Famous Fateful Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Runnable Stag

..., a stag, a stag, 
A runnable stag in a jewell'd bed, 
Under the sheltering ocean dead, 
A stag, a runnable stag.

So a fateful hope lit up his eye, 
And he open'd his nostrils wide again, 
And he toss'd his branching antlers high 
As he headed the hunt down the Charlock glen, 
As he raced down the echoing glen 
For five miles more, the stag, the stag, 
For twenty miles, and five and five, 
Not to be caught now, dead or alive, 
The stag, the runnable stag.

Three hundred gent...Read more of this...
by Davidson, John


Battle Hymn of the Republic

...of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the wine press, where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He hath loosed the fateful lightnings of his terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
I have seen him in the watchfires of an hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
I have read a burning Gospel writ in fiery rows of steel,
As ye deal with...Read more of this...
by Howe, Julia Ward

Bon Voyage

...ll 
In the event.

Told of his own deceit 
By many a tongue, 
Flayed for his long defeat 
By being young, 
Lured by the fateful sweet
Of songs unsung— 

Knowing it in his heart, 
But knowing not 
The secret of an art 
That few forgot,
He played the twinkling part 
That was his lot. 

And when the twinkle died, 
As twinkles do, 
He pushed himself aside
And out of view: 
Out with the wind and tide, 
Before we knew....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Custer

...l and in none confides; 
But slowly weaves about the foe a net
Which leaves them wholly at his mercy, yet
He strikes no fateful blow; he takes no life, 
And holds in check his men, who pant for bloody strife.



XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate, 
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate. 
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot, 
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wi...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Eureka

...leep their last.

About the streets of Melbourne town the sound of bells is borne
That call the citizens to prayer that fateful Sabbath morn;
But there upon Eureka's hill, a hundred miles away,
The diggers' forms lie white and still above the blood-stained clay.
The bells that toll the diggers' death might also ring a knell
For those few gallant soldiers, dead, who did their duty well.
The sight of murdered heroes is to hero-hearts a goad,
A thousand men are up in arms upon t...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry


Eviradnus

...
 Must consecrate her noble Margrave race. 
 Thus in the weird and old ancestral tower 
 For Mahaud now has come the fateful hour, 
 The lonely supper which her state decrees. 
 What matters this to flowers, and birds, and trees, 
 And clouds and fountains? That the people may 
 Still bear their yoke—have kings to rule alway? 
 The water flows, the wind in passing by 
 In murmuring tones takes up the questioning cry. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE BANQUET HALL. 
 
 The old s...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Exit

...fall, 
May we who are alive be slow 
To tell what we shall never know. 

For penance he would not confess, 
And for the fateful emptiness
Of early triumph undermined, 
May we now venture to be kind....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

God fashioned the ship of the world carefully

...the hull and the sails,
Held He the rudder
Ready for adjustment.
Erect stood He, scanning His work proudly.
Then -- at fateful time -- a wrong called,
And God turned, heeding.
Lo, the ship, at this opportunity, slipped slyly,
Making cunning noiseless travel down the ways.
So that, forever rudderless, it went upon the seas
Going ridiculous voyages,
Making quaint progress,
Turning as with serious purpose
Before stupid winds.
And there were many in the sky
Who laughed at this t...Read more of this...
by Crane, Stephen

He who was born

...
We are struck dumb: the toxsin's pressure
Has made us tightly close lips.
In living hearts, once full of pleasure,
The fateful desert now sleeps.

And let the crying ravens soar 
Right over our death-bed,
May those who were striving more, 
O God, behold Thy Kingdom's Great!...Read more of this...
by Blok, Aleksandr

Henry the Seventh

...t another rebellion before he arrived 
And take the wind out of his sails.

And so Lambert Simnel's rebellion 
Made its fateful debut in the North 
Experts disagree who he made out to be, 
John the Second or Richard the Fourth.

T 'was surprising how many believed him
They flocked to his flag like one man,
For in them days the folk would do owt for a change,
And their motto was, " San fairy ann."

