Famous Deserted Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Deserted poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous deserted poems. These examples illustrate what a famous deserted poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Lost Battle

by Victor Hugo
 ("Allah! qui me rendra-") 
 
 {XVI., May, 1828.} 


 Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array? 
 My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day; 
 My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight, 
 Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night, 
 Seemed oft unto the sentinel that...Read more of this...

Deserted Gipsy's Song: Hillside Camp

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   She is glad to receive your turquoise ring,
         Dear and dark-eyed Lover of mine!
   I, to have given you everything:
         Beauty maddens the soul like Wine.

   "She is proud to have held aloof her charms,
  ...Read more of this...

539. Song—O that's the lassie o' my heart

by Robert Burns
 O WAT ye wha that lo’es me
 And has my heart a-keeping?
O sweet is she that lo’es me,
 As dews o’ summer weeping,
 In tears the rosebuds steeping!


Chorus.—O that’s the lassie o’ my heart,
 My lassie ever dearer;
O she’s the queen o’ womankind,
 And ne’er a ane to peer her.


If thou shalt meet a lassie,
 In grace and beauty...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXVIII. Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi. HE SEEKS SOLITUDE, BUT LOVE FOLLOWS HIM EVERYWHERE.  Alone, and lost in thought, the desert gladeMeasuring I roam with ling'ring steps and slow;And still a watchful glance around me throw,Anxious to shun the print of human tread:No other means I find, no...Read more of this...

Solitude at an Inn

by Thomas Warton
 Oft upon the twilight plain,
Circled with thy shadowy train,
While the dove at distance coo'd,
Have I met thee, Solitude!
Then was loneliness to me
Best and true society,
But ah! how alter'd is thy mien
In this sad deserted scene!
Here all thy classic pleasures cease,
Musing mild, and thoughtful peace;
Here thou com'st in sullen mood,
Not with thy fantastic brood
Of magic shapes and visions airy
Beckon'd from...Read more of this...

The Deserted Garden

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I MIND me in the days departed, 
How often underneath the sun 
With childish bounds I used to run 
To a garden long deserted. 

The beds and walks were vanish'd quite; 5 
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, 
The greenest grasses Nature laid, 
To sanctify her right. 

I call'd the place my wilderness, 
For no one enter'd there but I....Read more of this...

In The Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood
 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn...Read more of this...

Adieu Adieu! My Native Land

by George (Lord) Byron
 Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'ver the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native Land-Good Night! 
A few short hours, and he will rise
To give the morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother earth.
Deserted...Read more of this...

A Song before Sailing

by Bliss Carman
 Wind of the dead men's feet,
Blow down the empty street
Of this old city by the sea
With news for me!
Blow me beyond the grime
And pestilence of time!
I am too sick at heart to war
With failure any more.
Thy chill is in my bones;
The moonlight on the stones
Is pale, and palpable, and cold;
I am as one grown old.

I call from room to...Read more of this...

Angel Or Demon

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 You call me an angel of love and of light,
A being of goodness and heavenly fire,
Sent out from God’s kingdom to guide you aright,
In paths where your spirits may mount and aspire.
You say that I glow like a star on its course,
Like a ray from the alter, a spark from the source.

Now list to my answer; let all the...Read more of this...

An Ending

by Philip Levine
 Early March. 
The cold beach deserted. My kids 
home in a bare house, bundled up 
and listening to rock music 
pirated from England. My wife 
waiting for me in a bar, alone 
for an hour over her sherry, and none 
of us knows why I have to pace 
back and forth on this flat 
and birdless stretch of gleaming...Read more of this...

In the shadow of a broken house

by Laurence Binyon
 In the shadow of a broken house, 
Down a deserted street, 
Propt walls, cold hearths, and phantom stairs, 
And the silence of dead feet —
Locked wildly in one another's arms 
I saw two lovers meet.

And over that hearthless house aghast 
Rose from the mind's abyss 
Lost stars and ruined, peering moons, 
Worlds overshadowing this, —
Time's stony palace crumbled down...Read more of this...

