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Famous Embers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lehman, David
...heritage of Judaism they are passing along
 to their children.
Have they done as much as they could to keep the old embers
 burning?
Others lead more dramatic lives.
A few go to Israel.
One of them calls Israel "the ultimate concentration camp."
He tells Jewish jokes.
On the plane he gets tipsy, tries to seduce the stewardess.
People in the Midwest keep telling him reminds them of Woody
 Allen.
He wonders what that means. I'm funny? A sort of n...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...e it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - 
He hath awakened from the dream of life - 
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. -We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Co...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ee 
Floats in a mist of light and shade: 
They pass, a flimsy cavalcade, 
And with a weak, remindful glow, 
The falling embers break and fade, 
As one by one the phantoms go. 

Then, with a melancholy glee 
To think where once my fancy strayed, 
I muse on what the years may be 
Whose coming tales are all unsaid, 
Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid 
Within their shadowed niches, grow 

By grim degrees to pick and spade, 
As one by one the phantoms go. 

But then, what ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...rowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage: they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...der, and behold
Those winged steeds, with snorting nostrils bold
Snuff at its faint extreme, and seem to tire,
Dying to embers from their native fire!

 There curl'd a purple mist around them; soon,
It seem'd as when around the pale new moon
Sad Zephyr droops the clouds like weeping willow:
'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow.
For the first time, since he came nigh dead born
From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn
Had he left more forlorn; for the first t...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...st picked up a horseshoe."
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him,
And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:--
"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors
Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us.
What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded
On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate
Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in t...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
..., 
loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie; 
batte col remo qualunque s'adagia . 

The demon Charon, with his eyes like embers, 
by signaling to them, has all embark; 
his oar strikes anyone who stretches out. 


Come d'autunno si levan le foglie 
l'una appresso de l'altra, fin che 'l ramo 
vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie , 

As, in the autumn, leaves detach themselves, 
first one and then the other, till the bough 
sees all its fallen garments on the ground, 


Aen....Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...dabbled with the stain
Of crimson at the bosom of the slain,
And peaceful homes and fortunes ruined--lost
In smoldering embers of the holocaust.
Yet on and on, through years of gloom and strife,
Our country struggled into stronger life;
Till colonies, like footprints in the sand,
Marked Freedom's pathway winding through the land--
And not the footprints to be swept away
Before the storm we hatched in Boston Bay,--
But footprints where the path of war begun
That led to Bun...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...t desire, 
But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire, 
The burning and consuming element, 
But that of ashes and of embers spent, 
In which some living sparks we still discern, 
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. 


What then? Shall we sit idly down and say 
The night hath come; it is no longer day? 
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite 
Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
Something remains for us to do or dare; 
Even the oldest tree some fruit may...Read more of this...

by Naidu, Sarojini
...SEE how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon's throat, 
Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote. 


See the white river that flashes and scintillates, 
Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates. 


Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin's call 
Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall. 


From trellised balconies, languid and luminous 
Faces gleam, veiled in a splendour voluminous. 


Leisurely...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...y?

(Ah, Soul, the sobs of women—the wounded groaning in agony, 
The hiss and crackle of flames—the blacken’d ruins—the embers of cities, 
The dirge and desolation of mankind.) 

4
Now airs antique and medieval fill me! 
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals:
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love, 
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages. 

5
Now the great organ sounds, 
Tremulous—while underneath, (as the...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...rt, -­
To watch that fire whose genial glow
Was formed to comfort and to cheer,
For want of fuel, fading so,
Sinking to embers dull and drear, -­
To see the soft soil turned to stone
For lack of kindly showers, -­
To see those yearnings of the breast,
Pining to bless and to be blessed,
Drop withered, frozen one by one,
Till, centred in itself alone,
It wastes its blighted powers. 

Oh, I have known a wondrous joy
In early friendship's pure delight, -­
A genial bliss that ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...the Concert-Meister gone
With his best violin, the rain being stopped,
Frau Lotta in the kitchen sat alone
Watching the embers which the fire dropped.
The china shone upon the dresser, topped
By polished copper vessels which her skill
Kept brightly burnished. It was very still.
An air from `Orfeo' hummed in her head.
Herr Altgelt had been practising before
The night's performance. Charlotta had plead
With him to stay with her. Even at the door
She'd be...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...Salamis!
These scenes, their story yet unknown;
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your Sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it man...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...wn more tender,
Soothe with their softened tones the slumberous brain.

Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, 
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers
That warm its creeping life-blood till the last.

Dear to its heart is every loving token 
That comes unbidden era its pulse grows cold,
Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken,
Its labors ended and its story told.

Ah, while around us rosy youth...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e, and some
Blazed with ambition's wild, unsteady fire,
And some were burnt i' the sockets black, and some
Were dead as embers when the fire is out.
A curious zone circled the Spectre's waist,
Which seemed with strange device to symbol Time.
It was a silver-gleaming thread of day
Spiral about a jet-black band of night.
This zone seemed ever to contract and all
The frame with momentary spasms heaved
In the strangling traction which did never cease.
I cried unto...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...babbling trill
          Of curses stammered slow;
     Answering with imprecation dread,
     'Sunk be his home in embers red!
     And cursed be the meanest shed
     That o'er shall hide the houseless head
          We doom to want and woe!'
     A sharp and shrieking echo gave,
     Coir-Uriskin, thy goblin cave!
     And the gray pass where birches wave
          On Beala-nam-bo.
     XI.

     Then deeper paused the priest anew,
     And hard his laboring...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...looms.
Then, when the sullen shades of evening close,
Where through the room a blindly- glimmering gleam
They dying embers scatter, far remote
From Mirth's mad shouts, that through th' illumined roof
Resound with festive echo, let me sit,
Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge.
Then let my thought contemplative explore
This fleeting state of things, the vain delights,
The fruitless toils, that still our search elude,
As through the wilderness of life we rove....Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...zed on them, & soon
"All that was seemed as if it had been not,
As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
"Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
As Day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
"Of darkness reillumines even the least
Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
"To move, as one between desire and shame
Suspended, I said--'If, ...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...tomps his Hush 
Puppies through dead brush. Everything's quiet.
She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers
Under the evening samovar, filling 
The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong
Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E 
In the window's black reflection, one finger 
Tendrilling her own breath on the glass. 
Like putting a shell to your ear to hear the sea 
*
When it's really your own red little sparkle, the echo 
Of marc...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs