Famous Extinct Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Extinct poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous extinct poems. These examples illustrate what a famous extinct poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Nash, Ogden
...Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion --
A statesman's Embryo --
The Boys that whistled are extinct --
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect --...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...the sky,
But their bodies remain below
To pursue the Cain who each has slain
And harry him to and fro.
When life is extinct each corpse is linked
To its gibbering murderer,
As a chicken is bound with wire around
The neck of a killer cur.
Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite
(He tastes the poison now),
And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood
With horns upon its brow.
Up sashays Nan with her feathery fan
From Floradora bright;
She never hung for Caesar Young
But she'...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...hat night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished -
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourn...Read more of this...
by
Clampitt, Amy
...A vagueness comes over everything,
as though proving color and contour
alike dispensable: the lighthouse
extinct, the islands' spruce-tips
drunk up like milk in the
universal emulsion; houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.
Tactile
definition, however, has not been
totally banished: hanging
tassel by tassel, panicled
foxtail and needlegrass,
dropseed, furred hawkweed,
and last season's rose-hips
are ve...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...Although the aepyornis
or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
with them in size--the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is
a symbol of justice.
This bird watches his chicks with
a maternal concentration-and he's
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks--his legs
their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...How Human Nature dotes
On what it can't detect.
The moment that a Plot is plumbed
Prospective is extinct --
Prospective is the friend
Reserved for us to know
When Constancy is clarified
Of Curiosity --
Of subjects that resist
Redoubtablest is this
Where go we --
Go we anywhere
Creation after this?...Read more of this...
by
Gray, Thomas
...r,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic Train be there
To soften, not to wound my heart.
The gen'rous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are, to feel, and know myself a Man....Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...r dawns in sheen,
After long darkness rude,
Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,
With happier zeal pursued.
'With hope extinct and brow composed
I mark'd the present die;
Its term of life was nearly closed,
Yet it had more than I.
'But thou, though to the world's new hour
Thou come with aspect marr'd,
Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power,
Which best befits its bard--
'Though more than half thy years be past,
And spent thy youthful prime;
Though, round thy firmer manh...Read more of this...
by
Cheney-Coker, Syl
...hall be remembered:
the curse on the bellwether, crumbled destinies,
although it was possible, once again,
like some extinct creatures, to wish for another life.
After the charnel house, what was this green pasture
we were promised, when impatient like thirsty cadavers,
we hurried that morning to crown the new emperor,
who was really unveiling his ancient lust?
Even so, someone was saying a new king deserves
vestal virgins, white roosters and the finest harvest—
...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...venly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o'erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ave seen,
And death ensue? then I shall be no more!
And Adam, wedded to another Eve,
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think! Confirmed then I resolve,
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life.
So saying, from the tree her step she turned;
But first low reverence done, as to the Power
That dwelt within, whose presence had infused
Into the plant sciential sap...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...n!
Blind among enemies, O worse then chains,
Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age!
Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd,
Inferiour to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,
They creep, yet see, I dark in light expos'd
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I se...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana—ended the quest of the Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind—extinct;
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone—Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed—vanish’d the turrets that Usk reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights—Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad—all
gone—dissolv’d utterly, like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass’d! for us, ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...yielding to his speed,)
Half hoping, half despairing, to the scene
Of wonder-waking anguish, suddenly
The torches were extinct; and second night
Came doubly hideous, while the hollow tongues
Of cavern'd winds, with melancholy sound
Increas'd the HERMIT'S fears. Four freezing hours
He watch'd and pray'd: and now the glimm'ring dawn
Peer'd on the Eastern Summits; (the blue light
Shedding cold lustre on the colder brows
Of Alpine desarts;) while the filmy wing
Of weeping Tw...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...nd now again the cavalcade
Pass'd slowly near the upland glade;--
But HE was dark, and dark the scene,
The torches long extinct had been;
He call'd, but, in the stormy hour,
His feeble voice had lost its pow'r,
'Till, near a tree, beside the flood,
A night-bewilder'd Trav'ller stood.
The LASCAR now with transport ran
"Stop ! stop !" he cried--with accents bold;
The Trav'ller was a fearful man--
And next his life he priz'd his gold!--
He heard the wand'rer madly cry;
He h...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...Heiresses indeed they are.
This ancient Yew three hundred Years,
Has been possess'd by Lineal Heirs:
The Males extinct, now All is Theirs.
I hope I've done their Beauties right,
Whose Eyes outshine the Stars by Night;
Their Muffs and Tippets too are White.
The King of Cedars wav'd his Power,
And swore he'd fast ev'n from that Hour,
Ere he'd such Lady Birds devour.
Th' Agreement seal'd, on either part,
The Owl now promis'd, from her Heart,
All ...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing ...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
like the mouth of an extinct volcano.
Not one,
not five--
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his stick,
you quickly join the flock
and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
I mean you're strangest creature on earth--
even stranger than the fish
that couldn't see the ocean for the water.
A...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...>)
Once done, his soul was so betossed,
It found no more the force it lost:
Hope was his only drink and food,
And hope extinct, decay ensued.
And, living long so closely penned,
He had not kept a single friend;
He dwindled thin as phantoms be,
And drooped to death in poverty....
Meantime his schoolmate had gone out
To join the fortune-finding rout;
He liked the winnings of the mart,
But wearied of the working part.
He turned to seek a privy lair,
N...Read more of this...
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