It were quite a success this rebellion
Till t'were routed by Henry at Stoke,
An...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott

I Go Back To The House For A Book

...inch into the future,
and not nearly as well-versed as I
in the love poems of Ovid —
I who went back to the house
that fateful winter morning and got the book....Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy

Jeanne dArc Returns

...at hast thou done, O womanhood of France,
Mother and daughter, sister, sweetheart, wife,
What hast thou done, amid this fateful strife,
To prove the pride of thine inheritance
In this fair land of freedom and romance?
I hear thy voice with tears and courage rife,--
Smiling against the swords that seek thy life,--
Make answer in a noble utterance:
"I give France all I have, and all she asks.
Would it were more! Ah, let her ask and take:
My hands to nurse her wounded, do her ta...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van

O Sing Fair Lady When With Me

...The steppe, the night - and with the moon
Lines of a far, unhappy lass.

Forgetting at the sight of you
That shadow fateful, shadow dear,
I hear you singing - and anew
I picture it before me, here.

O sing, fair lady, when with me
Sad songs of Georgia no more:
They bring into my memory
Another life, a distant shore....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander

Patriotism 02 Nelson Pitt Fox

...is dangerous post he stood;
Each call for needful rest repell'd,
With dying hand the rudder held,
Till in his fall with fateful sway
The steerage of the realm gave way.
Then--while on Britain's thousand plains
One polluted church remains,
Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around
The bloody tocsin's maddening sound,
But still upon the hallow'd day
Convoke the swains to praise and pray;
While faith and civil peace are dear,
Grace this cold marble with a tear:--
He who preserved t...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

Song of the Redwood-Tree

...a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term has come. 

2
Along the northern coast, 
Just back from the rock-bound shore, and the caves,
In the saline air from the sea, in the Mendocino...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Symphonic Studies (After Schumann)

...rmony 
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. 
Shall we not call im Prospero who held 
In his enchanted hands the fateful key 
Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, 
And with controlling wand our spirits spelled, 
With him to wander by a sun-bright shore, 
To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly 
With disembodied Ariel once more 
Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh 
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud, 
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud. 


I

Fl...Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma

The Lady of the Lake

...the living and the dead,
     Is gifted beyond nature's law
     Had e'er survived to say he saw.
     At length the fateful answer came
     In characters of living flame!
     Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll,
     But borne and branded on my soul:—
     WHICH SPILLS THE FOREMOST FOEMAN'S LIFE,
     THAT PARTY CONQUERS IN THE STRIFE.'
     VII.

     'Thanks, Brian, for thy zeal and care!
     Good is thine augury, and fair.
     Clan-Alpine ne'er in bat...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Negro Girl

...While on her DRACO dear
She madly call'd, but call'd in vain,
No sound could DRACO hear,
Save the shrill yelling of the fateful blast,
While ev'ry Seaman's heart, quick shudder'd as it past.


III. 

White were the billows, wide display'd
The clouds were black and low;
The Bittern shriek'd, a gliding shade
Seem'd o'er the waves to go !
The livid flash illum'd the clam'rous main,
While ZELMA pour'd, unmark'd, her melancholy strain.


IV. 

"Be still!" she cried, "loud tempest ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

To the maiden

...people
Singing.

To the sailor, wrecked,
The sea was dead grey walls
Superlative in vacancy,
Upon which nevertheless at fateful time
Was written
The grim hatred of nature....Read more of this...
by Crane, Stephen

When Frankenstein was just a kid

...came a bit more green.
On chives and chard he loved to chew,
and Brussels sprouts and peppers too,
until he ate that fateful bean
that turned his skin completely green.
He turned all green, and stayed that way,
and now he frightens folks away.
Poor Frankenstein, his tale is sad,
but things need not have been so bad.
It’s fair to say, if only he
had eaten much less celery,
avoided cabbage, ate no kale,
why, then, we’d have a different tale.
So, mom and dad, I’m he...Read more of this...
by Nesbitt, Kenn

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