Famous Crypt Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Crypt poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous crypt poems. These examples illustrate what a famous crypt poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Browning, Robert
...nse with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,---
Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!
XXI.
Each in the crypt would cry
``But one freezes here! and why?
``When a heart, as chill,
``At my own would thrill
``Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
``Heart, shall we live or die?
``The rest. . . . settle by-and-by!''
XXII.
So, she'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
It is twelve o'clock:
I shall hear ...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...footsteps sift into the lift
As a knife in the sheath is slipped,
Stealthy and swift into the lift
As a vampire into a crypt.
Old Maxie, the elevator boy,
Was reading an ode by Shelley,
But he dropped the ode as it were a toad
When the gun jammed into his belly.
There came a whisper as soft as mud
In the bed of an old canal:
"Take me up to the suite of Pinball Pete,
The rat who betrayed my gal."
The lift doth rise with groans and sighs
Like a duchess for the wa...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...thoughts that obscure thee?
I wait for thee, my soul distraught
With aching for some nameless naught
In its most arcane crypt-
Am I not fit to endure thee?
Girded about the paps
With a golden girdle of glory,
Dost thou wait me, thy slave who am,
As a wolf lurks for a strayed white lamb?
The chain of the stars snaps,
And the deep of night is hoary!
Thou whose mouth is a flame
With its seven-edged sword proceeding,
Come ! I am writhing with despair
Like a snake taken in a sna...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...40
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man.
Quicken'd so will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock.
I thank the joyful juice 45
For all I know;
Winds of remembering
Of the ancient being blow
And seeming-solid walls of use
Open and flow. 50
Pour Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!
Vine for vine be antidote
And the grape requite the lote!
Haste to cure the old despair; 55
...Read more of this...
by
Manrique, Jorge
...castles with their turrets boasting,
Their walls and barricades to brag
And mock surrender,—
The cavern's ancient crypt of hiding,
Or secret passage, vault, or stair,—
What use affords it?
Since thou upon thy onslaught striding
Canst send a shaft unerring where
No buckler wards it!
O World that givest and destroyest
Would that the life which thou hast shown
Were worth the living!
But here, as good or ill deployest,
The parting is with gladness known
Or with...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ith empty cells of the human hive;
---With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church's apsis, aisle or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave.
VI.
Wherever a fresco peels and drops,
Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:
One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,
Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,
---A lion wh...Read more of this...
by
Cather, Willa
...THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure,
And hold of vanished power,
And crypt of faith forgotten,
A came to Ludlow tower.
A-top of arch and stairway,
Of crypt and donjan cell,
Of council hall, and chamber,
Of wall, and ditch, and well,
High over grated turrets
Where clinging ivies run,
A thousand scarlet poppies
Enticed the rising sun,
Upon the topmost turret,
With death and damp below,--
Three hundred years o...Read more of this...
by
Kumin, Maxine
...And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,
suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin
with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a
displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin.
His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum.
Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye.
Another Montague is in the womb
although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry.
She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nur...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...or them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier transports move and thrill;
So keep I fair thro' faith and prayer
A virgin heart in work and will.
When down the stormy crescent goes,
A light before me swims,
Between dark stems the forest glows,
I hear a noise of hym...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...death
And many a shape of doom,
Good steadings to grey ashes gone
And a monk's house white like a skeleton
In the green crypt of the combe.
And in many a Roman villa
Earth and her ivies eat,
Saw coloured pavements sink and fade
In flowers, and the windy colonnade
Like the spectre of a street.
But the cold stars clustered
Among the cold pines
Ere he was half on his pilgrimage
Over the western lines.
And the white dawn widened
Ere he came to the last pine,
Where ...Read more of this...
by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of t...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fevourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In ...Read more of this...
by
Tsvetaeva, Marina
...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
Morris, William
...ir,
And from the topmost turret seen the shore
And his good ship drawn up at anchor there,
Came down again, and found a crypt most fair
Built wonderfully beneath the greatest hall,
And there he saw a door within the wall,
Well-hinged, close shut; nor was there in that place
Another on its hinges, therefore he
Stood there and pondered for a little space
And thought: "Perchance some marvel I shall see,
For surely here some dweller there must be,
Because this door seems whole a...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...but stooped apart
One instant, rapidly glanced round,
And saw me beckon from the ground;
A wild bush grows and hides my crypt,
She picked my glove up while she stripped
A branch off, then rejoined the rest
With that; my glove lay in her breast:
Then I drew breath: they disappeared;
It was for Italy I feared.
An hour, and she returned alone
Exactly where my glove was thrown.
Meanwhile come many thoughts; on me
Rested the hopes of Italy;
I had devised a certain tale
Wh...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e a guide mercurial
Took charge of us.
He showed us through room after room,
And talked hour after hour,
Of place, crypt and royal tomb,
Of pomp and power.
But in bewilderment of grace
What pleased me most of all
Were ancient missals proud in place
In stately hall.
A thousand tomes there were at least,
All luminously bright,
That each a score of years some priest
Had toiled to write.
Poor patient monk who brushed and penned
From rise to set of sun!
And w...Read more of this...
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