Famous Fashioning Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Thread of Life

by Christina Rossetti
 I
The irresponsive silence of the land, 
The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 
Speak both one message of one sense to me:--
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand?--
And I am...Read more of this...

Sonnet XL: My Heart the Anvil

by Michael Drayton
 My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; 
My words the hammers fashioning my desire; 
My breast the forge including all the heat; 
Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; 
My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, 
Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; 
Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, 
In grievous passions my...Read more of this...

The Wanderer

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Published in the Gottingen Musen Almanach, 
having been written "to express his feelings and caprices" after 
his separation from Frederica.]

WANDERER.

YOUNG woman, may God bless thee,
Thee, and the sucking infant
Upon thy breast!
Let me, 'gainst this rocky wall,
Neath the elm-tree's shadow,
Lay aside my burden,
Near thee take my rest.

WOMAN.

What vocation leads thee,
While the day is burning,
Up this dusty path?
Bring'st thou goods from...Read more of this...

The Convergence Of The Twain

by Thomas Hardy
 (Lines on the loss of the "Titanic")

 I
 In a solitude of the sea
 Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

 II

 Steel chambers, late the pyres
 Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

 III

 Over the mirrors meant
 To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb,...Read more of this...

Gods Funeral

by Thomas Hardy
 I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my...Read more of this...

Lines On The Loss Of The Titanic

by Thomas Hardy
 In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared...Read more of this...

My Suicide

by Robert William Service
 I've often wondered why
Old chaps who choose to die
In evil passes,
Before themselves they slay,
Invariably they
Take off their glasses?

As I strolled by the Castle cliff
An oldish chap I set my eyes on,
Who stood so singularly stiff
And stark against the blue horizon;
A poet fashioning a sonnet,
I thought - how rapt he labours on it!

And then I blinked and stood astare,
And questioned...Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Philip Levine
 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the...Read more of this...

Searching For Pittsburgh

by Jack Gilbert
 The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night, 
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart 
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it. 
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world. 
Goes deeper, searching for what remains of Pittsburgh 
in me. The rusting mills sprawled gigantically 
along three rivers. The authority of them. 
The...Read more of this...

We to Sigh Instead of Sing

by James Whitcomb Riley
 "Rain and Rain! and rain and rain!" 
Yesterday we muttered 
Grimly as the grim refrain 
That the thunders uttered: 
All the heavens under cloud -- 
All the sunshine sleeping; 
All the grasses limply bowed 
With their weight of weeping.

Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh! 
Never end of sighing; 
Rain and rain for our reply -- 
Hopes half-drowned and...Read more of this...

To the bright east she flies

by Emily Dickinson
 To the bright east she flies,
Brothers of Paradise
Remit her home,
Without a change of wings,
Or Love's convenient things,
Enticed to come.

Fashioning what she is,
Fathoming what she was,
We deem we dream --
And that dissolves the days
Through which existence strays
Homeless at home....Read more of this...

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