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Best Famous Flaring Poems

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Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

Love Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.


Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

Hiawathas Childhood

 Downward through the evening twilight, 
In the days that are forgotten, 
In the unremembered ages, 
From the full moon fell Nokomis, 
Fell the beautiful Nokomis, 
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women, 
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, 
When her rival the rejected, 
Full of jealousy and hatred, 
Cut the leafy swing asunder, 
Cut in twain the twisted grape-vines, 
And Nokomis fell affrighted 
Downward through the evening twilight, 
On the Muskoday, the meadow, 
On the prairie full of blossoms. 
"See! a star falls!" said the people; 
"From the sky a star is falling!"
There among the ferns and mosses, 
There among the prairie lilies, 
On the Muskoday, the meadow, 
In the moonlight and the starlight, 
Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. 
And she called her name Wenonah, 
As the first-born of her daughters.
And the daughter of Nokomis 
Grew up like the prairie lilies, 
Grew a tall and slender maiden,
With the beauty of the moonlight, 
With the beauty of the starlight.
And Nokomis warned her often, 
Saying oft, and oft repeating, 
"Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis, 
Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis; 
Listen not to what he tells you; 
Lie not down upon the meadow, 
Stoop not down among the lilies,
Lest the West-Wind come and harm you!"
But she heeded not the warning, 
Heeded not those words of wisdom, 
And the West-Wind came at evening, 
Walking lightly o'er the prairie, 
Whispering to the leaves and blossoms, 
Bending low the flowers and grasses, 
Found the beautiful Wenonah, 
Lying there among the lilies, 
Wooed her with his words of sweetness, 
Wooed her with his soft caresses, 
Till she bore a son in sorrow, 
Bore a son of love and sorrow.
Thus was born my Hiawatha, 
Thus was born the child of wonder; 
But the daughter of Nokomis, 
Hiawatha's gentle mother,
In her anguish died deserted 
By the West-Wind, false and faithless, 
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.
For her daughter long and loudly 
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis; 
"Oh that I were dead!" she murmured, 
"Oh that I were dead, as thou art! 
No more work, and no more weeping, 
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"
By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
By the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 
Dark behind it rose the forest, 
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 
Rose the firs with cones upon them; 
Bright before it beat the water, 
Beat the clear and sunny water, 
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
There the wrinkled old Nokomis 
Nursed the little Hiawatha, 
Rocked him in his linden cradle, 
Bedded soft in moss and rushes, 
Safely bound with reindeer sinews; 
Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" 
Lulled him into slumber, singing, 
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet! 
Who is this, that lights the wigwam? 
With his great eyes lights the wigwam? 
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
Many things Nokomis taught him 
Of the stars that shine in heaven; 
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, 
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses; 
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, 
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs, 
Flaring far away to northward 
In the frosty nights of Winter; 
Showed the broad white road in heaven, 
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, 
Running straight across the heavens, 
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
At the door on summer evenings 
Sat the little Hiawatha; 
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, 
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder; 
'Minne-wawa!" said the Pine-trees, 
Mudway-aushka!" said the water.
Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, 
Flitting through the dusk of evening, 
With the twinkle of its candle 
Lighting up the brakes and bushes, 
And he sang the song of children, 
Sang the song Nokomis taught him: 
"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, 
Little, flitting, white-fire insect, 
Little, dancing, white-fire creature, 
