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Famous Ere Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shakespeare, William
...ory from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.

Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done:
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all ...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...oring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers fore...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...CANTO I


 ONE night, when half my life behind me lay, 
 I wandered from the straight lost path afar. 
 Through the great dark was no releasing way; 
 Above that dark was no relieving star. 
 If yet that terrored night I think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot, 
 I turn my tale to that which ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...lf forgets her feudal chain; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord — 
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored: 
There be bright faces in the busy hall, 
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; 
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays 
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze; 
And gay retainers gather round the hearth, 
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 

II. 

The chief of Lara is return'd again: 
And why had Lara cross'd the bounding...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
..., 
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice 
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, 
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus. Awake, 
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, 
Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight! 
Awake: The morning shines, and the fresh field 
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring 
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove, 
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, 
How nature paints her colours, how the bee 
Sits on th...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...inks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spr...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mount which lured him, rogue,
To buy st...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...e turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norm...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...rmity!   With other ministrations thou, O nature!'  Healest thy wandering and distempered child:  Thou pourest on him thy soft influences.  Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sheets,  Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,  Till he relent, and can no more endure  To be a jarring and a dissonant thing,  Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...who crying, thus began.

Childhood. 

2.1 Ah me! conceiv'd in sin, and born in sorrow,
2.2 A nothing, here to day, but gone to morrow,
2.3 Whose mean beginning, blushing can't reveal,
2.4 But night and darkness must with shame conceal.
2.5 My mother's breeding sickness, I will spare,
2.6 Her nine months' weary burden not declare.
2.7 To shew her bearing pangs, I should do wrong,
2.8 To tell that pain, which can't be told by ton...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...s place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now tha...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ent life of prayer, 
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl 
The helmet in an abbey far away 
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died. 

And one, a fellow-monk among the rest, 
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest, 
And honoured him, and wrought into his heart 
A way by love that wakened love within, 
To answer that which came: and as they sat 
Beneath a world-old yew-tree, darkening half 
The cloisters, on a gustful April morn 
That puffed the swayin...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...WHILOM*, as olde stories tellen us, *formerly
There was a duke that highte* Theseus. *was called 
Of Athens he was lord and governor,
And in his time such a conqueror
That greater was there none under the sun.
Full many a riche country had he won.
What with his wisdom and his chivalry,
He conquer'd all the regne of Feminie,
That whilom was y-cleped Scythia;
And weddede the Queen Hippolyt...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...in.
     Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!
     I.

     The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
     Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
     And deep his midnight lair had made
     In lone Glenartney's hazel shade;
     But when the sun his beacon red
     Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head,
     The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay
     Resounded up the rocky way,
     And faint, from farther distance borne,
     Were heard the clanging hoof a...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...The First Voice 


HE trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea: 

It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat, 

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Th...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...he mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...E 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gr...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...lover, 
I was a traveller, the guest of a week; 
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover', 
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek. 
I have loved England, and still as a stranger, 
Here is my home and I still am alone. 
Now in her hour of trial and danger, 
Only the English are really her own. 

II 
It happened the first evening I was there. 
Some one was giving a ball in Belgrave Square.
At Belgrave Square, that most Victorian spot.—
L...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things