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Best Famous Incise Poems

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

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Written by Thomas Carew | Create an image from this poem

An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Pauls Dr. John

 Can we not force from widow'd poetry, 
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy 
To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, 
Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust, 
Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower 
Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour, 
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay 
Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day? 
Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense 
Through all our language, both the words and sense? 
'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain 
And sober Christian precepts still retain, 
Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, 
Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame 
Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light 
As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, 
Committed holy rapes upon our will, 
Did through the eye the melting heart distil, 
And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach 
As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) 
Must be desir'd forever. So the fire 
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, 
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, 
Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death. 
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds 
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds 
Of servile imitation thrown away, 
And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay 
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; 
Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage 
A mimic fury, when our souls must be 
Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, 
Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat 
Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat 
Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong 
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, 
Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine 
Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line 
Of masculine expression, which had good 
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood 
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold 
Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, 
Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more 
They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore. 
Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, 
And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime 
More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim 
From so great disadvantage greater fame, 
Since to the awe of thy imperious wit 
Our stubborn language bends, made only fit 
With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about 
Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout 
For their soft melting phrases. As in time 
They had the start, so did they cull the prime 
Buds of invention many a hundred year, 
And left the rifled fields, besides the fear 
To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands 
Of what is purely thine, thy only hands, 
(And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more 
Than all those times and tongues could reap before. 

But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be 
Too hard for libertines in poetry; 
They will repeal the goodly exil'd train 
Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign 
Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these, 
The silenc'd tales o' th' Metamorphoses 
Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, 
Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age 
Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be 
Ador'd again, with new apostasy. 

Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse 
The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, 
Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee, 
More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, 
That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence 
The death of all the arts; whose influence, 
Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, 
Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies. 
So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand 
In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, 
But some small time maintain a faint weak course, 
By virtue of the first impulsive force; 
And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile 
Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile, 
And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes 
Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. 

I will not draw the envy to engross 
All thy perfections, or weep all our loss; 
Those are too numerous for an elegy, 
And this too great to be express'd by me. 
Though every pen should share a distinct part, 
Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art; 
Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice 
I on thy tomb this epitaph incise: 

Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit 
The universal monarchy of wit; 
Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best, 
Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.


Written by A S J Tessimond | Create an image from this poem

Black On Black

 Serrations of chimneys
Stone-black perforate
Velvet-black dark.
A tree coils in core of darkness.
My swinging
Hands
Incise the night.
A man slips into a doorway,
Black hole in blackness, and drowns there.
A second man passing traces
The diagram of his steps
On invisible pavement. Rain
Draws black parallel threads
Through the hollow of air.
Written by Thomas Carew | Create an image from this poem

Celia Beeding To the Surgeon

 Fond man, that canst believe her blood
Will from those purple channels flow;
Or that the pure untainted flood
Can any foul distemper know;
Or that thy weak steel can incise
The crystal case wherein it lies:

Know, her quick blood, proud of his seat,
Runs dancing through her azure veins;
Whose harmony no cold nor heat
Disturbs, whose hue no tincture stains:
And the hard rock wherein it dwells
The keenest darts of love repels.

But thou repli'st, "behold, she bleeds!"
Fool! thou 'rt deceiv'd, and dost not know
The mystic knot whence this proceeds,
How lovers in each other grow:
Thou struck'st her arm, but 'twas my heart
Shed all the blood, felt all the smart.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things