Famous Demon Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Demon poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous demon poems. These examples illustrate what a famous demon poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...oice, or flight of birds,
Or boding sign at morn, or noon, or eve,
Portent and prodigy and omen dire.
Each oracle by Demon, or the craft
Of priests, made vocal, can declare no more
Of high renown, and victory secure,
To kings low prostrate at their bloody shrines.
No more with vain uncertainty perplex
Mistaken worshippers, or give unseen
Response ambiguous in some mystic sound,
And hollow murmer from the dark recess.
No more of Lybian Jove; Dodona's oaks,
In sacre...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view....Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...woes—
I ground down our oppressors and now, against Grendel,
I must pay him back alone,
that wretched monster, that demon. (ll, 415-26a)
“Just now I wish to ask you one thing,
lord of the Bright-Danes, Hedge of the Scyldings,
one single favor, that you do not refuse me this—
shelter of warriors, generous friend of your people,
now that I have come so far, that I be allowed
to cleanse Heorot, alone, with this band of my warriors,
this troop of hardened men. I have...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...when the wronged Indian knows
His seeming benefactors are but foes.
His kinsmen kidnapped and his lands possessed,
The demon woke in that untutored breast.
Four hundred years have rolled upon their way-
The ruthless demon rules the red man to this day.
XI.
If, in the morning of success, that grand
Invincible discoverer of our land
Had made no lodge or wigwam desolate
To carry trophies to the proud and great;
If on our history's page there were no blot
Left by the cruel ra...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...e. If an innocent bird
Before my heedless footsteps stirr'd, and stirr'd
In little journeys, I beheld in it
A disguis'd demon, missioned to knit
My soul with under darkness; to entice
My stumblings down some monstrous precipice:
Therefore I eager followed, and did curse
The disappointment. Time, that aged nurse,
Rock'd me to patience. Now, thank gentle heaven!
These things, with all their comfortings, are given
To my down-sunken hours, and with thee,
Sweet sister, help to ste...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...zed Celtic ports, still needing more and more.
On all the Northern Sea his crafts roused fear:
Iceland beheld his demon navy near.
Antwerp the German burnt; and Prussias twain
Bowed to the yoke. The Polish King was fain
To help the Russian Spotocus—his aid
Was like the help that in their common trade
A sturdy butcher gives a weaker one.
The King it is who seizes, and this done,
The Emp'ror pillages, usurping right
In war Teutonic, settled but by ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...And so
They came reluctant to the shore of woe
That waits for all who fear not God, and not
Them only.
Then the demon Charon rose
To herd them in, with eyes that furnace-hot
Glowed at the task, and lifted oar to smite
Who lingered.
As the leaves, when autumn shows,
One after one descending, leave the bough,
Or doves come downward to the call, so now
The evil seed of Adam to endless night,
As Charon signalled, from the shore's bleak height,
Cast thems...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...lint was there, the berries at his head.
XLV.
Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard,
And let his spirit, like a demon-mole,
Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,
To see skull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole;
Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd,
And filling it once more with human soul?
Ah! this is holiday to what was felt
When Isabella by Lorenzo knelt.
XLVI.
She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...d then
From that red floor he ne'er had risen again,
For Lara's brow upon the moment grew
Almost to blackness in its demon hue;
And fiercer shook his angry falchion now
Than when his foe's was levell'd at his brow;
Then all was stern collectedness and art,
Now rose the unleaven'd hatred of his heart;
So little sparing to the foe he fell'd,
That when the approaching crowd his arm withheld
He almost turn'd the thirsty point on those
Who thus for mercy dared to interp...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...h' abyss where frantic horror bides,
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began:
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire.
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating pow'r,
To blast the fairest hopes of man.
Soon as thy fatal birth...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...des a white horse, I fancy we shall know it.
HAMILTON
It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind;
No god, or ghost, or demon—only a man:
A man whose occupation is the need
Of those who would not feel it if it bit them;
And one who shapes an age while he endures
The pin pricks of inferiorities;
A cautious man, because he is but one;
A lonely man, because he is a thousand.
No marvel you are slow to find in him
The genius that is one spark or is nothing:
His genius is a ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...such rude revelry,
The dim clan of the Gael
Came like a bad king's burial-end,
With dismal robes that drop and rend
And demon pipes that wail--
In long, outlandish garments,
Torn, though of antique worth,
With Druid beards and Druid spears,
As a resurrected race appears
Out of an elder earth.
And though the King had called them forth
And knew them for his own,
So still each eye stood like a gem,
So spectral hung each broidered hem,
Grey carven men he fancied them,
Hewn in a...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...the coverlet,
And pale enchantment held her sleepy-ey'd.
Never on such a night have lovers met,
Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt.
"It shall be as thou wishest," said the Dame:
"All cates and dainties shall be stored there
Quickly on this feast-night: by the tambour frame
Her own lute thou wilt see: no time to spare,
For I am slow and feeble, and scarce dare
On such a catering trust my dizzy head.
Wait here, my child, with patience; kneel in prayer
...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...
Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun.
On - on he hastened, and he drew
My gaze of wonder as he flew:
Though like a demon of the night
He passed, and vanished from my sight,
His aspect and his air impressed
A troubled memory on my breast,
And long upon my startled ear
Rung his dark courser's hoofs of fear.
He spurs his steed; he nears the steep,
That, jutting, shadows o'er the deep;
He winds around; he hurries by;
The rock relieves him from mine eye;
For, well I ween, unw...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...here wounded pride
With ire and disappointment vied
Seemed, by the torch's gloomy light,
Like the ill Demon of the night,
Stooping his pinions' shadowy sway
Upon the righted pilgrim's way:
But, unrequited Love! thy dart
Plunged deepest its envenomed smart,
And Roderick, with thine anguish stung,
At length the hand of Douglas wrung,
While eyes that mocked at tears before
With bitter drops were running o'er.
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
..., they say, thro' all the burthen'd Air,
Long Groans are heard, shrill Sounds, and distant Sighs,
That, murmur'd by the Demon of the Night,
Warn the devoted Wretch of Woe, and Death!
Wild Uproar lords it wide: the Clouds commixt,
With Stars, swift-gliding, sweep along the Sky.
All Nature reels. -- But hark! the Almighty speaks:
Instant, the chidden Storm begins to pant,
And dies, at once, into a noiseless Calm.
AS yet, 'tis Midnight's Reign; the weary Clouds,
Slow-meeting,...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...by's or an idiot's brow, & made
Their nests in it; the old anatomies
Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
"Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
To reassume the delegated power
Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
"Who make this earth their charnel.--Others more
Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
"Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyer, ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east.'
'He was a warrior then, nor fear'd the gods?'
'Gebir, he fear'd the demons, not the gods,
Though them indeed his daily face adored:
And was no warrior, yet the thousand lives
Squander'd, as stones to exercise a sling,
And the tame cruelty and cold caprice —
Oh madness of mankind! address'd, adored!'
Gebir, p. 28.
I omit noticing some edifying Ithyphallics of Savagius, wishing to keep the proper veil over them, if his...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ng prey from that grim cell,
That hollowed den 'neath journals great,
Where editors who poets flout
With their demoniac laughter shout.
And I have scolded you! What fate
For charming dwarfs who never meant
To anger Hercules! And I
Have frightened you!—My chair I sent
Back to the wall, and then let fly
A shower of words the envious use—
"Get out," I said, with hard abuse,
"Leave me alone—alone I say."
Poor man alone! Ah, well-a-day,
What ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...been at sixteen
With straw gold hair Yeats would have immortalised.
People seemed to guess I was haunted by an inner demon
I’d tried to leave in the raftered lofts of City Square
But failed to. Girls from sixteen to twenty six kept grabbing me
And making me dance and I found my teenage inhibitions
Gone at sixty-one and wildly gyrated to ‘Sex Bomb, Sex Bomb’
Egged on by the throng by the fruit machine and continuous
Thumbs-up signs from passing men. I had to forgo
A ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
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