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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 Shakespeare, William
...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...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...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 ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
 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 looki...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...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 Alighieri, Dante
...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 ...Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...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...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...r 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, ...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...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 Milton, John
...the Seraphim 
Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal adored 
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed, 
Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe 
The current of his fury thus opposed. 
O argument blasphemous, false, and proud! 
Words which no ear ever to hear in Heaven 
Expected, least of all from thee, Ingrate, 
In place thyself so high above thy peers. 
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn 
The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn, 
That to his only Son, by right...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...
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 nob...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...uldn’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.
...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...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 conquer...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...ts that stir 
And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? 

Or do you hope, when sing the violins, 
And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, 
To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, 
And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? 

Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! 
Eternal alembic of antique distress! 
Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides 
The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. 

And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, 
Am...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...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 Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...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 ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...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 Blake, William
...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...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...g 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 Byron, George (Lord)
...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 porte...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...nbearably 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
...Read more of this...

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