Light me with your little candle, 
Ere upon my bed I lay me, 
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
Saw the moon rise from the water 
Rippling, rounding from the water, 
Saw the flecks and shadows on it, 
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" 
And the good Nokomis answered: 
"Once a warrior, very angry, 
Seized his grandmother, and threw her 
Up into the sky at midnight; 
Right against the moon he threw her; 
'T is her body that you see there."
Saw the rainbow in the heaven, 
In the eastern sky, the rainbow, 
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?" 
And the good Nokomis answered: 
"'T is the heaven of flowers you see there; 
All the wild-flowers of the forest, 
All the lilies of the prairie, 
When on earth they fade and perish, 
Blossom in that heaven above us."
When he heard the owls at midnight, 
Hooting, laughing in the forest, 
'What is that?" he cried in terror, 
"What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
And the good Nokomis answered: 
"That is but the owl and owlet,
Talking in their native language, 
Talking, scolding at each other."
Then the little Hiawatha 
Learned of every bird its language, 
Learned their names and all their secrets, 
How they built their nests in Summer, 
Where they hid themselves in Winter, 
Talked with them whene'er he met them, 
Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."
Of all beasts he learned the language, 
Learned their names and all their secrets, 
How the beavers built their lodges, 
Where the squirrels hid their acorns, 
How the reindeer ran so swiftly, 
Why the rabbit was so timid, 
Talked with them whene'er he met them, 
Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."
Then Iagoo, the great boaster, 
He the marvellous story-teller, 
He the traveller and the talker, 
He the friend of old Nokomis, 
Made a bow for Hiawatha; 
From a branch of ash he made it, 
From an oak-bough made the arrows, 
Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, 
And the cord he made of deer-skin.
Then he said to Hiawatha: 
"Go, my son, into the forest, 
Where the red deer herd together, 
Kill for us a famous roebuck, 
Kill for us a deer with antlers!"
Forth into the forest straightway 
All alone walked Hiawatha 
Proudly, with his bow and arrows; 
And the birds sang round him, o'er him, 
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
Sang the robin, the Opechee, 
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
Up the oak-tree, close beside him, 
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
In and out among the branches, 
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, 
Laughed, and said between his laughing, 
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"
And the rabbit from his pathway 
Leaped aside, and at a distance 
Sat erect upon his haunches, 
Half in fear and half in frolic, 
Saying to the little hunter, 
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"
But he heeded not, nor heard them, 
For his thoughts were with the red deer; 
On their tracks his eyes were fastened, 
Leading downward to the river, 
To the ford across the river,
And as one in slumber walked he. 
Hidden in the alder-bushes,
There he waited till the deer came, 
Till he saw two antlers lifted, 
Saw two eyes look from the thicket, 
Saw two nostrils point to windward, 
And a deer came down the pathway, 
Flecked with leafy light and shadow. 
And his heart within him fluttered, 
Trembled like the leaves above him, 
Like the birch-leaf palpitated, 
As the deer came down the pathway.
Then, upon one knee uprising, 
Hiawatha aimed an arrow; 
Scarce a twig moved with his motion, 
Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, 
But the wary roebuck started, 
Stamped with all his hoofs together,
Listened with one foot uplifted, 
Leaped as if to meet the arrow; 
Ah! the singing, fatal arrow, 
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!
Dead he lay there in the forest, 
By the ford across the river; 
Beat his timid heart no longer, 
But the heart of Hiawatha 
Throbbed and shouted and exulted, 
As he bore the red deer homeward, 
And Iagoo and Nokomis 
Hailed his coming with applauses.
From the red deer's hide Nokomis 
Made a cloak for Hiawatha, 
From the red deer's flesh Nokomis 
Made a banquet to his honor. 
All the village came and feasted, 
All the guests praised Hiawatha, 
Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha! 
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee!
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Pursuit

 Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit.
 RACINE


There is a panther stalks me down:
 One day I'll have my death of him;
 His greed has set the woods aflame,
He prowls more lordly than the sun.
Most soft, most suavely glides that step,
 Advancing always at my back;
 From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc:
The hunt is on, and sprung the trap.
Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,
 Haggard through the hot white noon.
 Along red network of his veins
What fires run, what craving wakes?

Insatiate, he ransacks the land
 Condemned by our ancestral fault,
 Crying: blood, let blood be spilt;
Meat must glut his mouth's raw wound.
Keen the rending teeth and sweet
 The singeing fury of his fur;
 His kisses parch, each paw's a briar,
Doom consummates that appetite.
In the wake of this fierce cat,
 Kindled like torches for his joy,
 Charred and ravened women lie,
Become his starving body's bait.

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;
 Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;
 The black marauder, hauled by love
On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.
Behind snarled thickets of my eyes
 Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush
 Bright those claws that mar the flesh
And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.
His ardor snares me, lights the trees,
 And I run flaring in my skin;
 What lull, what cool can lap me in
When burns and brands that yellow gaze?

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,
 To quench his thirst I squander blook;
 He eats, and still his need seeks food,
Compels a total sacrifice.
His voice waylays me, spells a trance,
 The gutted forest falls to ash;
 Appalled by secret want, I rush
From such assault of radiance.
Entering the tower of my fears,
 I shut my doors on that dark guilt,
 I bolt the door, each door I bolt.
Blood quickens, gonging in my ears:

The panther's tread is on the stairs,
Coming up and up the stairs.
Written by Galway Kinnell | Create an image from this poem

On Frozen Fields

1 
We walk across the snow, 
The stars can be faint, 
The moon can be eating itself out, 
There can be meteors flaring to death on earth, 
The Northern Lights can be blooming and seething 
And tearing themselves apart all night, 
We walk arm in arm, and we are happy. 

2 
You in whose ultimate madness we live, 
You flinging yourself out into the emptiness, 
You - like us - great an instant, 

O only universe we know, forgive us.
Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

A Rolling Stone

 There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.

I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
 And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
 The fret and the sweat of a slave:
For far over all that folks hold worth,
 There lives and there leaps in me
A love of the lowly things of earth,
 And a passion to be free.

To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
 To range and to change at will;
To mock at the mastership of man,
 To seek Adventure's thrill.
Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;
 To go my own sweet way;
To reck not at all what may befall,
 But to live and to love each day.

To make my body a temple pure
 Wherein I dwell serene;
To care for the things that shall endure,
 The simple, sweet and clean.
To oust out envy and hate and rage,
 To breathe with no alarm;
For Nature shall be my anchorage,
 And none shall do me harm.

To shun all lures that debauch the soul,
 The orgied rites of the rich;
To eat my crust as a rover must
 With the rough-neck down in the ditch.
To trudge by his side whate'er betide;
 To share his fire at night;
To call him friend to the long trail-end,
 And to read his heart aright.

To scorn all strife, and to view all life
 With the curious eyes of a child;
From the plangent sea to the prairie,
 From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
 From the vast to the greatly small;
For I know that the whole for good is planned,
 And I want to see it all.

To see it all, the wide world-way,
 From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
With never a one to say me nay,
 And none to cramp my soul.
In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
 But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
 They made a slave of me.

In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
 Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
 Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is good enough for me;
 The gipsy of God am I;
Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
And may I go a-roaming on
 Until the day I die!

Then every star shall sing to me
Its song of liberty;
And every morn shall bring to me
Its mandate to be free.
In every throbbing vein of me
I'll feel the vast Earth-call;
O body, heart and brain of me
Praise Him who made it all!


Written by Andre Breton | Create an image from this poem

Always For The First Time

 Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
You idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the
forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Magpiety

 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the real heat is hours ahead.
 You get out and step
cautiously over a low wire
 fence and begin
the climb up the yellowed hill.
 A hundred feet
ahead the trunks of two
 fallen oaks
rust; something passes over
 them, a lizard
perhaps or a trick of sight.
 The next tree
you pass is unfamiliar,
 the trunk dark,
as black as an olive's; the low
 branches stab
out, gnarled and dull: a carob
 or a Joshua tree.
A sudden flaring-up ahead,
 a black-winged
bird rises from nowhere,
 white patches
underneath its wings, and is gone.
 You hear your own
breath catching in your ears,
 a roaring, a sea
sound that goes on and on
 until you lean
forward to place both hands
 -- fingers spread --
into the bleached grasses
 and let your knees
slowly down. Your breath slows
 and you know
you're back in central
 California
on your way to San Francisco
 or the coastal towns
with their damp sea breezes
 you haven't
even a hint of. But first
 you must cross
the Pacheco Pass. People
 expect you, and yet
you remain, still leaning forward
 into the grasses
that if you could hear them
 would tell you
all you need to know about
 the life ahead. 

 . . .

Out of a sense of modesty
 or to avoid the truth
I've been writing in the second
 person, but in truth
it was I, not you, who pulled
 the green Ford
over to the side of the road
 and decided to get
up that last hill to look
 back at the valley
he'd come to call home.
 I can't believe
that man, only thirty-two,
 less than half
my age, could be the person
 fashioning these lines.
That was late July of '60.
 I had heard
all about magpies, how they
 snooped and meddled
in the affairs of others, not
 birds so much
as people. If you dared
 to remove a wedding
ring as you washed away
 the stickiness of love
or the cherished odors of another
 man or woman,
as you turned away
 from the mirror
having admired your new-found
 potency -- humming
"My Funny Valentine" or
 "Body and Soul" --
to reach for a rough towel
 or some garment
on which to dry yourself,
 he would enter
the open window behind you
 that gave gratefully
onto the fields and the roads
 bathed in dawn --
he, the magpie -- and snatch
 up the ring
in his hard beak and shoulder
 his way back
into the currents of the world
 on his way
to the only person who could
 change your life:
a king or a bride or an old woman
 asleep on her porch. 

 . . .

Can you believe the bird
 stood beside you
just long enough, though far
 smaller than you
but fearless in a way
 a man or woman
could never be? An apparition
 with two dark
and urgent eyes and motions
 so quick and precise
they were barely motions at all?
 When he was gone
you turned, alarmed by the rustling
 of oily feathers
and the curious pungency,
 and were sure
you'd heard him say the words
 that could explain
the meaning of blond grasses
 burning on a hillside
beneath the hands of a man
 in the middle of
his life caught in the posture
 of prayer. I'd
heard that a magpie could talk,
 so I waited
for the words, knowing without
 the least doubt
what he'd do, for up ahead
 an old woman
waited on her wide front porch.
 My children
behind her house played
 in a silted pond
poking sticks at the slow
 carp that flashed
in the fallen sunlight. You
 are thirty-two
only once in your life, and though
 July comes
too quickly, you pray for
 the overbearing
heat to pass. It does, and
 the year turns
before it holds still for
 even a moment.
Beyond the last carob
 or Joshua tree
the magpie flashes his sudden
 wings; a second
flames and vanishes into the pale
 blue air.
July 23, 1960.
 I lean down
closer to hear the burned grasses
 whisper all I
need to know. The words rise
 around me, separate
and finite. A yellow dust
 rises and stops
caught in the noon's driving light.
 Three ants pass
across the back of my reddened
 right hand.
Everything is speaking or singing.
 We're still here.
Written by Siegfried Sassoon | Create an image from this poem

Autumn

 October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves 
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood 
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves 
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud 
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown 
Along the westering furnace flaring red. 
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, 
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.
Written by James Henry Leigh Hunt | Create an image from this poem

Death

 Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?
Memories I do not seize and bring inside.
O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames. And no one here who knows me. 



[Written in December 1926, this poem was the last
entry in Rilke's notebook, less than two weeks before his
death at age 51.]
Written by Julia Ward Howe | Create an image from this poem

Battle Hymn of the Republic

 Howe's Final version
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His Truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps.
His Day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
'As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.'
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat:
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
2. Howe's First Manuscript Version
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel,
As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal
Let the hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Our God is marching on.

He has sounded out the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He has waked the earth's dull sorrow with a high ecstatic beat,
Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on.

In the whiteness of the lilies he was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom that shines out on you and me,
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
Our God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is sucour to the brave
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave
Our God is marching on.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry