Famous Fireplace Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Long Small Room

by Edward Thomas
 THE long small room that showed willows in the west 
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, 
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed 
What need or accident made them so build. 

Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped 
In from the ivy round the casement thick. 
Of all they saw and heard there...Read more of this...

A Visit

by Margaret Atwood
 Gone are the days
when you could walk on water.
When you could walk.

The days are gone.
Only one day remains,
the one you're in.

The memory is no friend.
It can only tell you
what you no longer have:

a left hand you can use,
two feet that walk.
All the brain's gadgets.

Hello, hello.
The one hand that still works
grips, won't let go.

That is not a train.
There is no...Read more of this...

Ashes

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The fireplace
was eager
to put a fullstop,
in the sentence
where the road
of my dreams
stuck
upon the word of happiness
with sparkles
of wet logs
I collected
from the inside of me
that I dared
to turn to ashes....Read more of this...

The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus

by Ogden Nash
 In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.


In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come...Read more of this...

Tsushima Screen

by Joseph Brodsky
The perilous blue sun follows with its slant eyes
masts of the shuddered grove steaming up to capsize
in the frozen straits of Epiphany. February has fewer
days than the other months; therefore it's morecruel
than the rest. Dearest it's more sound
to wrap up our sailing round
the globe with habitual naval grace 
moving your cot to the fireplace
where our dreadnought is going under
in great...Read more of this...

Eden in Winter

by Vachel Lindsay
 [Supposed to be chanted to some rude instrument at a modern fireplace]


Chant we the story now 
Tho' in a house we sleep; 
Tho' by a hearth of coals 
Vigil to-night we keep. 
Chant we the story now, 
Of the vague love we knew 
When I from out the sea 
Rose to the feet of you. 

Bird from the cliffs...Read more of this...

The Wood-Pile

by Robert Frost
 Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther- and we shall see'.
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tail slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a...Read more of this...

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...

to the seaside

by Rg Gregory
 to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind

to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands

to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel

to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw

(to the...Read more of this...

Duello

by Robert William Service
 A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
They each would fire a single shot
In room of darkness pitchy,
And who was killed and who was not
Would hang on fingers twitchy.

The room was bare and dark as death,
And each ferocious fighter
Could hear his fierce opponent's breath
And clutched his pistol tighter.
The Gaston...Read more of this...

For K. J. Leaving and Coming Back

by Marilyn Hacker
 August First: it was a year ago
we drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert
to open the house in St. Guiraud

rented unseen. I'd stay; you'd go; that's where
our paths diverged. I'd settle down to work,
you'd start the next month of your Wanderjahr.

I turned the iron key in the rusted lock
(it came, like a detective-story clue,
in a manila envelope, postmarked

elsewhere, unmarked otherwise) while you
stood...Read more of this...

The Shanty On The Rise

by Henry Lawson
 When the caravans of wool-teams climbed the ranges from the West, 
On a spur among the mountains stood `The Bullock-drivers' Rest'; 
It was built of bark and saplings, and was rather rough inside, 
But 'twas good enough for bushmen in the careless days that died -- 
Just a quiet little shanty kept by `Something-in-Disguise', 
As the bushmen called the...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant...Read more of this...

The Bunk-House Orchestra

by Badger Clark
  Wrangle up your mouth-harps, drag your banjo out,
  Tune your old guitarra till she twangs right stout,
  For the snow is on the mountains and the wind is on the plain,
  But we'll cut the chimney's moanin' with a livelier refrain.

    _Shinin' 'dobe fireplace, shadows on the wall--_
    _(See...Read more of this...

The Room Of My Life

by Anne Sexton
 Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

The Palace and the Hut XXIX

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One


As night fell and the light glittered in the great house, the servants stood at the massive door awaiting the coming of the guests; and upon their velvet garments shown golden buttons. 

The magnificent carriages drew into the palace park and the nobles entered, dressed in gorgeous raiment and decorated with jewels. The instruments filled the air with...Read more of this...

Arms and the Man

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Young Croesus went to pay his call 
On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall: 
And, though his wound was healed and mended, 
He hoped he’d get his leave extended. 

The waiting-room was dark and bare.
He eyed a neat-framed notice there 
Above the fireplace hung to show 
Disabled heroes where to go 
For arms and legs; with scale of price, 
And words...Read more of this...

A Drowsy Day

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The air is dark, the sky is gray,
The misty shadows come and go,
And here within my dusky room
Each chair looks ghostly in the gloom.
Outside the rain falls cold and slow—
Half-stinging drops, half-blinding spray.
Each slightest sound is magnified,
For drowsy quiet holds her reign;
The burnt stick in the fireplace breaks,
The nodding cat with start awakes,
And then to sleep drops off again,
Unheeding Towser...Read more of this...

The Story Of Our Lives

by Mark Strand
 1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
There is no one there,
no sound of anything.
The tress are heavy with leaves,
the parked cars never move.
We keep turning the pages, hoping for something,
something like mercy or change,
a black line that would bind us
or keep us apart.
The way it is, it...Read more of this...

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