Famous Coal Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Coal poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous coal poems. These examples illustrate what a famous coal poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...of future days,
And scenes unravel only known to fate.
ACASTO.
This might we do if warm'd by that bright coal
Snatch'd from the altar of seraphic fire,
Which touch'd Isaiah's lips, or if the spirit
Of Jeremy and Amos, prophets old,
Should fire the breast; but yet I call the muse
And what we can will do. I see, I see
A thousand kingdoms rais'd, cities and men
Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore;
Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town
Of note: an...Read more of this...
by
Martí, José
...s and dies.
All is beautiful and right,
All is as music and reason;
And all, like diamonds, is light
That was coal before its season.
I know when fools are laid to rest
Honor and tears will abound,
And that of all fruits, the best
Is left to rot in holy ground.
Without a word, the pompous muse
I've set aside, and understood:
From a withered branch, I choose
To hang my doctoral hood....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...the ground;
Strong through the turbulent profound
Shoots xiphias to his aim.
LXXVI
Strong is the lion—like a coal
His eyeball—like a bastion's mole
His chest against his foes:
Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail,
Strong against tide, th'enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.
LXXVII
But stronger still in earth and air,
And in the sea, the man of pray'r;
And far beneath the tide;
And in the seat to faith assign'd,
Where ask is have, where seek is find, ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...
On my scooter I flew over the holy stones of
Jerusalem the Golden.
My wide eyes wandered over the Aire at the
Coal barges as they snaked beneath the bridge
In black tarpaulin shrouds and clouds of steam
Hissed from Easy Road Laundry, the breaths of a
Monster, half man, half machine, the terrifying
Figures in a dream and on the Empire’s stage
I saw Doctor Wonder’s Mechanical Robot raise
An axe and chop in half his master and the two
Halves haunted me always, t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks by flaggers,
The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,
Coal-mines, and all that is down there,—the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs,
what
meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutch’d faces,
Iron-works, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks—men around feeling
the
melt
with huge crowbars—lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal—th...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my ki...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...y day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe."
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him,
And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:--
"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors
Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us.
What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded
On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate
Will be proclaimed as law in the land.<...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...The MAD MOTHER. Her eyes are wild, her head is bare, The sun has burnt her coal-black hair, Her eye-brows have a rusty stain, And she came far from over the main. She has a baby on her arm, Or else she were alone; And underneath the hay-stack warm, And on the green-wood stone, She talked and sung the woods among; ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...octive heat
To transubstantiate: What redounds, transpires
Through Spirits with ease; nor wonder;if by fire
Of sooty coal the empirick alchemist
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold,
As from the mine. Mean while at table Eve
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquours crowned: O innocence
Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamoured at that sight; but in ...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...ese in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river—
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators—
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
what brothers these
in the dark
of a thousand years?. . .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funne...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
Comrade of Californians—comrade of free north-westerners, (loving their big
proportions;)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen—comrade of all who shake hands and welcome
to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest;
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician,...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...;
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands;
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores;
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc;
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe!
3
The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it;
The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for a garden,
The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves, after the storm is lull’d,
The wailing and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,
The thought...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ses,
The grapes that ripen on thy vines—the apples in thy orchards,
Thy incalculable lumber, beef, pork, potatoes—thy coal—thy gold and silver,
The inexhaustible iron in thy mines.
12
All thine, O sacred Union!
Ship, farm, shop, barns, factories, mines,
City and State—North, South, item and aggregate,
We dedicate, dread Mother, all to thee!
Protectress absolute, thou! Bulwark of all!
For well we know that while thou givest each and all, (generous as God,)
Withou...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...roded it still.
My host took up a paper spill
From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl,
And lighted it at a burning coal.
At either end of the table, tall
Wax candles were placed, each in a small,
And slim, and burnished candlestick
Of pewter. The old man lit each wick,
And the room leapt more obviously
Upon my mind, and I could see
What the flickering fire had hid from me.
Above the chimney's yawning throat,
Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote,
Was a mante...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...ouble."
'Twas Doxy Jane, a bouncing girl
With eyes all sparks and hair all curl,
And cheeks all red and lips all coal,
And thirst for men instead of soul.
She's trod her pathway to the fire.
Old Rivers had his nephew by her.
I step aside from Tom and Jimmy
To find if she'd a kiss to gimme.
I blew out lamp 'fore she could speak.
She said, "If you ain't got a cheek,"
And then beside me in the dim,
"Did he beat you or you beat him?"
"Why, I ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...rel)
There saw I first the dark imagining
Of felony, and all the compassing;
The cruel ire, as red as any glede*, *live coal
The picke-purse, and eke the pale dread;
The smiler with the knife under the cloak,
The shepen* burning with the blacke smoke *stable
The treason of the murd'ring in the bed,
The open war, with woundes all be-bled;
Conteke* with bloody knife, and sharp menace. *contention, discord
All full of chirking* was that sorry place. *creaking, j...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...clear brow in sunlight glow'd; 100
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river 105
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
'Tirra lirra,' by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room, 110
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...br> *loins **plait
White was her smock*, and broider'd all before, *robe or gown
And eke behind, on her collar about
Of coal-black silk, within and eke without.
The tapes of her white volupere* *head-kerchief
Were of the same suit of her collere;
Her fillet broad of silk, and set full high:
And sickerly* she had a likerous** eye. *certainly **lascivious
Full small y-pulled were her browes two,
And they were bent*, and black as any sloe. *arched
She was well mo...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...er;
She did and I did, too.
Mornings at the rectory
Learning how to roll
Bandages, and always
Saving light and coal.
Oh, that house was bitter
As winter closed in,
In spite of heavy stockings
And woollen next the skin.
I was cold and wretched,
And never unaware
Of John more cold and wretched
In a trench out there.
XXIX
All that long winter I wanted so much to complain,
But my mother-in-Iaw, as far as I could see,
Felt no such impulse, though she was al...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...eft v. Right,
Class v. class as bitter as before,
the unending violence of US and THEM,
personified in 1984
by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,
Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind,
East/West, male/female, and the ground
these fixtures are fought on's Man, resigned
to hope from his future what his past never found.
The prospects for the present aren't too grand
when a swastika with NF (National Front)'s
sprayed on a grave, to which another hand
has added, ...Read more of this...
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