The White Bees

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

LEGEND 

Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus, 
youngest of the shepherds,
Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees." 
Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey;
golden, too, the music,
Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees. 

Happy Aristæus loitered in the garden, wandered
in the orchard,
Careless and contented, indolent and free; 
Lightly took his labour, lightly took his...Read more of this...

The Deserted Plantation

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, de grubbin'-hoe 's a-rustin' in de co'nah,
An' de plow 's a-tumblin' down in de fiel',
While de whippo'will 's a-wailin' lak a mou'nah
When his stubbo'n hea't is tryin' ha'd to yiel'.
In de furrers whah de co'n was allus wavin',
Now de weeds is growin' green an' rank an' tall;
An' de swallers roun' de whole place is a-bravin'
Lak dey thought deir folks...Read more of this...

The Hunters in the Snow

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 1962 

The over-all picture is winter 
icy mountains 
in the background the return 

from the hunt it is toward evening 
from the left 
sturdy hunters lead in 

their pack the inn-sign 
hanging from 
a broken hinge is a stag a crucifix 

between his antlers the cold 
inn yard 
is deserted but for a huge bonfire 

that flares wind-driven it...Read more of this...

penelope

by Rg Gregory
 name meaning thread weaver or duck
(these may be guesses from obscurity)
ten-year faithful wife whilst her husband
was gallivanting round the islands
deceiving the suitors by her shroud-unpicking 
or maybe not such a savoury dame having
a high time with those after her favours
allegedly allowing hermes up her skirts
and becoming the mother of pan
or even (when odysseus was killed) 
getting married to her...Read more of this...

Bacchanalia

by Matthew Arnold
 The evening comes, the fields are still.
The tinkle of the thirsty rill,
Unheard all day, ascends again;
Deserted is the half-mown plain,
Silent the swaths! the ringing wain,
The mower's cry, the dog's alarms,
All housed within the sleeping farms!
The business of the day is done,
The last-left haymaker is gone.
And from the thyme upon the height,
And from the elder-blossom white
And pale dog-roses in the...Read more of this...

A Poets Death is His Life IV

by Kahlil Gibran
 The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow and on the verge...Read more of this...

Nocturne In A Deserted Brickyard

by Carl Sandburg
 Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night....Read more of this...

Alexanders Feast; Or The Power Of Music

by John Dryden
 'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son— 
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais by his side
Sate like a blooming eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride:— 
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None...Read more of this...

The Cranes Of Ibycus

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Once to the song and chariot-fight,
Where all the tribes of Greece unite
On Corinth's isthmus joyously,
The god-loved Ibycus drew nigh.
On him Apollo had bestowed
The gift of song and strains inspired;
So, with light staff, he took his road
From Rhegium, by the godhead fired.

Acrocorinth, on mountain high,
Now burns upon the wanderer's eye,
And he begins, with pious dread,
Poseidon's grove of firs to tread.
Naught...Read more of this...

The Deserted Cottage

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.

And yet, it tops a verdant hill
By Summer gales surrounded:
Beneath its door a shallow rill
Runs brawling to the vale below,
And near it sweetest flowrets grow
By banks of willow...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Anna Akhmatova
 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her...Read more of this...

The Deserted House

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Life and Thought have gone away
Side by side,
Leaving door and windows wide.
Careless tenants they!

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.

Close the door; the shutters close;
Or through the windows we shall see
The nakedness and vacancy
Of the dark deserted house.

Come away: no more of mirth
Is here or...Read more of this...

The Tearful Tale Of Captain Dan

by Ellis Parker Butler
 A sinner was old Captain Dan;
 His wives guv him no rest:
He had one wife to East Skiddaw
 And one to Skiddaw West.

Now Ann Eliza was the name
 Of her at East Skiddaw;
She was the most cantankerous
 Female you ever saw.

I don’t know but one crosser-grained,
 And of this Captain Dan
She was the wife at Skiddaw West—
 She was...Read more of this...

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