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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A Lovers Complaint

...ame in me remains,
By how much of me their reproach contains.

''Among the many that mine eyes have seen,
Not one whose flame my heart so much as warm'd,
Or my affection put to the smallest teen,
Or any of my leisures ever charm'd:
Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was harm'd;
Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,
And reign'd, commanding in his monarchy.

''Look here, what tributes wounded fancies sent me,
Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood;
Figuring that the...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Beowulf (Modern English)

...illed and dealt out rings,
riches at his feastings. The hall towered there,
high and horn-wide, awaiting the whelming flames,
the hateful tongues. It was not so long yet
until the blade-hatred must awaken sworn in-laws
after their slaughtering malice. (ll. 74-85)

Then wretchedly a mighty monster
suffered for a space, he who dwelt in darkness,
every day hearing the joy loud in the hall.
The voice of harps was there and the ringing song
of the scop. One spoke who kn...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...was silent.

In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the farmer
Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths
Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him,
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic,
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into darkness.
Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair
Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the dresser
Caught and reflecte...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Howl

...er the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an ...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Humanitad

...is somewhere, though the stormy sea
Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ''Tis not in me.'

To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
In natural honour, not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Inferno (English)

...be powerful. God in me 
 Is gracious, that the piteous sights I see 
 I share not, nor myself can shrink to feel 
 The flame of all this burning. One there is 
 In height among the Holiest placed, and she 
 - Mercy her name - among God's mysteries 
 Dwells in the midst, and hath the power to see 
 His judgments, and to break them. This sharp 
 I tell thee, when she saw, she called, that so 
 Leaned Lucia toward her while she spake - and said, 
 "One that is faithful to thy n...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Jabberwocky

...the Tumtum tree, 
And stood a while in thought. 

And, as in uffish thought he stood, 
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, 
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
And burbled as it came! 

One two! One two! And through and through 
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
He went galumphing back. 
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" 
He chortled in his joy....Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Lara

...Such insult from a stranger, doubly sore, 
The colour of young Kaled went and came, 
The lip of ashes, and the cheek of flame; 
And o'er his brow the dampening heart-drops threw 
The sickening iciness of that cold dew 
That rises as the busy bosom sinks 
With heavy thoughts from which reflection shrinks. 
Yes — there be things which we must dream and dare 
And execute ere thought be half aware: 
Whate'er might Kaled's be, it was enow 
To seal his lip, but agonise his brow. 
H...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Love

...;Whatever stirs this mortal Frame,  All are but Ministers of Love,    And feed his sacred flame.   Oft in my waking dreams do I  Live o'er again that happy hour,  When midway on the Mount I lay    Beside the Ruin'd Tower.   The Moonshine stealing o'er the scene  Had blended with the Lights of Eve;  And she was there, my Hope, my Joy,   &nb...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Ode To Silence

...come from temples where her altars are,
From groves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wed...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Ravenna

...
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago! - it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it was - and by rich flowering vines,
Dark olive-groves and noble fores...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Snow

...t couldn’t stir so sensitively poised
A thing as that. It couldn’t reach the lamp
To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
Or blow a rumple in the collie’s coat.
You make a little foursquare block of air,
Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all
The illimitable dark and cold and storm,
And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,
And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;
Though for all anyone can tell, repose
May be the thing you haven’t, yet you give it.
So false...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Ballad of the White Horse

...ose gold lute had a string
That sighed like all desire.

The Earls of the Great Army
That no men born could tire,
Whose flames anear him or aloof
Took hold of towers or walls of proof,
Fire over Glastonbury roof
And out on Ely, fire.

And Guthrum heard the soldiers' tale
And bade the stranger play;
Not harshly, but as one on high,
On a marble pillar in the sky,
Who sees all folk that live and die--
Pigmy and far away.

And Alfred, King of Wessex,
Looked on his conqueror--
And...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Growth of Love

...ght gave tongue to truth 
Or say hath flaunting summer a device
To match our midnight revelry, that rang
With steel and flame along the snow-girt ice?
Or when we hark't to nightingales that sang
On dewy eves in spring, did they entice
To gentler love than winter's icy fang? 

11
There's many a would-be poet at this hour,
Rhymes of a love that he hath never woo'd,
And o'er his lamplit desk in solitude
Deems that he sitteth in the Muses' bower:
And some the flames of earthly lo...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Holy Grail

...wore the stone, 
A holy maid; though never maiden glowed, 
But that was in her earlier maidenhood, 
With such a fervent flame of human love, 
Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot 
Only to holy things; to prayer and praise 
She gave herself, to fast and alms. And yet, 
Nun as she was, the scandal of the Court, 
Sin against Arthur and the Table Round, 
And the strange sound of an adulterous race, 
Across the iron grating of her cell 
Beat, and she prayed and fasted all ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lady of the Lake

...North.
     One only passion unrevealed
     With maiden pride the maid concealed,
     Yet not less purely felt the flame;—
     O, need I tell that passion's name?
     XX.

     Impatient of the silent horn,
     Now on the gale her voice was borne:—
     'Father!' she cried; the rocks around
     Loved to prolong the gentle sound.
     Awhile she paused, no answer came;—
     'Malcolm, was thine the blast?' the name
     Less resolutely uttered fell,
     Th...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...t he knows
better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.


A Memorable Fancy

Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
The worship of God is. Honouring his gifts in other men
each according to his genius. and loving the [PL 23] greatest men
best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there
is no other God.
The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
hims...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Triumph of Life

...icing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smil...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Vision of Judgment

...r his keys; when, lo! there came 
A wondrous noise he had not heard of late — 
A rushing sound of wind, and stream, and flame; 
In short, a roar of things extremely great, 
Which would have made aught save a saint exclaim; 
But he, with first a start and then a wink, 
Said, 'There's another star gone out, I think!' 

XVII 

But ere he could return to his repose, 
A cherub flapp'd his right wing o'er his eyes — 
At which St. Peter yawn'd, and rubb'd his hose: 
'Saint porter,' ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

White Flock

...erous
Unbearably as though ¡®t were red hot wine..
And now the wind, all redolent and heated,
In perfect vigor has enflamed my mind.



x x x

Oh, this was a cold day
In Peter's wonderful town!
The shadow grew dense, and the sundown
Like purple fire lay.

Let him not want my eyes fair
Prophetic and never-changing
All life long verse he'll be catching -
My conceited lips' empty prayer.



x x x

This way I prayed: "Slake the dumb thirst
Of singing w...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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