Best Famous Cauldron Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Cauldron poems. This is a select list of the best famous Cauldron poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Cauldron poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of cauldron poems.

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• All Famous Cauldron Poems

Written by Andrew Barton Paterson | The Incantation Scene: Federal Political Arena A darkened cave. In the middle, a cauldron, boiling. Enter the three witches. 1ST WITCH: Thrice hath the Federal Jackass brayed. 2ND WITCH: Once the Bruce-Smith War-horse neighed. 3RD WITCH: So Georgie comes, 'tis time, 'tis time, Around the cauldron to chant our rhyme. 1ST WITCH: In the cauldron boil and bake Fillet of a tariff snake, Home-made flannels -- mostly cotton, Apples full of moths, and rotten, Lamb that perished in the drought, Starving stock from "furthest out", Drops of sweat from cultivators, Sweating to feed legislators. Grime from a white stoker's nob, Toiling at a ******'s job. Thus the great Australian Nation, Seeks political salvation. ALL: Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. 2ND WITCH: Heel-taps from the threepenny bars, Ash from Socialist cigars. Leathern tongue of boozer curst With the great Australian thirst, Two-up gambler keeping dark, Loafer sleeping in the park -- Drop them in to prove the sequel, All men are born free and equal. ALL: Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. 3RD WITCH:Lung of Labour agitator, Gall of Isaacs turning traitor; Spleen that Kingston has revealed, Sawdust stuffing out of Neild; Mix them up, and then combine With duplicity of Lyne, Alfred Deakin's gift of gab, Mix the gruel thick and slab. ALL: Double, double, toil and trouble, Heav'n help Australia in her trouble. HECATE: Oh, well done, I commend your pains, And everyone shall share i' the gains, And now about the cauldron sing, Enchanting all that you put in. Round about the cauldron go, In the People's rights we'll throw, Cool it with an Employer's blood, Then the charm stands firm and good, And thus with chaos in possession, Ring in the coming Fed'ral Session.

Written by Marge Piercy | Belly Good A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs but I've never seen wheat in a pile. Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek as a seal hauled out in the winter sun. I can see you as a great goose egg or a single juicy and fully ripe peach. You swell like a natural grassy hill. You are symmetrical as a Hopewell mound, with the eye of the navel wide open, the eye of my apple, the pear's port window. You're not supposed to exist at all this decade. You're to be flat as a kitchen table, so children with roller skates can speed over you like those sidewalks of my childhood that each gave a different roar under my wheels. You're required to show muscle striations like the ocean sand at ebb tide, but brick hard. Clothing is not designed for women of whose warm and flagrant bodies you are a swelling part. Yet I confess I meditate with my hands folded on you, a maternal cushion radiating comfort. Even when I have been at my thinnest, you have never abandoned me but curled round as a sleeping cat under my skirt. When I spread out, so do you. You like to eat, drink and bang on another belly. In anxiety I clutch you with nervous fingers as if you were a purse full of calm. In my grandmother standing in the fierce sun I see your cauldron that held eleven children shaped under the tent of her summer dress. I see you in my mother at thirty in her flapper gear, skinny legs and then you knocking on the tight dress. We hand you down like a prize feather quilt. You are our female shame and sunburst strength.

Written by Sylvia Plath | Ariel Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God's lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! ---The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, ******-eye Berries cast dark Hooks --- Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through air --- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel --- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies, Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning.

Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay | Bluebeard This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid, No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, But only what you see... Look yet again— An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless. Yet this alone out of my life I kept Unto myself, lest any know me quite; And you did so profane me when you crept Unto the threshold of this room to-night That I must never more behold your face. This now is yours. I seek another place.

