Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live --

The "Life that is" will then have been
A thing...Read more of this...

To lose ones faith -- surpass

by Emily Dickinson
 To lose one's faith -- surpass
The loss of an Estate --
Because Estates can be
Replenished -- faith cannot --

Inherited with Life --
Belief -- but once -- can be --
Annihilate a single clause --
And Being's -- Beggary --...Read more of this...

Lady Lazarus

by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it_____
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on...Read more of this...

Happy Dust

by Aleister Crowley
 For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter,...Read more of this...

Boadicea

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. 

`They that scorn...Read more of this...

I never would have come, had I been asked,

by Omar Khayyam
I never would have come, had I been asked,
I would as lief not go, if I were asked,
And, to be short, I would annihilate
All coming, being, going, were I asked!...Read more of this...

The Battle of Atbara

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye Sons of Great Britain, pray list to me,
And I'll tell ye of a great victory.
Where the British defeated the Dervishes, without delay,
At the Battle of Atbara, without dismay. 

The attack took place, 'twas on the 8th of April, in the early morning dawn,
And the British behaved manfully to a man;
And Mahmud's front was raked fearfully, before the assault...Read more of this...

Late Summer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 (ALCAICS)


Confused, he found her lavishing feminine 
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; 
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors 
Be as they were, without end, her playthings? 

And why were dead years hungrily telling her 
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? 
If now she knew, there might be kindness 
Clamoring yet where a...Read more of this...

To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus

by Sarojini Naidu
 LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne, 
With praying eyes and hands elate, 
What mystic rapture dost thou own, 
Immutable and ultimate? 
What peace, unravished of our ken, 
Annihilate from the world of men? 

The wind of change for ever blows 
Across the tumult of our way, 
To-morrow's unborn griefs depose 
The sorrows of our yesterday. 
Dream yields to dream, strife...Read more of this...

To John Hamilton Reynolds

by John Keats
 O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
So could we live long life in little space,
So time itself would be annihilate,
So a day's journey in oblivious haze
To serve ourjoys would lengthen and dilate.
O to arrive each...Read more of this...

The Lay of the Motor-Car

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We're away! and the wind whistles shrewd 
In our whiskers and teeth; 
And the granite-like grey of the road 
Seems to slide underneath. 
As an eagle might sweep through the sky, 
So we sweep through the land; 
And the pallid pedestrians fly 
When they hear us at hand. 
We outpace, we outlast, we outstrip! 
Not the fast-fleeing hare, 
Nor...Read more of this...

Broken Love

by William Blake
 MY Spectre around me night and day 
Like a wild beast guards my way; 
My Emanation far within 
Weeps incessantly for my sin. 

‘A fathomless and boundless deep, 
There we wander, there we weep; 
On the hungry craving wind 
My Spectre follows thee behind. 

‘He scents thy footsteps in the snow 
Wheresoever thou dost go, 
Thro’ the wintry hail...Read more of this...

Nero's Incendiary Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("Amis! ennui nous tue.") 
 
 {Bk. IV. xv., March, 1825.} 


 Aweary unto death, my friends, a mood by wise abhorred, 
 Come to the novel feast I spread, thrice-consul, Nero, lord, 
 The Caesar, master of the world, and eke of harmony, 
 Who plays the harp of many strings, a chief of minstrelsy. 
 
 My...Read more of this...

The Voice of Age

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 She'd look upon us, if she could, 
As hard as Rhadamanthus would; 
Yet one may see,—who sees her face, 
Her crown of silver and of lace, 
Her mystical serene address
Of age alloyed with loveliness,— 
That she would not annihilate 
The frailest of things animate. 

She has opinions of our ways, 
And if we’re not all mad, she says,—
If our...Read more of this...

Prelude to an Evening

by John Crowe Ransom
 Do not enforce the tired wolf
Dragging his infected wound homeward
To sit tonight with the warm children
Naming the pretty kings of France.

The images of the invaded mind
Being as the monsters in the dreams
Of your most brief enchanted headful,
Suppose a miracle of confusion:

That dreamed and undreamt become each other
And mix the night and day of your mind;
And it does not matter...Read more of this...

My Centenarian

by Robert William Service
 A hundred years is a lot of living
I've often thought. and I'll know, maybe,
Some day if the gods are good in giving,
And grant me to turn the century.
Yet in all my eighty years of being
I've never known but one ancient man
Who actively feeling, hearing, seeing,
Survived t beyond the hundred span.

Thinking? No, I don't guess he pondered;
He had the brains...Read more of this...

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