Famous Bones Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bones poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bones poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bones poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...es be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...er of Waters
Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean,
Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth.
Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken,
Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside.
Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards.
Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered,
Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things.
Fair was s...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ls are ringing:
But silence falls with fading day,
And there's an end to mirth and play.
Ah, well-a-day
Rest your old bones, ye wrinkled crones!
The kettle sings, the firelight dances.
Deep be it quaffed, the magic draught
That fills the soul with golden fancies!
For Youth and Pleasance will not stay,
And ye are withered, worn, and gray.
Ah, well-a-day!
O fair cold face! O form of grace,
For human passion madly yearning!
O weary air of dumb despair,
From marble won, to ma...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...eed I saw, but, Ichabod!
Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
Who being man died for the sake of God,
And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower,
Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour
Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or
The Arno with its tawny troubled gold
O'er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror
Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old
When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty
Walked like a bride beside him, a...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...taker waits for me.
he is probably twenty-three now,
learning his trade.
He'll stitch up the gren,
he'll fasten the bones down
lest they fly away.
I am flying today.
I am not tired today.
I am a motor.
I am cramming in the sugar.
I am running up the hallways.
I am squeezing out the milk.
I am dissecting the dictionary.
I am God, la de dah.
Peanut butter is the American food.
We all eat it, being patriotic.
Ms. Dog is out fighting the dollars,
rolling in a fi...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...t licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she
In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see,
And where she lay among her bones had brought
So many to grief before, that all my thought
Aghast turned backward to the sunless night
I left. But while I plunged in headlong flight
To that most feared before, a shade, or man
(Either he seemed), obstructing where I ran,
Called to me with a voice that few should know,
Faint from forgetful silence, "Where ye go,
Take heed...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ata, analyzed to a hair, counsell’d with
doctors, and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.
In all people I see myself—none more, and not one a barleycorn less;
And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.
And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at the table, in the bed-room, everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell
under
the
skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else, but never of itself.
16
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
Wh...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...like a blue tree in the trees
When he came to Eldred's farm.
But Eldred's farm was fallen awry,
Like an old cripple's bones,
And Eldred's tools were red with rust,
And on his well was a green crust,
And purple thistles upward thrust,
Between the kitchen stones.
But smoke of some good feasting
Went upwards evermore,
And Eldred's doors stood wide apart
For loitering foot or labouring cart,
And Eldred's great and foolish heart
Stood open like his door.
A mighty man was Eldre...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...as Helle's legends tell,
Next morn 'twas found where Selim fell;
Lash'd by the tumbling tide, whose wave
Denied his bones a holier grave:
And there by night, reclined, 'tis said,
Is seen a ghastly turban'd head:
And hence extended by the billow,
'Tis named the "Pirate-phantom's pillow!"
Where first it lay that mourning flower
Hath flourish'd; flourisheth this hour,
Alone and dewy, coldly pure and pale;
As weeping Beauty's cheek at Sorrow's tale.
(1) "G?l," the ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...folds around a dry foot, shod
With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.
The swarms that hum about her collar-bones
As the lascivious streams caress the stones,
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes
Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae.
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they
Who laugh and name you a Caricatur...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...ght,
3.85 That yet my bed in darkness is not made,
3.86 And I in black oblivion's den long laid.
3.87 Of Marrow full my bones, of Milk my breasts,
3.88 Ceas'd by the gripes of Serjeant Death's Arrests:
3.89 Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
3.90 Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.
Middle Age.
4.1 Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
4.2 And now am grown more staid that have been green,
4.3 What they have done, the same was done by me:
4.4 As w...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...On either hand, as far as eye could see,
A great black swamp and of an evil smell,
Part black, part whitened with the bones of men,
Not to be crost, save that some ancient king
Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge,
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge,
And every bridge as quickly as he crost
Sprang into fire and vanished, though I yearned
To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens
Opened and blazed w...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...his hair--
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.
"Leave him here to his fate--it is getting so late!"
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half the day. Any further delay,
And we sha'nt catch a Snark before night!"
FIT VIII.--THE VANISHING.
Fit the Eighth.
THE VANISHING.
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...e hewe wood, and water bear,
For he was young and mighty for the nones*, *occasion
And thereto he was strong and big of bones
To do that any wight can him devise.
A year or two he was in this service,
Page of the chamber of Emily the bright;
And Philostrate he saide that he hight.
But half so well belov'd a man as he
Ne was there never in court of his degree.
He was so gentle of conditioun,
That throughout all the court was his renown.
They saide that it were a charity
That ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...re told.
His mother watched a midnight fold,
Built deep within a dreary glen,
Where scattered lay the bones of men
In some forgotten battle slain,
And bleached by drifting wind and rain.
It might have tamed a warrior's heart
To view such mockery of his art!
The knot-grass fettered there the hand
Which once could burst an iron band;
Beneath the broad and ample bone,
That bucklered heart to fear unknown,
A...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time;
And on the tables every clime and age
Jumbled together; celts and calumets,
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries,
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere,
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls,
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer,
His...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ts for their native land, and glows for their ancestors' precepts;
Here on the well-beloved spot, rest now time-honored bones.
Down from the heavens descends the blessed troop of immortals,
In the bright circle divine making their festal abode;
Granting glorious gifts, they appear: and first of all, Ceres
Offers the gift of the plough, Hermes the anchor brings next,
Bacchus the grape, and Minerva the verdant olive-tree's branches,
Even his charger of war brings there Poseido...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...inking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
"What is that noise?"
The
wind under the door.
"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
Nothing
again nothing.
"Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?"
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It's so elegan...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
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