Written by Matthew Arnold | Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, Through forest, up the mountain-side. The autumnal evening darkens round, The wind is up, and drives the rain; While, hark! far down, with strangled sound Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods, Over his boiling cauldron broods. Swift rush the spectral vapours white Past limestone scars with ragged pines, Showing--then blotting from our sight!-- Halt--through the cloud-drift something shines! High in the valley, wet and drear, The huts of Courrerie appear. Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher Mounts up the stony forest-way. At last the encircling trees retire; Look! through the showery twilight grey What pointed roofs are these advance?-- A palace of the Kings of France? Approach, for what we seek is here! Alight, and sparely sup, and wait For rest in this outbuilding near; Then cross the sward and reach that gate. Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come To the Carthusians' world-famed home. The silent courts, where night and day Into their stone-carved basins cold The splashing icy fountains play-- The humid corridors behold! Where, ghostlike in the deepening night, Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white. The chapel, where no organ's peal Invests the stern and naked prayer-- With penitential cries they kneel And wrestle; rising then, with bare And white uplifted faces stand, Passing the Host from hand to hand; Each takes, and then his visage wan Is buried in his cowl once more. The cells!--the suffering Son of Man Upon the wall--the knee-worn floor-- And where they sleep, that wooden bed, Which shall their coffin be, when dead! The library, where tract and tome Not to feed priestly pride are there, To hymn the conquering march of Rome, Nor yet to amuse, as ours are! They paint of souls the inner strife, Their drops of blood, their death in life. The garden, overgrown--yet mild, See, fragrant herbs are flowering there! Strong children of the Alpine wild Whose culture is the brethren's care; Of human tasks their only one, And cheerful works beneath the sun. Those halls, too, destined to contain Each its own pilgrim-host of old, From England, Germany, or Spain-- All are before me! I behold The House, the Brotherhood austere! --And what am I, that I am here? For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb? Forgive me, masters of the mind! At whose behest I long ago So much unlearnt, so much resign'd-- I come not here to be your foe! I seek these anchorites, not in ruth, To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak! But as, on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek In pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen Runic stone-- For both were faiths, and both are gone. Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. Their faith, my tears, the world deride-- I come to shed them at their side. Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, Ye solemn seats of holy pain! Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round, Till I possess my soul again; Till free my thoughts before me roll, Not chafed by hourly false control! For the world cries your faith is now But a dead time's exploded dream; My melancholy, sciolists say, Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme-- As if the world had ever had A faith, or sciolists been sad! Ah, if it be pass'd, take away, At least, the restlessness, the pain; Be man henceforth no more a prey To these out-dated stings again! The nobleness of grief is gone Ah, leave us not the fret alone! But--if you cannot give us ease-- Last of the race of them who grieve Here leave us to die out with these Last of the people who believe! Silent, while years engrave the brow; Silent--the best are silent now. Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb, Silent they are though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more. Our fathers water'd with their tears This sea of time whereon we sail, Their voices were in all men's ears We pass'd within their puissant hail. Still the same ocean round us raves, But we stand mute, and watch the waves. For what avail'd it, all the noise And outcry of the former men?-- Say, have their sons achieved more joys, Say, is life lighter now than then? The sufferers died, they left their pain-- The pangs which tortured them remain. What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart, Through Europe to the ?tolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own? What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze Carried thy lovely wail away, Musical through Italian trees Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay? Inheritors of thy distress Have restless hearts one throb the less? Or are we easier, to have read, O Obermann! the sad, stern page, Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head From the fierce tempest of thine age In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau, Or chalets near the Alpine snow? Ye slumber in your silent grave!-- The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we--we learned your lore too well! Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity. Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; But, while we wait, allow our tears! Allow them! We admire with awe The exulting thunder of your race; You give the universe your law, You triumph over time and space! Your pride of life, your tireless powers, We laud them, but they are not ours. We are like children rear'd in shade Beneath some old-world abbey wall, Forgotten in a forest-glade, And secret from the eyes of all. Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves, Their abbey, and its close of graves! But, where the road runs near the stream, Oft through the trees they catch a glance Of passing troops in the sun's beam-- Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance! Forth to the world those soldiers fare, To life, to cities, and to war! And through the wood, another way, Faint bugle-notes from far are borne, Where hunters gather, staghounds bay, Round some fair forest-lodge at morn. Gay dames are there, in sylvan green; Laughter and cries--those notes between! The banners flashing through the trees Make their blood dance and chain their eyes; That bugle-music on the breeze Arrests them with a charm'd surprise. Banner by turns and bugle woo: Ye shy recluses, follow too! O children, what do ye reply?-- 'Action and pleasure, will ye roam Through these secluded dells to cry And call us?--but too late ye come! Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent was taken long ago. 'Long since we pace this shadow'd nave; We watch those yellow tapers shine, Emblems of hope over the grave, In the high altar's depth divine; The organ carries to our ear Its accents of another sphere. 'Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer, How should we grow in other ground? How can we flower in foreign air? --Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease; And leave our desert to its peace!'

