Famous Buried Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Buried Life The

by Matthew Arnold
 Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush...Read more of this...

I Went Down into the Desert

by Vachel Lindsay
 I went down into the desert
To meet Elijah—
Arisen from the dead.
I thought to. find him in an echoing cave;
For so my dream had said.

I went down into the desert
To meet John the Baptist.
I walked with feet that bled,
Seeking that prophet lean and brown and bold.
I spied foul fiends instead.

I went down into the desert
To meet my God.
By him be...Read more of this...

His Age:dedicated To His Peculiar Friendmr John Wickes Under The Name Ofpostumus

by Robert Herrick
 Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly
And leave no sound: nor piety,
Or prayers, or vow
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow;
But we must on,
As fate does lead or draw us; none,
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline
The doom of cruel Proserpine.

The pleasing wife, the house, the ground
Must all be left, no one plant found
To follow thee,
Save only the curst cypress-tree!
--A merry mind
Looks...Read more of this...

With Tears They Buried You Today

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 With tears they buried you to-day,
But well I knew no turf could hold
Your gladness long beneath the mould,
Or cramp your laughter in the clay;
I smiled while others wept for you
Because I knew. 

And now you sit with me to-night
Here in our old, accustomed place;
Tender and mirthful is your face,
Your eyes with starry joy are bright­
Oh, you are merry as...Read more of this...

A Farewell to Agassiz

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes
How they'll bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps
When the cry goes through their passes,
"Here comes the great Agassiz!"
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo,
"But I wait for him to say so,--
That's the only thing that lacks,-- he
Must see me,...Read more of this...

It Rained The Day They Buried Tito Puente

by Emanuel Xavier
 It rained the day they buried Tito Puente
The eyes of drug dealers following me
as I walked through the streets
past shivering prostitutes
women of every sex
young boys full of piss
and lampposts like ghosts in the night
past Jimmy the hustler boy 
with the really big dick 
cracked out on the sidewalk
wrapped in a blanket donated by the trick
that also gave him genital...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it then regret for buried time

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Is it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,
And meets the year, and gives and takes
The colours of the crescent prime?
Not all: the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,
Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.
Not all regret: the face will shine
Upon me, while I muse alone;
And...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee too comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower;
But Sorrow--fixt upon the dead,
And darkening the dark graves of men,--
What whisper'd from her lying lips?
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips,
And...Read more of this...

The Buried Train

by Robert Bly
 Tell me about the train that people say got buried
By the avalanche--was it snow?--It was
In Colorado, and no one saw it happen.
There was smoke from the engine curling up

Lightly through fir tops, and the engine sounds.
There were all those people reading--some
From Thoreau, some from Henry Ward Beecher.
And the engineer smoking and putting his head out.

I wonder when that happened....Read more of this...

Anthony Considine

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 OUT in the wastes of the West countrie, 
Out where the white stars shine, 
Grim and silent as such men be, 
Rideth a man with a history— 
Anthony Considine. 
For the ways of men they are manifold 
As their differing views in life; 
Some sell themselves for the lust of gold, 
And some for the lust of strife: 
But...Read more of this...

The Buried Life

by Matthew Arnold
 Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush...Read more of this...

Buffalo Country

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Out where the grey streams glide, 
Sullen and deep and slow, 
And the alligators slide 
From the mud to the depths below 
Or drift on the stream like a floating death, 
Where the fever comes on the south wind's breath, 
There is the buffalo. 
Out of the big lagoons, 
Where the Regia lilies float, 
And the Nankin heron croons...Read more of this...

In falling Timbers buried --

by Emily Dickinson
 In falling Timbers buried --
There breathed a Man --
Outside -- the spades -- were plying --
The Lungs -- within --

Could He -- know -- they sought Him --
Could They -- know -- He breathed --
Horrid Sand Partition --
Neither -- could be heard --

Never slacked the Diggers --
But when Spades had done --
Oh, Reward of Anguish,
It was dying -- Then...Read more of this...

The Grave of the Hundered Head

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a widow in sleepy Chester
 Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
 A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
 Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
 Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
 Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark...Read more of this...

I never told the buried gold

by Emily Dickinson
 I never told the buried gold
Upon the hill -- that lies --
I saw the sun -- his plunder done
Crouch low to guard his prize.

He stood as near
As stood you here --
A pace had been between --
Did but a snake bisect the brake
My life had forfeit been.

That was a wondrous booty --
I hope 'twas honest gained.
Those were the fairest ingots
That...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXVI: The Night-Flood Rakes

by Charlotte Turner Smith
 The night-flood rakes upon the stony shore;
Along the rugged cliffs and chalky caves
Mourns the hoarse Ocean, seeming to deplore
All that are buried in his restless waves—
Mined by corrosive tides, the hollow rock 
Falls prone, and rushing from its turfy height,
Shakes the broad beach with long-resounding shock,
Loud thundering on the ear of sullen Night;
Above the desolate and stormy deep,
Gleams the...Read more of this...

Buried Love

by Sara Teasdale
 I have come to bury Love
 Beneath a tree,
In the forest tall and black
 Where none can see.

I shall put no flowers at his head,
 Nor stone at his feet,
For the mouth I loved so much
 Was bittersweet.

I shall go no more to his grave,
 For the woods are cold.
I shall gather as much of joy
 As my hands...Read more of this...

I Dont Feel At Home Where I Am

by Regina Derieva
 I don't feel at home where I am,
or where I spend time; only where,
beyond counting, there's freedom and calm,
that is, waves, that is, space where, when there,
you consist of pure freedom, which, seen,
turns that Gorgon, the crowd, to stone,
to pebbles and sand . . . where life's mean-
ing lies buried, that never let one
come within cannon shot yet.
From cloud-covered...Read more of this...

On Sir John Roe

by Ben Jonson
XXVII. ? ON SIR JOHN ROE.     In place of scutcheons that should deck thy herse, Take better ornaments, my tears and verse.  If any sword could save from Fates', ROE'S could ;      If any Muse outlive their spight, his can ;  If any friends' tears could restore, his would ;      If any pious life ere lifted man To...Read more of this...

In a Castle

by Amy Lowell
 I
Over the yawning chimney hangs the fog. Drip 
-- hiss -- drip -- hiss --
fall the raindrops on the oaken log which burns, and steams,
and smokes the ceiling beams. Drip -- hiss -- the rain 
never stops.

The wide, state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, 
dim,
in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead 
hammers and chinks
the rain....Read more of this...

To My Name-Child

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 1 

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed, 
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read. 
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down 
By the English printers, long before, in London town. 

In the great and busy city where the East and West are met, 
All the little letters did...Read more of this...

Mohenjodaro Reviisited

by Omer Tarin
I. You are not dead

Why do they call you 
Mohen-jo-daro,
“ Mounds-of-the-Dead”?
You are not dead!
You have never been dead
Or buried
Or cremated
By the scorching banks of the Sindhu;

Historians have conspired against you

A thousand and one tales 
Have besmirched your name
Misguided fools have imagined 
Your obituary to be true;
Sentimental fools have sung elegies
By their own graves
Garlanded their own biers,
Cursed the stars and howled...Read more of this...

A Subalterns Love Song

by John Betjeman
 Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad...Read more of this...

Ode to a Nightingale

by John Keats
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 
But being too happy in thine happiness, 
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 121. Sad Hesper oer the buried sun

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen'd from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the...Read more of this...

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