Famous Fires Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Behind the Arras

by Bliss Carman
 I like the old house tolerably well, 
Where I must dwell 
Like a familiar gnome; 
And yet I never shall feel quite at home. 
I love to roam. 
Day after day I loiter and explore 
From door to door; 
So many treasures lure 
The curious mind. What histories obscure 
They must immure! 

I hardly know which room I care...Read more of this...

Dream Song 77: Seedy Henry rose up shy

by John Berryman
 Seedy Henry rose up shy in de world
& shaved & swung his barbells, duded Henry up
and p.a.'d poor thousands of persons on topics of grand
moment to Henry, ah to those less & none.
Wif a book of his in either hand
he is stript down to move on.

-”Come away, Mr. Bones.

-”Henry is tired of the winter,
& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy...Read more of this...

A Fairy Tale

by Amy Lowell
 On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a...Read more of this...

Mark Twain and Joan of Arc

by Vachel Lindsay
 When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.

For she is there in armor clad, today,
All the young poets of the wide world say.

Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
Seeing him come against the fires accurst?

Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,
Leading to war our youngest and our best.

The Yankee to...Read more of this...

Autumn Fires

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 In the other gardens 
And all up the vale, 
From the autumn bonfires 
See the smoke trail! 

Pleasant summer over 
And all the summer flowers, 
The red fire blazes, 
The grey smoke towers. 

Sing a song of seasons! 
Something bright in all! 
Flowers in the summer, 
Fires in the fall!...Read more of this...

The Unsung Heroes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country's need,
When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver's cruel greed,
For the men who came from the cornfield, who came from the plough and the flail,
Who rallied round when they heard the sound of the mighty man of the rail.
They laid them down in the valleys, they...Read more of this...

My Indian Summer

by Robert William Service
 Here in the Autumn of my days
My life is mellowed in a haze.
Unpleasant sights are none to clear,
Discordant sounds I hardly hear.
Infirmities like buffers soft
Sustain me tranquilly aloft.
I'm deaf to duffers, blind to bores,
Peace seems to percolate my pores.
I fold my hands, keep quiet mind,
In dogs and children joy I find.
With temper tolerant and mild,
Myself you'd almost think a...Read more of this...

Late Summer Fires

by Les Murray
 The paddocks shave black
with a foam of smoke that stays,
welling out of red-black wounds.

In the white of a drought
this happens. The hardcourt game.
Logs that fume are mostly cattle,

inverted, stubby. Tree stumps are kilns.
Walloped, wiped, hand-pumped,
even this day rolls over, slowly.

At dusk, a family drives sheep 
out through the yellow
of the Aboriginal flag....Read more of this...

The Fires

by Rudyard Kipling
 Men make them fires on the hearth
 Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
 They blow the smoke to me.

Across the high hills and the sea
 And all the changeful skies,
The Four Winds blow the smoke to me
 Till the tears are in my eyes.

Until the tears are in my eyes.
 And my heart is...Read more of this...

The Beacon of Fires

by Aeschylus
AGLEAM -- a gleam -- from Ida's height,
By the Fire-god sent, it came;
From watch to watch it leapt, that light,
As a rider rode the flame!
It shot through the startled sky,
And the torch of that blazing glory
Old Lemnos caught on high,
On its holy promontory,
And sent it on, the jocund sign,
To Athos, Mount of Jove divine.
Wildly the while, it rose from the...Read more of this...

Home Fires

by Carl Sandburg
 IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street … faces … coffee spots … children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks.
They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts,
Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow.
Here the stranger wonders how so many people...Read more of this...

Hohenlinden

by Thomas Campbell
 1 On Linden, when the sun was low,
2 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
3 And dark as winter was the flow
4 Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

5 But Linden saw another sight
6 When the drum beat at dead of night,
7 Commanding fires of death to light
8 The darkness of her scenery.

9 By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
10 Each horseman drew his...Read more of this...

The Morrow Of Grandeur

by Victor Hugo
 ("Non, l'avenir n'est à personne!") 
 
 {V. ii., August, 1832.} 


 Sire, beware, the future's range 
 Is of God alone the power, 
 Naught below but augurs change, 
 E'en with ev'ry passing hour. 
 Future! mighty mystery! 
 All the earthly goods that be, 
 Fortune, glory, war's renown, 
 King or kaiser's sparkling crown, 
...Read more of this...

O you who tremble not at fires of hell,

by Omar Khayyam
O you who tremble not at fires of hell,
Nor wash in water of remorse's well,
When winds of death shall quench your vital torch,
Beware lest earth your guilty dust expel....Read more of this...

Fires Reflection

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection
on some piece of gleaming furniture
that the child remembers so much later
like a revelation.

And if in his later life, one day
wounds him like so many others,
it's because he mistook some risk
or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,
that soon had hauled him 
toward absence complicated
by an overflowing heart.......Read more of this...

Jadis

by Ernest Dowson
 Erewhile, before the world was old, 
When violets grew and celandine, 
In Cupid's train we were enrolled: 
 Erewhile! 
Your little hands were clasped in mine, 
Your head all ruddy and sun-gold 
Lay on my breast which was your shrine, 
And all the tale of love was told: 
Ah, God, that sweet things should decline, 
And fires fade out...Read more of this...

The Task: Book V The Winter Morning Walk (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length...Read more of this...

Demeter And Persephone

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When...Read more of this...

Now Hollow Fires Burn Out to Black

by A E Housman
 Now hollow fires burn out to black, 
And lights are guttering low: 
Square your shoulders, lift your pack, 
And leave your friends and go. 

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread, 
Look not to left nor right: 
In all the endless road you tread 
There's nothing but the night....Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter III

by William Blake
 1. The voice ended, they saw his pale visage
Emerge from the darkness; his hand
On the rock of eternity unclasping
The Book of brass. Rage siez'd the strong

2. Rage, fury, intense indignation
In cataracts of fire blood & gall
In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke:
And enormous forms of energy;
All the seven deadly sins of the soul
In living creations appear'd
In the flames of eternal fury.

3....Read more of this...

The Great Fires

by Jack Gilbert
 Love is apart from all things. 
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it. 
It is not the body that finds love. 
What leads us there is the body. 
What is not love provokes it. 
What is not love quenches it. 
Love lays hold of everything we know. 
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness 
at...Read more of this...

The Wifes Will

by Charlotte Bronte
 Sit still­ a word­ a breath may break 
(As light airs stir a sleeping lake,) 
The glassy calm that soothes my woes, 
The sweet, the deep, the full repose. 
O leave me not ! for ever be 
Thus, more than life itself to me ! 

Yes, close beside thee, let me kneel­ 
Give me thy hand that I may...Read more of this...

An Apology for my fearfull temper

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Tis true of courage I'm no mistress
No Boadicia nor Thalestriss
Nor shall I e'er be famed hereafter
For such a Soul as Cato's Daughter
Nor active valour nor enduring 
Nor leading troops nor forts securing
Like Teckley's wife or Pucell valiant
Will e'er be reckonded for my talent
Who all things fear whilst day is shining
And my own shadow light declining 
And from the Spleen's...Read more of this...

And Yet The Books

by Czeslaw Milosz
 And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away...Read more of this...

The Philosopher

by Emily Brontë
 "Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space - sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again? 

"Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity,
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven, these wild desires,
Could all, or half fulfil;
No threathened hell, with quenchless...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Fires poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace