Famous Cauldron Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Cauldron poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cauldron poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cauldron poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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The hoary cavern, wide surrounding lours:
Still thro’ the gap the struggling river toils,
And still, below, the horrid cauldron boils...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...nd the tinkler prest her,
He feign’d to snirtle in his sleeve,
When thus the caird address’d her:
AirTune—“Clout the Cauldron.”My bonie lass, I work in brass,
A tinkler is my station:
I’ve travell’d round all Christian ground
In this my occupation;
I’ve taen the gold, an’ been enrolled
In many a noble squadron;
But vain they search’d when off I march’d
To go an’ clout the cauldron.
I’ve taen the gold, &c.
Despise that shrimp, that wither’d imp,
With a’ his noise an...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...ts 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....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...pass
The towery gates of Gorias,
And Findrias and Falias,
And long-forgotten Murias,
Among the giant kings whose hoard,
Cauldron and spear and stone and sword,
Was robbed before earth gave the wheat;
Wandering from broken street to street
They come where some huge watcher is,
And tremble with their love and kiss.
They know undying things, for they
Wander where earth withers away,
Though nothing troubles the great streams
But light from the pale stars, and gleams
From the hol...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...ou 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....Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...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 o...Read more of this...
by
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...m 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 t...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...h 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 ma...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...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 gritt...Read more of this...
by
Alger, Julie Hill
...ht 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 r...Read more of this...
by
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...wn, 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 r...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...ept 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....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...her'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....Read more of this...
by
Tsvetaeva, Marina
...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 ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...Out of the seething cauldron of my woes,
Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung;
Where charmed music gathered from my tongue,
And where I chained strange archipelagoes
Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows
A curious bitumen; where among
The glowing medley moved the tune unsung
Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic Rose.
Its myriad petals of divided light;
Its le...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
And dusk grow strong
And they have fled.
Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day....
But wasted--wasted, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imagined one...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names...Read more of this...
by
Heaney, Seamus
...roubles are o'er!"
Then, like a rumble of thunder, heard we a canorous roar.
Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron afume;
There was the rage of the rapids, there was the menace of doom.
The river springs like a racer, sweeps through a gash in the rock;
Buts at the boulder-ribbed bottom, staggers and rears at the shock;
Leaps like a terrified monster, writhes in its fury and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.
Dared we that ravening...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...fourscore,
A bunch fit to amaze a China Queen.
Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose
He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set
WIth elvish unsubstantial Mignonette
And such vague blooms as wandering dreams enclose.
But she?
Awed,
Charmed to tears,
Distracted,
Yet -
Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued - who knows?...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...e son la Pia;
Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma."
307. V. St. Augustine's Confessions: "to Carthage
then I came,
where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about mine ears."
308. The complete text of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which
corresponds
in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken,
will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism
in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
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