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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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by Whitman, Walt
...e old and unknown hive-bees, 
The North—the sweltering South—eastern Assyria—the Hebrews—the Ancient of Ancients, 
Vast desolated cities—the gliding Present—all of these, and more, are in the
 pageant-procession.

Geography, the world, is in it; 
The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond; 
The coast you, henceforth, are facing—you Libertad! from your Western golden shores 
The countries there, with their populations—the millions en-masse, are curiou...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ndered on
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
Day after day, a weary waste of hours,
Bearing within his life the brooding care
That ever fed on its decaying flame.
And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,
Sered by the autumn of strange suffering,
Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand 
Hung...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...to moan: 
As one alone, once not alone, 
I sit and knock at Nature's door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor, 
Whose desolated days go on.

VIII

I knock and cry, —Undone, undone!
Is there no help, no comfort, —none? 
No gleaning in the wide wheat plains 
Where others drive their loaded wains? 
My vacant days go on, go on.

IX

This Nature, though the snows be down,
Thinks kindly of the bird of June:
The little red hip on the tree
Is ripe for such. What is for ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.

I've solaced me with scraps of song
The desolated ways along:
Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
And meadows reaped by death alone;
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
By headless Virgin in the mire;
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
By gutted grave, by shattered tomb;
Beside the dying and the dead,
Where rocket green and rocket red,
In trembling pools of poising light,
With flowers of ...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...r lamentations heard we rise;
As when the evil Manitou that dries
Th' Ohio woods, consumes them in his ire,
In vain the desolated panther flies,
And howls amidst his wilderness of fire:
Alas! too late, we reach'd and smote those Hurons dire!

But as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle brand;
And from the tree we, with her child, unbound
A lonely mother of the Christian land:--
Her lord--the captain of the British band--
Amidst the slaughter ...Read more of this...



by García Lorca, Federico
...
at five in the afternoon. 
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle 
at five in the afternoon. 
And a thigh with a desolated horn 
at five in the afternoon. 
The bass-string struck up 
at five in the afternoon. 
Arsenic bells and smoke 
at five in the afternoon. 
Groups of silence in the corners 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the bull alone with a high heart! 
At five in the afternoon. 
When the sweat of snow was coming 
at five in the afternoon, 
wh...Read more of this...

by Raine, Kathleen
...forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chan...Read more of this...

by Po, Li
...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 his city from my melancholy heart....Read more of this...

by Bai, Li
...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 his city from my melancholy heart....Read more of this...

by Barlow, Joel
...se. 

Yet shall the Lord, who hears when Zion calls, 
O'ertake her foes with terror and dismay, 
His arm avenge her desolated walls, 
And raise her children to eternal day....Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. 

Away away! to thy sad and silent home; 
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; 10 
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come  
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. 
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head  
The blooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath thy feet: 
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead 15 
Ere midnight's frown and m...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...y gentle flow'r decay'd;
When whistling winds, and drenching rain,
Swept with rude force the naked plain;
When o'er the desolated scene,
I saw the drifted snow descend; 
And sadness darken'd all the green,
And Nature's triumphs seem'd to end; 
O! then, my mourning heart did say,
"Thus Youth shall vanish, Life decay." 

When Beauty blooms, and Fortune smiles, 
And wealth the easy breast beguiles; 
When pleasure from her downy wings,
Her soft bewitching incense flings;
THEN...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e bird
 Flapped to its feet and flew.

I'm sure it never said goodbye
To its fond foster Pa and Ma,
Though to their desolated sigh
It might have chirruped: "Au revoir."
But no, it went in wanton mood,
Flying the coop for climates new
And so I say: "Ingratitude,
 They name's Cuckoo."...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...emperature, and aid,
With seasons all revers'd, destructive War.
Shuddering, I view the pictures they have drawn
Of desolated countries, where the ground,
Stripp'd of its unripe produce, was thick strewn
With various Death--the war-horse falling there
By famine, and his rider by the sword.
The moping clouds sail'd heavy charg'd with rain,
And bursting o'er the mountains misty brow,
Deluged, as with an inland sea, the vales 5 ;
Where, thro' the sullen evening's lurid g...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ully did behave,
And when the body was laid in the grave, from tears he could not refrain,
But instantly fled from that desolated place, and never returned again. 

Thirteen years after this the famous battle of Minden was fought
By Prince Ferdinand against the French, who brought them to nought;
And there was a large body of British horse, under Lord George Sackville,
And strange! the widow's son was at the battle all the while. 

And on the evening after the battle ...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...ert the skies;Leaving the dark sojourn of time beneath,And the wide desolated realms of Death.But she will early seek these glorious bounds,Whose long-lamented fall the world resoundsIn unison with me. And heaven will viewThat awful day her heavenly charms renew,Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...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 o'er the desert solitude
Where seas of sand toss their hot surges high;
Nor Genius should the midnight song
Detain thee in some milder mood
The ...Read more of this...

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