Famous Coldness Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Coldness poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous coldness poems. These examples illustrate what a famous coldness poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...we’re through, we’re through, we’re through, we’re through
and – flanking, now, the edges of our schism –
it seems your coldness and my idealism
alone for all this time have kept us true.
Credulous I and hedonistic you:
opposed, refracting angles of a prism
who challenged sense with childish skepticism –
and every known the bulk of mankind knew....Read more of this...
by
Reeser, Jennifer
...impatient woes;
The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,
And in the east one giant window shows
The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn....Read more of this...
by
Wharton, Edith
...ined-on streets and squares
They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise
Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,
Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes
That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made
As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home
All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs
Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,
And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents
Just missed them, as the pensioner paid
A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' ...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...tal language can express.
Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.
And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...the valley was tumbling with lilies and dogs.
In my hands' violet shadow, your body,
dead on the bank, was an angel of coldness....Read more of this...
by
García Lorca, Federico
...w'd lines had fix'd at last,
And spake of passions, but of passion past;
The pride, but not the fire, of early days,
Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
A high demeanour, and a glance that took
Their thoughts from others by a single look;
And that sarcastic levity of tongue,
The stinging of a heart the world hath stung,
That darts in seeming playfulness around,
And makes those feel that will not own the wound:
All these seem'd his, and something more benea...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...m sweetly perplexed by love sallies, releases,
By the countless retreats and the numberless captures,
By the petulant coldness and agreeable raptures,
By the whisper of phrases that hurts and then pleases,
I am drunk by the prodigal total of leases
From her body and spirit, her soul and her senses,
I revel in approaches and artless offenses,
In her challenging taunts and her tenderly teases.
Now will I disengage a red flower from her tresses,
And uplift her lithe for...Read more of this...
by
Dato, Luis G.
...ly gurgled in her throat.
At last, straining to hold herself, she cried To him for pity,
and her strange words smote
A coldness through him, for she begged Gervase To leave her,
'twas too much a second time.
Gervase must go, always Gervase, her mind Repeated
like a rhyme
This name he did not know. In sad amaze
He watched her, and that hunted, fearful gaze,
So unremembering and so unkind.
XLVIII
Softly he spoke to her, patiently dealt With
what he feared her madness. By a...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...AUNT ESPECIALLY
And all his descendants
With their particular vilenesses -
I met one in the sixties
Who had all the coldness of Himmler
So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti.
I want a history responsive
To the needs of the working-class
One that will minute the back-to-backs
Spread over the city like a seamless robe
SO **** CUTHBERT BRODERICK’S TOWN HALL
BRIDEWELL AND MAGISTRACY.
I want a history of the culture
Of the working class and not
Hoggart’s slim...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemd where'er it fell
To make the coldness visible.
Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throa...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...e willow-tree.
Here upon my true-love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid;
Not one holy saint to save
All the coldness of a maid:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
With my hands I'll dent the briers
Round his holy corse to gre:
Ouph and fairy, light your fires,
Here my body still shall be:
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heartes blood away;
L...Read more of this...
by
Chatterton, Thomas
...n the playground,
Kicking up dust; The column hesitates
As though in answer to the rising wind,
To darkness and the coldness it must enter.
Listen, my heroes, my half frozen men,
The corporal calls us to that distant winter
Where we will merge the nothingness within.
And they salute as one and stand at peace.
Keeping an arm's distance from everything,
I answer them, knowing they see no face
Between my helmet and my helmet thong.
VI
But three more days and we'l...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...t, I thought They never would have done. —I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning. Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftner left me mourning. LINES Written in early Spring. I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind.<...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...,
You are but my fellow-mortal!"
Then Kabibonokka entered,
And though Shingebis, the diver,
Felt his presence by the coldness,
Felt his icy breath upon him,
Still he did not cease his singing,
Still he did not leave his laughing,
Only turned the log a little,
Only made the fire burn brighter,
Made the sparks fly up the smoke-flue.
From Kabibonokka's forehead,
From his snow-besprinkled tresses,
Drops of sweat fell fast and heavy,
Making dints upon the ashes,
As al...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Spring moonlight,
Rises the deflowered arch.
In the silence, shining bright,
She stands naked and unsubdued.
Her marble coldness will endure the march
Of decades.
Rend her bronzes, hammers;
Cast down her inscriptions.
She is unconquerable, austere,
Cold as the moon that swims above her
When the nights are clear.
IV
Croissy, Ile-de-France, June, 1815
"Whoa! Victorine.
Devil take the mare! I've never seen so vicious a beast.
She kicked Jules the last time she was here,
He's be...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...mother whose child was buried to-day
Turns her face to the window; her face is grey;
And all her body is cold with the coldness of rain.
He would have grown as easily as a tree,
He would have spread a pleasure of shade above her,
He would have been his father again . . .
His growth was ended by a freezing invisible shadow.
She lies, and does not move, and is stabbed by the rain.
Wind, wind, wind; we toss and dream;
We dream we are clouds and stars, blown in a stream:
Window...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...y do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.
Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.
Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.
Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much...Read more of this...
by
Raleigh, Sir Walter
...nd the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.
The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----
Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given
These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes
Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair
Touching and melting.
Nowhere....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...knew and well,To the whole world your secret heart was shown;Thence was the coldness which your hopes distress'd,For such our sympathy in all the rest,As is alone where Love keeps honour's law.Since in your bosom first its birth I saw,One fire our heart has equally inflamed,Except that I conceal'd it, you proclaim'd;<...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...is gone or only points in vain
The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again.
Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;
It cannot feel for others' woes it dare not dream its own; 10
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears
And though the eye may sparkle still 'tis where the ice appears.
Though wit may flash from fluent lips and mirth distract the breast
Through midnight hours that yield no more...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
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