Famous Devils Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Two Fusiliers

by Robert Graves
 And have we done with War at last? 
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both, 
And there’s no need of pledge or oath 
To bind our lovely friendship fast, 
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough. 

By wire and wood and stake we’re bound, 
By Fricourt and by Festubert, 
By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare, 
By all the misery and loud...Read more of this...

Re-adjustment

by C S Lewis
 I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched 
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge 
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning. 
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity 
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the...Read more of this...

Over The Parapet

by Robert William Service
 All day long when the shells sail over
 I stand at the sandbags and take my chance;
But at night, at night I'm a reckless rover,
 And over the parapet gleams Romance.
Romance! Romance! How I've dreamed it, writing
 Dreary old records of money and mart,
Me with my head chuckful of fighting
 And the blood of vikings to thrill my heart.

But...Read more of this...

James Simmons R.i.p

by Barry Tebb
 You were the one I wanted most to know

So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,

The casual voice, the sharp invective,

The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant

Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms

Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt

For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry

Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.



You wrote from the heart,...Read more of this...

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but...Read more of this...

Gerontion

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.


HERE I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed...Read more of this...

The Sacrifice of Er-Heb

by Rudyard Kipling
 Er-Heb beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai
Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o'er the peaks to India.

The story of Bisesa, Armod's child, --
A maiden plighted to the Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, who held the Pass
That leads to Thibet, but to-day is gone
To seek his comfort of the...Read more of this...

The Immortals

by Dorothy Parker
 I killed them, but they would not die. 
Yea! all the day and all the night 
For them I could not rest or sleep, 
Nor guard from them nor hide in flight. 

Then in my agony I turned 
And made my hands red in their gore. 
In vain - for faster than I slew 
They rose more cruel than...Read more of this...

Two Words

by Robert William Service
 'God' is composed of letters three,
 But if you put an 'l'
Before the last it seems to me
 A synonym for Hell.
For all of envy, greed and hate
 The human heart can hold
Respond unto the devil's bait
 Of Gold.

When God created Gold to be
 For our adorning fit,
I little think he dreamed that we
 Would come to worship it.
But...Read more of this...

Devils

by Alexander Pushkin
 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.

-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We...Read more of this...

Saving a Train

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1869, and on the 19th of November,
Which the people in Southern Germany will long remember,
The great rain-storm which for twenty hours did pour down,
That the rivers were overflowed and petty streams all around. 

The rain fell in such torrents as had never been seen before,
That it seemed like a second deluge, the mighty torrents'...Read more of this...

Captivity

by Robert William Service
 O meadow lark, so wild and free,
It cannot be, it cannot be,
That men to merchandise your spell
Do close you in a wicker hell!

O hedgerow thrush so mad with glee,
it cannot be, it cannot be,
They rape you from your hawthorn foam
To make a cell of steel your home!

O blackbird in the orchard tree,
In cannot be, it cannot be,
That devils in...Read more of this...

The Lost Leader

by Robert Browning
 Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat— 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple,...Read more of this...

The Blind And The Dead

by Robert William Service
 She lay like a saint on her copper couch;
 Like an angel asleep she lay,
In the stare of the ghoulish folks that slouch
 Past the Dead and sneak away.

Then came old Jules of the sightless gaze,
 Who begged in the streets for bread.
Each day he had come for a year of days,
 And groped his way to the Dead.

"What's...Read more of this...

The Homebody

by Dorothy Parker
 There still are kindly things for me to know,
Who am afraid to dream, afraid to feel-
This little chair of scrubbed and sturdy deal,
This easy book, this fire, sedate and slow.
And I shall stay with them, nor cry the woe
Of wounds across my breast that do not heal;
Nor wish that Beauty drew a duller steel,
Since I am sworn to meet...Read more of this...

Heretics Tragedy The

by Robert Browning
 A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE.

ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAID JODOCUS-BY-THE-BAR,
YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, _Virgilius._ 
AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG 
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALES. GAVISUS
ERAM, _Jessides._

(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from
Flemish brain to brain, during the course of
a couple...Read more of this...

damsel flies

by Rg Gregory
 certain creatures it seems are never seen 
straight on - they occupy the corner of the eye
once sensed (a second look) they're gone
the damsel even more so than the dragon-fly

she's a tough cookie for all her slender flutters
huge eyes strong jaws belie her evanescence
the kind of female to leave love's lisps in tatters
don't get sucked in by her immaculate...Read more of this...

The Laboratory

by Robert Browning
 ANCIEN REGIME

I

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze through these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy— 
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

II

He is with her; and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to...Read more of this...

Many red devils ran from my heart

by Stephen Crane
 Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page,
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart....Read more of this...

Clancy Of The Mounted Police

by Robert William Service
 In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail--
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail"--
Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-turrets freeze,
Half round the world, if need there be, on...Read more of this...

87. The Twa Dogs

by Robert Burns
 ’TWAS 1 in that place o’ Scotland’s isle,
That bears the name o’ auld King Coil,
Upon a bonie day in June,
When wearin’ thro’ the afternoon,
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
Forgather’d ance upon a time.
 The first I’ll name, they ca’d him Caesar,
Was keepit for His Honor’s pleasure:
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,
Shew’d he was nane o’...Read more of this...

La Solitude de St. Amant

by Katherine Philips
 1

O! Solitude, my sweetest choice
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult, and from noise,
How you my restless thoughts delight!
O Heavens! what content is mine,
To see those trees which have appear'd
From the nativity of Time,
And which hall ages have rever'd,
To look to-day as fresh and green,
As when their beauties first were seen!


2

A cheerful wind does court them so,
And with such...Read more of this...

Sonnet XV: Since to Obtain Thee

by Michael Drayton
 His Remedy for Love

Since to obtain thee nothing will be stead, 
I have a med'cine that shall cure my love, 
The powder of her heart dried, when she is dead, 
That gold nor honor ne'er had power to move, 
Mixt with her tears, that ne'er her true-love crost 
Nor at fifteen ne'er long'd to be a bride, 
Boil'd with...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Father OHart

by William Butler Yeats
 Good Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.

In trust took he John's lands;
Sleiveens were all his race;
And he gave them as dowers to his daughters.
And they married beyond their place.

But Father John went up,
And Father John went down;
And he wore small holes in his Shoes,
And he wore large...Read more of this...

Poor Earth

by Elinor Wylie
 It is not heaven: bitter seed 
Leavens its entrails with despair 
It is a star where dragons breed: 
Devils have a footing there.

The sky has bent it out of shape; 
The sun has strapped it to his wheel; 
Its course is crooked to escape 
Traps and gins of stone and steel.

It balances on air, and spins 
Snared by strong...Read more of this...

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