Famous Ember Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Venal Muse

by Charles Baudelaire
 O muse of my heart, lover of palaces, 
Will you bring, when January lets loose its sleet 
And its black evenings without solace, 
An ember to warm my violet feet? 
What will revive your bruised shoulders, 
The nocturnal rays that pierce the shutters? 
When you cannot feel your palace, just your empty billfold, 
How will you harvest the gold...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

The Temple Dancing Girl

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   This passion is but an ember
     Of a Sun, of a Fire, long set;
   I could not live and remember,
     And so I love and forget.

   You say, and the tone is fretful,
     That my mourning days were few,
  ...Read more of this...

Heritage

by Countee Cullen
 What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive...Read more of this...

Lillies in the Fire

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Ah, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without form
Or having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your cold

White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me to-night,
And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped...Read more of this...

Itylus

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,
How can thine heart be full of the spring?
A thousand summers are over and dead.
What hast thou found in the spring to follow?
What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?
What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,
Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,
The soft...Read more of this...

Sentimental Shark

by Robert William Service
 Give me a cabin in the woods
Where not a human soul intrudes;
Where I can sit beside a stream
Beneath a balsam bough and deam,
And every morning see arise
The sun like bird of paradise;
Then go down to the creek and fish
A speckled trout for breakfast dish,
And fry it in an ember fire -
Ah! there's the life of my desire.

Alas! I'm tied...Read more of this...

Soon Our Friends Perish

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 SOON our friends perish,
Soon all we cherish
Fades as days darken - goes as flowers go.
Soon in December
Over an ember,
Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow....Read more of this...

The Children of Lir

by Katharine Tynan
 Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly, 
Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed; 
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early: 
And the day's a...Read more of this...

Cinderella

by Randall Jarrell
 Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up 
In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances, 
The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes 
Draw over an old ember --as the mother 
In a jug of cider-- were a comfort to her. 
They sat by the fire and told each other stories. 

"What men want..." said the godmother softly-- 
How she went...Read more of this...

June Dreams In January

by Sidney Lanier
 "So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon
That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills,
In languid palpitation, half a-swoon
With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills;

"Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale
As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips
Up to the sun, that turn him passion-pale
And then as red as any virgin's lips.

"O tender Darkness, when June-day hath ceased,
-- Faint Odor from the day-flower's...Read more of this...

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
        ...Read more of this...

Sainte-Nitouche

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though not for common praise of him, 
Nor yet for pride or charity, 
Still would I make to Vanderberg 
One tribute for his memory: 

One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass— 
Who neither blamed him in defect 
Nor marveled how it came to pass; 

Or why it ever was that he— 
That Vanderberg,...Read more of this...

September

by Hilaire Belloc
 Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days 
Gleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways, 
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, 
Some crimson poppy of a late delight 
Atoning in its splendor for the flight 
Of summer blooms and joys­
This is September....Read more of this...

On The Sea Wall

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I sit upon the old sea wall,
And watch the shimmering sea,
Where soft and white the moonbeams fall,
Till, in a fantasy,
Some pure white maiden's funeral pall
The strange light seems to me.
The waters break upon the shore
And shiver at my feet,
While I dream old dreams o'er and o'er,
And dim old scenes repeat;
Tho' all have dreamed the same before,
They still seem new and...Read more of this...

Reminder

by D. H. Lawrence
    Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star,
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
    Forth to her field of November.

    And you remember,
How towards the north a red blot on the sky
Burns like a blotch of anxiety
Over the forges,...Read more of this...

Haze

by Carl Sandburg
 KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.

Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.

Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...

A Swimmers Dream

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Somno mollior unda 

I 
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, 
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. 
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, 
Fair and flawless from face to feet, 
Hailed of all when the world was golden, 
Loved of lovers whose names beholden 
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden 
Days more glad than...Read more of this...

Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . .
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.

There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river;...Read more of this...

Lines by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   There were Roses in the hedges, and Sunshine in the sky,
   Red Lilies in the sedges, where the water rippled by,
   A thousand Bulbuls singing, oh, how jubilant they were,
   And a thousand flowers flinging their sweetness on the air.

   But you, who sat beside me, had a shadow...Read more of this...

The Chinese Nightingale

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you...Read more of this...

Ione

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, yes, 't is sweet still to remember,
Though 'twere less painful to forget;
For while my heart glows like an ember,
Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet,
And, oh, my heart is aching yet.
[Pg 32]It is a law of mortal pain
That old wounds, long accounted well,
Beneath the memory's potent spell,
Will wake to life and bleed again.
So 't is with me;...Read more of this...

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