Written by Marina Tsvetaeva | The Demon In Me The demon in me's not dead, He's living, and well. In the body as in a hold, In the self as in a cell. The world is but walls. The exit's the axe. ("All the world's a stage," The actor prates.) And that hobbling buffoon Is no joker; In the body as in glory, In the body as in a toga. May you live forever! Cherish your life, Only poets in bone Are as in a lie. No, my eloquent brothers, We'll not have much fun, In the body as with Father's Dressing-gown on. We deserve something better. We wilt in the warm. In the body as in a byre. In the self as in a cauldron. Marvels that perish We don't collect. In the body as in a marsh, In the body as in a crypt. In the body as in furthest Exile. It blights. In the body as in a secret, In the body as in the vice Of an iron mask.

Written by Robert Graves | Love and Black Magic To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master’s gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—“Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!” quo’ she. “A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and hither, my lad! “Oh, here have I ever lain forlorn: My father died ere I was born, Mother was by a wizard wed, And oft I wish I had died instead— Often I wish I were long time dead. But, delving deep in my master’s lore, I have won of magic power such store I can turn a skull—oh, fiddlededee For all this curious craft!” quo’ she. “A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and hither, my lad! “To bring my brave boy unto my arms, What need have I of magic charms— ‘Abracadabra!’ and ‘Prestopuff’? I have but to wish, and that is enough. The charms are vain, one wish is enough. My master pledged my hand to a wizard; Transformed would I be to toad or lizard If e’er he guessed—but fiddlededee For a black-browed sorcerer, now,” quo’ she. “Let Cupid smile and the fiend must flee; Hey and hither, my lad.”

Written by Robert William Service | Grey Gull 'Twas on an iron, icy day I saw a pirate gull down-plane, And hover in a wistful way Nigh where my chickens picked their grain. An outcast gull, so grey and old, Withered of leg I watched it hop, By hunger goaded and by cold, To where each fowl full-filled its crop. They hospitably welcomed it, And at the food rack gave it place; It ate and ate, it preened a bit, By way way of gratitude and grace. It parleyed with my barnyard cock, Then resolutely winged away; But I am fey in feather talk, And this is what I heard it say: "I know that you and all your tribe Are shielded warm and fenced from fear; With food and comfort you would bribe My weary wings to linger here. An outlaw scarred and leather-lean, I battle with the winds of woe: You think me scaly and unclean... And yet my soul you do not know, "I storm the golden gates of day, I wing the silver lanes of night; I plumb the deep for finny prey, On wave I sleep in tempest height. Conceived was I by sea and sky, Their elements are fused in me; Of brigand birds that float and fly I am the freest of the free. "From peak to plain, from palm to pine I coast creation at my will; The chartless solitudes are mine, And no one seeks to do me ill. Until some cauldron of the sea Shall gulp for me and I shall cease... Oh I have lived enormously And I shall have prodigious peace." With yellow bill and beady eye This spoke, I think, that old grey gull; And as I watched it Southward fly Life seemed to be a-sudden dull. For I have often held this thought - If I could change this mouldy me, By heaven! I would choose the lot, Of all the gypsy birds, to be A gull that spans the spacious sea.

Written by Sylvia Plath | The Couriers The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf? It is not mine. Do not accept it. Acetic acid in a sealed tin? Do not accept it. It is not genuine. A ring of gold with the sun in it? Lies. Lies and a grief. Frost on a leaf, the immaculate Cauldron, talking and crackling All to itself on the top of each Of nine black Alps. A disturbance in mirrors, The sea shattering its grey one ---- Love, love, my season.

Written by Julie Hill Alger | Opening the Geode When the molten earth seethed in its whirling cauldron nobody watched the pot from a tall wooden stool set out in windy space beyond flame's reach; and when the spattering mush steamed, gurgled, boiled over, mounded up in smoking hills no giant mixing spoon smoothed out the lumps and bubbles as the pottage cooled to rock. No kitchen timer ticked precisely the eons required to fill the gritty pits slowly, drop by drop with layers of glassy salts, agate, opal, quartz; no listening ear inclined over the silicon mold to hear the chink of crystals rising geometrically facet upon facet in the airless dark. No hand lifted the stony lid to add light, the finishing touch, and no guest cried Ah! how well the recipe turned out - until this millennium, today, at my table. -Julie Alger