Famous Flame Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Flame poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous flame poems. These examples illustrate what a famous flame poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Kenneth Patchen
So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
To establish problem
To ignore solutions
To listen to no one
To omit nothing
To contradict everything
To generate the free brain
To bear no cross
To take part in no crucifixion
To tinkle a warning when mankind strays
To...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
BURNING our hearts out with longing
The daylight passed:
Millions and millions together,
The stars at last!
Purple the woods where the dewdrops,
Pearly and grey,
Wash in the cool from our faces
The flame of day.
Glory and shadow grow one in
The hazel wood:
Laughter and peace in the stillness
Together brood.
Hopes all unearthly are thronging
In hearts of earth:
Tongues of the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
My love is at the apogee of its flame. The beauty
of the one who captivates my soul [the Divinity] is complete.
My heart speaks, but my tongue remains mute,
refusing to express my sentiments. Great God! Has one
ever seen aught more strange? I am devoured by thirst,
and before me flows a fresh and limpid draught!
344...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,
There was her place. No matter what men said,
No matter what she was; living or dead,
Faithful or not,he loved her all the same.
The story was as old as human shame,
But ever since that lonely night she fled,
With books to blind him, he had only read
The story of the ashes and the...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
And its golden glory fills the western skies.
O...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
It was not when temptation came,
Swiftly and blastingly as flame,
And seared me white with burning scars;
When I stood up for age-long wars
And held the very Fiend at grips;
When all my mutinous body rose
To range itself beside my foes,
And, like a greyhound in the slips,
The Beast that dwells within me roared,
Lunging...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
I FAIN would leave the tender songs
I sang to you of old,
Thinking the oft-sung beauty wrongs
The magic never told.
And touch no more the thoughts, the moods,
That win the easy praise;
But venture in the untrodden woods
To carve the future ways.
Though far or strange or cold appear
The shadowy things I tell,
Within the heart the hidden seer
...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My garden hath a slender path
With ivy overgrown,
A secret place where once would pace
A pot all alone;
I see him now with fretted brow,
Plunged deep in thought;
And sometimes he would write maybe,
And sometimes he would not.
A verse a day he used to say
Keeps worry from the door;
Without the stink of printer's ink
How life would be a bore!
And so from chime...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I was Mojeska's leading man
And famous parts I used to play,
But now I do the best I can
To earn my bread from day to day;
Here in this Burg of Breaking Hears,
Where one wins as a thousand fail,
I play a score of scurvy parts
Till Time writes Finis to my tale.
My wife is dead, my daughter wed,
With heaps of trouble of...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"Hae ye heard whit ma auld mither's postit tae me?
It fair maks me hamesick," says Private McPhee.
"And whit did she send ye?" says Private McPhun,
As he cockit his rifle and bleezed at a Hun.
"A haggis! A Haggis!" says Private McPhee;
"The brawest big haggis I ever did see.
And think! it's the morn when fond memory turns
Tae haggis and whuskey--the Birthday...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Seymour Bridges
WHEN from the craggy mountain's pathless steep,
Whose flinty brow hangs o'er the raging sea,
My wand'ring eye beholds the foamy deep,
I mark the restless surgeand think of THEE.
The curling waves, the passing breezes move,
Changing and treach'rous as the breath of LOVE;
The "sad similitude" awakes my smart,
And thy dear image twines about my heart.
When at...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
BY the bivouac’s fitful flame,
A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;—but first I note,
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,
The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire—the silence;
Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving;
The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The Divine Perfections.
How shall I praise th' eternal God,
That infinite Unknown?
Who can ascend his high abode,
Or venture near his throne?
[The great Invisible! he dwells
Concealed in dazzling light;
But his all-searching eye reveals
The secrets of the night.
Those watchful eyes that never sleep
Survey the world around
His wisdom is a boundless deep
Where all our thoughts are drowned.]
[Speak we of strength? his arm is...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light,
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;
The holy brothers pass before my sight,
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.
They keep me from all sin and error grave,
They set me in the path whence Beauty came;
They are my servants, and I am their slave,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The gray of the sea, and the gray of the sky,
A glimpse of the moon like a half-closed eye.
The gleam on the waves and the light on the land,[Pg 94]
A thrill in my heart,—and—my sweetheart's hand.
She turned from the sea with a woman's grace,
And the light fell soft on her upturned face,
And I thought of the flood-tide of...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
"Oh! Love," they said, "is King of Kings,
And Triumph is his crown.
Earth fades in flame before his wings,
And Sun and Moon bow down." --
But that, I knew, would never do;
And Heaven is all too high.
So whenever I meet a Queen, I said,
I will not catch her eye.
"Oh! Love," they said, and "Love," they said,
"The gift of Love is this;
A...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,
Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...
by
Osip Mandelstam
A flame is in my blood
burning dry life, to the bone.
I do not sing of stone,
now, I sing of wood.
It is light and coarse:
made of a single spar,
the oak’s deep heart,
and the fisherman’s oar.
Drive them deep, the piles:
hammer them in tight,
around wooden Paradise,
where everything is light....Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
Sinuously winding through the room
On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, --
Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume
The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.
Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall,
Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through
With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall.
Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue....Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
Feed a flame within, which so torments me
That it both pains my heart, and yet contains me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die than once remove it.
Yet he, for whom I grieve, shall never know it;
My tongue does not betray, nor my eyes show it.
Not a...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
To give the glow-worm light?
Or, on...Read more of this...
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