Famous Fleshless Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Fleshless poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous fleshless poems. These examples illustrate what a famous fleshless poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ken--Do these cold lips murmur "Father?"
The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear,
Pierces the bones gnawed fleshless by despair,
And the heart's horror stirs the silver hair.
Fresh bleed the fiery wounds
Through all that agonizing heart undone--
Still on the voiceless lips "my Father" sounds,
And still the childless Father murmurs "Son!"
Ice-cold--ice-cold, in that white shroud he lies--
Thy sweet and golden dreams all vanished there--
The sweet and golden n...Read more of this...
by
Cather, Willa
...ght,
Where the beech threw gracious shade
On the cheek of boy and maid:
And the bitter blasts make roar
Through the fleshless sycamore.
White enchantment holds the spring,
Where thou once wert wont to sing,
And the cold hath cut to death
Reeds melodious of thy breath.
He, the rival of thy lyre,
Nightingale with note of fire,
Sings no more; but far away,
From the windy hill-side gray,
Calls the broken note forlorn
Of an aged shepherd's horn.
Still ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...r pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say,...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...>
High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,
With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death,
And crowned with fleshless laughter--some ten steps--
In the half-light--through the dim dawn--advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake no word.
But Gareth spake and all indignantly,
'Fool, for thou hast, men say, the strength of ten,
Canst thou not trust the limbs thy God hath given,
But must, to make the terror of thee more,
Trick thyself out in ghastly...Read more of this...
by
Mandelstam, Osip
...se: sound may
pour out, for them, through their fingers, and overflow:
I don’t remember the word I wished to say,
and a fleshless thought returns to the house of shadow.
The translucent one speaks in another guise,
always the swallow, dear one, Antigone....
on the lips the burning of black ice,
and Stygian sounds in the memory....Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...pressing buttons,
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of virtual reality,
in place of angels
the human imagination
is peopled with foot-ballers
film-stars, media-men,
experts, know-all
television personalities,
animated puppets
with cartoon faces —
To whom can we pray
for release from illusion,
from the world-cave,
but Time the destroyer,
the liberator, the pu...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...>
Then suddenly I saw within the room
The old love, long since lying in its tomb.
It dropped the cerecloth from its fleshless face
And smiled on me, with a remembered grace
That, like the noontide, lit the gloaming gloom.
Upon its shroud there hung the grave’s green mould,
About it hung the odour of the dead;
Yet from its cavernous eyes such light was shed
That all my life seemed gilded, as with gold;
Unto the trembling new love “Go, ” I said,
“I do not need thee...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...verhead,
To bear them Orchestra.
I crave Him grace of Summer Boughs,
If such an Outcast be --
Who never heard that fleshless Chant --
Rise -- solemn -- on the Tree,
As if some Caravan of Sound
Off Deserts, in the Sky,
Had parted Rank,
Then knit, and swept --
In Seamless Company --...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ea
in a promontory of thought i might mistake
the sea-air for a hand brushing my face
for the breeze i think is not so fleshless
nor your fingers so earthy as the rose
and then like an expansion in the blood
sometimes in the restless reflections of the boat
leaning in company across the rail i feel
another sea coming in at the elbows of your coat...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...eir giant-bodies tower above,
High o'er the puny sons of earth.
With loins in mantle black concealed,
Within their fleshless bands they wield
The torch, that with a dull red glows,--
While in their cheek no life-blood flows;
And where the hair is floating wide
And loving, round a mortal brow,
Here snakes and adders are descried,
Whose bellies swell with poison now.
And, standing in a fearful ring,
The dread and solemn chant they sing,
That through the bosom thrillin...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...but the stake holds them
still
in line. The breeze goes down, and the round stars shine,
for the stake
holds the fleshless bones in line.
Twenty years now! Twenty long years! The body
has powdered itself away;
it is clay to clay. It is brown earth mingled with brown
earth. Only flaky
bones remain, lain together so long they fit, although not one bone
is knit
to another. The stake is there too, rotted through, but
upright still,
and still piercing d...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...ms,
Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,
When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.
O irresistible, with fleshless face,
Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:
"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,
Ye shall taste death, musk scented skeletons!
Withered Antino?s, dandies with plump faces,
Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,
Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,
Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.
From Seine's cold q...Read more of this...
by
Gorry, Godfrey Mutiso
...Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
white as bones
Bony framed
fleshless
Pus in orifices
worms
teeth, white teeth
skull and bones.
Am sorry for life
Oh this pain deeper than
Only death can save
My friend, I am sorry
That you pain
When you sleep, wake
Pain, blindness
Damn anguish – no thoughts emerge
When engulfed by pain
Such heart is dead
Am sorry;
Oh this life! A taboo
You will die so
Potstones thrown
In the gard...Read more of this...
by
Muir, Edwin
...norant wonder saw
The wooden cross-tree on the bare hillside,
Not knowing that there a God suffered and died.
The fleshless word, growing, will bring us down,
Pagan and Christian man alike will fall,
The auguries say, the white and black and brown,
The merry and the sad, theorist, lover, all
Invisibly will fall:
Abstract calamity, save for those who can
Build their cold empire on the abstract man.
A soft breeze stirs and all my thoughts are blown
Far out to sea an...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...e garden
Inwalled of kings;
By his passion interceding for their pardon
Who do these things;
By the sightless souls and fleshless limbs that labour
For not their fruit;
By the foodless mouth with foodless heart for neighbour,
That, mad, is mute;
By the child that famine eats as worms the blossom
--Ah God, the child!
By the milkless lips that strain the bloodless bosom
Till woe runs wild;
By the pastures that give grass to feed the lamb in,
Where men lack meat;
By the cities c...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...er'd their dark caves,
And stored along the vaulted graves
Her sulphurous treasures, thickly spread
In masses by the fleshless dead:
Here, throughout the siege, had been
The Christians' chiefest magazine;
To these a late-form'd train now led,
Minotti's last and stern resource,
Against the foe's o'erwhelming force.
XXXII.
The foe came on, and few remain
To strive, and those must strive in vain:
For lack of further lives, to slake
The thirst of vengeance ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ith thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 5
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water's flow
Under December's snow,
Came a dull voice of woe 15
From the heart's chamber.
"I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manif...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...eir crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"
Within Earth's wide domains
Are markets for men's lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders,...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...They their silver voices gave thee,
Age can never steal upon thee.
Wise and gentle friend of poets,
Born a creature fleshless, bloodless,
Though Earth's daughter, free from suff'ring,
To the gods e'en almost equal.
1781....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ting -- but the time
For Interview -- had Come --
Before the Judgment Seat of God --
The last -- and second time
These Fleshless Lovers met --
A Heaven in a Gaze --
A Heaven of Heavens -- the Privilege
Of one another's Eyes --
No Lifetime -- on Them --
Appareled as the new
Unborn -- except They had beheld --
Born infiniter -- now --
Was Bridal -- e'er like This?
A Paradise -- the Host --
And Cherubim -- and Seraphim --
The unobtrusive Guest --...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Fleshless poems.