Famous Desolated Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On Climbing in Nan-king to the Terrace of Phoenixes

by Li Po
 Phoenixes that play here once, so that the place was named for them,
Have abandoned it now to this desolated river;
The paths of Wu Palace are crooked with weeds;
The garments of Chin are ancient dust.
...Like this green horizon halving the Three Peaks,
Like this Island of White Egrets dividing the river,
A cloud has risen between the Light of Heaven and me,
To...Read more of this...

Forward

by Robert William Service
 I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my bits of...Read more of this...

On Climbing in Nan-king to the Terrace of Phoenixes

by Li Bai
Phoenixes that play here once, so that the place was named for them,
Have abandoned it now to this desolated river;
The paths of Wu Palace are crooked with weeds;
The garments of Chin are ancient dust.
...Like this green horizon halving the Three Peaks,
Like this Island of White Egrets dividing the river,
A cloud has risen between the Light of Heaven and me,
To hide...Read more of this...

De Profundis

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I

The face, which, duly as the sun, 
Rose up for me with life begun, 
To mark all bright hours of the day 
With hourly love, is dimmed away—
And yet my days go on, go on.

II 

The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone, 
And every morning with ' Good day'
Make each day good, is...Read more of this...

Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

by Federico García Lorca
 1. Cogida and death 

At five in the afternoon. 
It was exactly five in the afternoon. 
A boy brought the white sheet 
at five in the afternoon. 
A frail of lime ready prepared 
at five in the afternoon. 
The rest was death, and death alone. 

The wind carried away the cottonwool 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the oxide...Read more of this...

To The Genius Of Africa

by Robert Southey
 O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
Recallest thy Palmyra's ancient pride,
Amid whose desolated domes
Secure the savage chacal roams,
Where from the fragments of the hallow'd fane
The Arabs rear their miserable homes!

Hear Genius hear thy children's cry!
Not always should'st thou love to brood
Stern...Read more of this...

Psalm CXXXVII The Babylonian Captivity

by Joel Barlow
 ALONG the banks where Babel's current flows 
Our captive bands in deep despondence stray'd, 
While Zion's fall in sad remembrance rose, 
Her friends, her children mingled with the dead. 

The tuneless harp, that once with joy we strung, 
When praise employ'd and mirth inspir'd the lay, 
In mournful silence on the willows hung; 
And growing grief prolong'd the tedious...Read more of this...

Remorse

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon  
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even: 
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon  
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. 
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!' 5 
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: 
Thy...Read more of this...

Stanzas

by Charlotte Bronte
 WHEN fragrant gales and summer show'rs
Call'd forth the sweetly scented flow'rs;
When ripen'd sheaves of golden grain,
Strew'd their rich treasures o'er the plain;
When the full grape did nectar yield,
In tepid drops of purple hue; 
When the thick grove, and thirsty field,
Drank the soft show'r and bloom'd a-new; 
O then my joyful heart did say, 
"Sure this is Nature's Holy-day!" 

But...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

The Nithsdale Widow and Her Son

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1746, on a fine summer afternoon,
When trees and flowers were in full bloom,
That widow Riddel sat knitting stockings on a little rustic seat,
Which her only son had made for her, which was very neat. 

The cottage she lived in was in the wilds of Nithsdale,
Where many a poor soul had cause to bewail
The loss...Read more of this...

The Cuckoo

by Robert William Service
 No lyric line I ever penned
The praise this parasitic bird;
And what is more, I don't intend
To write a laudatory word,
Since in my garden robins made
A nest with eggs of dainty spot,
And then a callous cuckoo laid
 A lone on on the lot.

Of course the sillies hatched it out
Along with their two tiny chicks,
And there it threw its weight about,
But...Read more of this...

Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva

by Kathleen Raine
 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our...Read more of this...

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