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Famous Asp Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilde, Oscar
...To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

Ay! though the gorged asp of passion feed
On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!...Read more of this...



by Southey, Robert
...security impart,
But he will apathize thy heart!

Ah no!
Fly Fly that fatal foe,
Virtue shall shrink from his torpedo grasp--
For not more fatal thro' the Wretches veins
Benumb'd in Death's cold pains
Creeps the chill poison of the deadly asp.

Serener joys my friend await
Maturer manhood's steady state.
The wild brook bursting from its source
Meanders on its early course,
Delighting there with winding way
Amid the vernal vale to stray,
Emerging thence more widely spr...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...! our mother visible!
Most blessed among nations and most sad,
For whose dear sake the young Calabrian fell
That day at Aspromonte and was glad
That in an age when God was bought and sold
One man could die for Liberty! but we, burnt out and cold,

See Honour smitten on the cheek and gyves
Bind the sweet feet of Mercy: Poverty
Creeps through our sunless lanes and with sharp knives
Cuts the warm throats of children stealthily,
And no word said:- O we are wretched men
Unworthy o...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...e !
Am I not ripe ?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou w...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...resented before the throne of grace, when he has trampled upon the idol in his prank. 

Let Benaiah praise with the Asp -- to conquer malice is nobler, than to slay the lion. 

Let Barzillai bless with the Snail -- a friend in need is as the balm of Gilead, or as the slime to the wounded bark. 

Let Joab with the Horse worship the Lord God of Hosts. 

Let Shemaiah bless God with the Caterpiller -- the minister of vengeance is the harbinger of mercy. 

Let ...Read more of this...



by Meredith, George
...ts, though Nature giveth all she can. 
It means, that woman is not, I opine, 
Her sex's antidote. Who seeks the asp 
For serpent's bites? 'Twould calm me could I clasp 
Shrieking Bacchantes with their souls of wine!...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...mote; and fixed as firm 
As Delos, floating once; the rest his look 
Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move; 
And with Asphaltick slime, broad as the gate, 
Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered beach 
They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on 
Over the foaming deep high-arched, a bridge 
Of length prodigious, joining to the wall 
Immoveable of this now fenceless world, 
Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad, 
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell. 
So, if...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...roic couplets concluding the million
Enacted tragedies on these blood-soaked boards,
And every private twinge a hissing asp
To petrify your eyes, and every village
Catastrophe a writhing length of cobra,
And the decline of empires the thick coil of a vast
Anacnoda.
 Imagine: the world
Fisted to a foetus head, ravined, seamed
With suffering from conception upwards, and there
You have it in hand. Grit in the eye or a sore
Thumb can make anyone wince, but the whole globe...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ing fals, while one might walk to Mile-
End Green. Why is it harder Sirs then Gordon,
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp?
Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek 
That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.
Thy age, like ours, O Soul of Sir John Cheek,
Hated not Learning wors then Toad or Asp;
When thou taught'st Cambridge, and King Edward Greek.

Note: Camb. Autograph supplies title, On the Detraction which
followed my writing certain Treatises.Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...SONNET CLXXV. Non dall' Ispano Ibero all' Indo Idaspe. HIS WOES ARE UNEXAMPLED.  From Spanish Ebro to Hydaspes old,Exploring ocean in its every nook,[Pg 191]From the Red Sea to the cold Caspian sho...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...rave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.


That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down t...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...rth
May be the occasion of some happier birth?
Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose?

II

Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth
In the white breast that trembled like a flower
At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour
By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth, 
Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe
This passion ineluctable, this power
Slave to its single end, to storm the tower
That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth.

O go...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...dire
Fear round my heart; a devil cold as ice
Breathes somewhere, for I feel his shudder take 
My veins: some deadlier asp or cockatrice
Slimes in my senses: I am half awake, 
Half automatic, as I move along
Wrapped in a cloud of blackness deep as hell,
Hearing afar some half-forgotten song
As of disruption; yet strange glories dwell
Above my head, as if a sword of light,
Rayed of the very Dawn, would strike within
The limitations of this deadly night
That folds me for the s...Read more of this...

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