Famous Ashes Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ashes poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ashes poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ashes poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,
There was her place. No matter what men said,
No matter what she was; living or dead,
Faithful or not,he loved her all the same.
The story was as old as human shame,
But ever since that lonely night she fled,
With books to blind him, he had only read
The story of the ashes and the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
"Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Ashes denote that Fire was --
Revere the Grayest Pile
For the Departed Creature's sake
That hovered there awhile --
Fire exists the first in light
And then consolidates
Only the Chemist can disclose
Into what Carbonates....Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Down, you mongrel, Death!
Back into your kennel!
I have stolen breath
In a stalk of fennel!
You shall scratch and you shall whine
Many a night, and you shall worry
Many a bone, before you bury
One sweet bone of mine!
When shall I be dead?
When my flesh is withered,
And above my head
Yellow pollen gathered
All the empty afternoon?
When sweet lovers pause and wonder
Whom am I that...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
No Khan’s extravagant estate.
No crown annoyed his honest head,
No fiddlers three were called or needed;
For two disastrous heirs instead
Made music more than ever three did.
Bereft of her with whom his life
Was harmony without a flaw,
He took...Read more of this...
by
Dimitris P Kraniotis
The fireplace
was eager
to put a fullstop,
in the sentence
where the road
of my dreams
stuck
upon the word of happiness
with sparkles
of wet logs
I collected
from the inside of me
that I dared
to turn to ashes....Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow near I did not look
I waked was with thund'ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of "Fire!" and "Fire!"
Let no man know is my desire.
I, starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my distress
And not to leave me succorless.
Then, coming...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
for J.A., December 3, 1975
Ashes that survive the aftermath of fire
Bury the past bravely, retaining
Only those messages that are least decipherable
And therefore most desirable
To be sung by the bright-eyed few remaining
Voices of our frankly foolish choir....Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off...Read more of this...
by
Lisa Zaran
Death is not the final word.
Without ears, my father still listens,
still shrugs his shoulders
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer.
I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob,
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him
what does he think about the war in Iraq
and how does he...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ASHES of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.
Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves,
In...Read more of this...
by
Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
IN Schnee der Alpen - so it runs
To those divine accords - and here
We dwell in Alpine snows and suns,
A motley crew, for half the year:
A motley crew, we dwell to taste -
A shivering band in hope and fear -
That sun upon the snowy waste,
That Alpine ether cold and clear.
Up from the laboured plains, and up
From low sea-levels, we...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
So we, who 've supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged—ah, well,
I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
That cannot stand so slight a test.
I fain would still have been your friend,
[Pg 41]And talked and laughed...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Quand longtemps a grondé la bouche du Vésuve.")
{I. vii.}
When huge Vesuvius in its torment long,
Threatening has growled its cavernous jaws among,
When its hot lava, like the bubbling wine,
Foaming doth all its monstrous edge incarnadine,
Then is alarm in Naples.
With dismay,
Wanton and wild...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
In a vision Liberty stood
By the childless charm-stricken bed
Where, barren of glory and good,
Knowing nought if she would not or would,
England slept with her dead.
Her face that the foam had whitened,
Her hands that were strong to strive,
Her eyes whence battle had lightened,
Over all was a drawn shroud tightened
To bind her asleep and alive.
She turned and laughed in her dream
With...Read more of this...
by
Lisa Zaran
It is later than late,
the simmered down darkness
of the jukebox hour.
The hour of drunkenness
and cigarettes.
The fools hour.
In my dreams,
I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette.
It's okay, I'm dreaming.
In dreams, smoking can't kill me.
It's warm outside.
I have every window open.
There's no such thing as danger,
only the dangerous face...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Edward Brown
TO live within a cave--it is most good;
But, if God make a day,
And some one come, and say,
'Lo! I have gather'd faggots in the wood!'
E'en let him stay,
And light a fire, and fan a temporal mood!
So sit till morning! when the light is grown
That he the path can...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Godolphin
CLORIS, it is not thy disdaine
Can ever cover with dispaire
Or in cold ashes hide that care
Which I have fedd with soe long paine,
I may perhaps myne eyes refraine 5
And fruiteless wordes noe more impart,
But yet still serve, still serve thee in my hearte.
What though I spend my haplesse dayes
...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
MY father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.
O had I lived when song was...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Grief is a Mouse --
And chooses Wainscot in the Breast
For His Shy House --
And baffles quest --
Grief is a Thief -- quick startled --
Pricks His Ear -- report to hear
Of that Vast Dark --
That swept His Being -- back --
Grief is a Juggler -- boldest at the Play --
Lest if He flinch -- the eye that way
Pounce on His...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
("Saint Proxed's ever was the Church for peace")
If down here I chance to die,
Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
To the Hills for old sake's sake,
Pack me very thoroughly
In the ice that used to slake
Pegs I drank when I was dry --
This observe for old sake's sake.
To the railway station hie,
There...Read more of this...
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