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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Befire the Battle

by Thomas Moore
 By the hope within us springing, 
Herald of to-morrow's strife; 
By that sun, whose light is bringing 
Chains or freedom, death or life -- 
Oh! remember life can be 
No charm for him, who lives not free! 
Like the day-star in the wave, 
Sinks a hero in his grave, 
'Midst the dew-fall of a nation's tears. 

Happy is he...Read more of this...

Night In The Old Home

by Thomas Hardy
 When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, 
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, 
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, 
My perished people who housed them here come back to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy places, 
Now and then bending towards me a glance of...Read more of this...

Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Be loosed by you and not by me,
Will suffer; I have been so true
A vestal to that only pride
Wet wood cannot extinguish, nor
Sand, nor its embers scattered, for,
See all these years, it has not died.

And if indeed, as I dare think,
You cannot push...Read more of this...

Glass

by Robert Francis
 O Man! what Inspiration was thy Guide, 
Who taught thee Light and Air thus to divide; 
To let in all the useful Beams of Day, 
Yet force, as subtil Winds, without thy Shash to stay; 
T'extract from Embers by a strange Device, 
Then polish fair these Flakes of solid Ice; 
Which, silver'd o'er, redouble all in place, 
And give...Read more of this...

Rovers Rest

by Robert William Service
 By parents I would not be pinned,
 Nor in my home abide,
For I was wanton as the wind
 And tameless as the tide;
So scornful of domestic hearth,
 And bordered garden path,
I sought the wilder ways of earth,
 The roads of wrath.

It scares me now to think of how
 Foolhardily I fared;
Though mighty scarred of pelt and pow
 A dozen...Read more of this...

Curfew

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I.

Solemnly, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.

Cover the embers,
And put out the light;
Toil comes with the morning,
And rest with the night.

Dark grow the windows,
And quenched is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,--
All footsteps retire.

No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all!

II.

The book is completed,
And closed, like the day;
And the hand that has written...Read more of this...

To the River Charles

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 River! that in silence windest
Through the meadows, bright and free,
Till at length thy rest thou findest
In the bosom of the sea!

Four long years of mingled feeling,
Half in rest, and half in strife,
I have seen thy waters stealing
Onward, like the stream of life.

Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give...Read more of this...

Ballad by the Fire

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Slowly I smoke and hug my knee, 
The while a witless masquerade 
Of things that only children see 
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...Read more of this...

The Wind of Sorrow

by Henry Van Dyke
 The fire of love was burning, yet so low
That in the dark we scarce could see its rays,
And in the light of perfect-placid days
Nothing but smouldering embers dull and slow.
Vainly, for love's delight, we sought to throw
New pleasures on the pyre to make it blaze:
In life's calm air and tranquil-prosperous ways
We missed the radiant heat of long ago.

Then in...Read more of this...

So soon as our lips touch

by Emile Verhaeren
So soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more luminous together that it would seem as though two Gods loved and united in us.
We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and so renewed by their virgin light that, in their brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.
In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of...Read more of this...

A Commonplace Day

by Thomas Hardy
 The day is turning ghost, 
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, 
 To join the anonymous host 
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe, 
 To one of like degree. 

 I part the fire-gnawed logs, 
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends 
 Upon the shining dogs; 
Further...Read more of this...

The smouldering embers blush --

by Emily Dickinson
 The smouldering embers blush --
Oh Hearts within the Coal
Hast thou survived so many years?
The smouldering embers smile --
Soft stirs the news of Light
The stolid seconds glow
One requisite has Fire that lasts
Prometheus never knew --...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

The Grave-digger

by Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.


Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.


The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...

The Oxen

by Thomas Hardy
 Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
 "Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
 By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
 They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
 To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would...Read more of this...

The Rope-maker

by Emile Verhaeren
In his village grey
At foot of the dykes, that encompass him
With weary weaving of curves and lines
Toward the sea outstretching dim,
The rope-maker, visionary white.
Stepping backwards along the way,
Prudently 'twixt his hands combines
The distant threads, in their twisting play.
That come to him from the infinite.


When day is gone.
Through ardent, weary evenings, yon
The whirr of a wheel can yet be heard;
Something by...Read more of this...

On Growing Old

by John Masefield
 Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying; 
My dog and I are old, too old for roving. 
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying, 
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving. 
I take the book and gather to the fire, 
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute 
The clock ticks to my heart....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...

Unrecorded

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The splendors of a southern sun
  Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
  And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
  And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul—
  Whose glory none can tell.
Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
  Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the...Read more of this...

Our Mother Pocahontas

by Vachel Lindsay
 (Note: — Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)

"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May — did she wonder? does she remember — in the dust — in the cool tombs?" 

CARL SANDBURG. 


I

Powhatan was conqueror,
Powhatan was emperor.
He was akin to wolf and bee,
Brother of the hickory tree.
Son of...Read more of this...

Proud Music of The Storm

by Walt Whitman
 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...

The Master of the Dance

by Vachel Lindsay
 A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher.


I

A master deep-eyed
Ere his manhood was ripe,
He sang like a thrush,
He could play any pipe.
So dull in the school
That he scarcely could spell,
He read but a bit,
And he figured not well.
A bare-footed fool,
Shod only with grace;
Long hair streaming down
Round a...Read more of this...

Good-Night

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Then the bright lamp is carried in, 
The sunless hours again begin; 
O'er all without, in field and lane, 
The haunted night returns again. 

Now we behold the embers flee 
About the firelit hearth; and see 
Our faces painted as we pass, 
Like pictures, on the window glass. 

Must we to bed indeed? Well then, 
Let us arise and...Read more of this...

Adams Curse

by William Butler Yeats
 We sat together at one summer's end, 
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend, 
And you and I, and talked of poetry. 
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe; 
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, 
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught. 
Better go down upon your marrow-bones 
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or...Read more of this...

The Logger

by Robert William Service
 In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
 I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer;
Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
 And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.
The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,
 And I alone a weary vigil keep;
In the sightless, sullen sky I can...Read more of this...

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