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Famous Flinty Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...that life of life—immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;
’Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms—
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?


But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ça ira! THE MAJESTY OF WOMAN!...Read more of this...



by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...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 the sober hour of sinking day,
Exhauste...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...es!­ 
The angel, PITY, now each cave explores, 
Braves the chill damps, and fells the pond'rous doors, 
Plucks from the flinty walls the clanking chains, 
Where many a dreadful tale of woe remains, 
Where many a sad memorial marks the hour, 
That gave the rights of man to rav'nous pow'r; 
Now snatch'd from death, the wond'ring wretch shall prove 
The rapt'rous energies of social love; 
Whose limbs each faculty denied­whose sight 
Had long resign'd all intercourse with light; ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ho studious in our art 
Shall count a little labour unrepaid? 
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 
On many a flinty furlong of this land. 
Also, the country-side is all on fire 
With rumours of a marching hitherward: 
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear; 
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: 
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. 
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, 
And once a...Read more of this...

by Kilmer, Joyce
...y
That made them weep and sing,
And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
And Drummond for his king.
They know that on flinty sorrow
And failure and desire
The steel of their souls was hammered
To bring forth the lyric fire.
Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatred of tyrants
Was so insistently fierce.
Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Mary Darby
...e is the music of that tongue, 
Once tuneful as the voice of love, 
When ORPHEUS, by his magic song, 
Taught trees, and flinty rocks to move. 

"Oft shall the pensive MUSE be found, 
Sprinkling with flow'rs his mould'ring clay; 
While soft-eyed SORROW wand'ring round, 
Shall pluck intruding weeds away." 

Sad victim of the sordid mind, 
That doom'd THEE to an early grave; 
Ne'er shall HER breast that pity find, 
Which thy forgiveness nobly gave! 

Thou, who, when SORR...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ere must be a nurse
Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express,
To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes,
I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch:
My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch.
So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies
Unheard of yet; and it shall still its cries
Upon some breast more lily-feminine.
Oh, no--it shall not pine, and pine, and pine
More than one pretty, trifling thousand years;
And then 'twere pity, but fate's gentle shears
Cut short i...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...Baby, doom'd to be
The partner of her destiny
Was by a peasant cherish'd!

He told a long and dismal Tale,
How, from a flinty Tow'r
A Lady wailing sad was seen,
The lofty grated bars between,
At dawnlight's purple hour!

He told a Tale of bitter woe,
His heart with pity swelling,
How the fair LADY pin'd and died,
And how her Ghost, at Christmas-tide--
Would wander,--near her dwelling.

He told her, how a lowly DAME
The LADY, lorn, befriended--
Who chang'd her own dear ba...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...ose; 
The sober beauties of EVE'S hour serene, 
The scatter'd village, now but dimly seen, 
The neighb'ring rock, whose flinty brow inclin'd, 
Shields the clay cottage from the northern wind: 
The variegated woodlands scarce we view, 
The distant mountains ting'd with purple hue: 
Pale twilight flings her mantle o'er the skies, 
From the still lake, the misty vapours rise; 
Cold show'rs descending on the western breeze, 
Sprinkle with lucid drops the bending trees, 
Whose spr...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...mir'd thee, and the old forgave. 

And when stern FATE, with ruthless rancour, press'd 
Thy withering graces to her flinty breast; 
Bright JUSTICE darted from her bless'd abode, 
And bore thy VIRTUES to the throne of GOD; 
While cold OBLIVION stealing o'er thy mind, 
Each youthful folly to the grave consign'd. 

O, if thy purer spirit deigns to know 
Each thought that passes in this vale of woe, 
Accept the incense of a tender tear, 
By PITY wafted on a sigh sincere.<...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...shall pass as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.

Through all time
I hear the approaching feet
Along the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come,—
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As now the round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams,
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...loathsome cells, where poisons damp 
Hung round the confines of a Living Grave; * 
Where no glimm'ring ray illum'd 
The flinty walls, where pond'rous chains 
Bound the wan Victim to the humid earth, 
Where VALOUR, GENIUS, TASTE, and WORTH, 
In pestilential caves entomb'd, 
Sought thy cold arms, and smiling mock'd their pains. 

THERE,­each procrastinated hour 
The woe-worn suff'rer gasping lay, 
While by his side in proud array 
Stalk'd the HUGE FIEND, DESPOTIC POW'R....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...ks the bitter tear, 
In vain the plaints of woe his thoughts assail, 
The bashful mourner's pitious tale 
Nor melts his flinty soul, nor vibrates on his ear, 

O blest REFLECTION ! let thy magic pow'r 
Awake his torpid sense, his slumb'ring thought, 
Tel1 him ADVERSITY'S unpitied hour 
A brighter lesson gives, than Stoics taught: 
Tell him that WEALTH no blessing can impart 
So sweet as PITY'S tear­that bathes the wounded Heart. 

Go tell the vain, the insolent, and fair,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...bade the budding branch expand; 
And from the teeming ground call'd forth the cherish'd grain; 
Salubrious springs from flinty caverns drew; 
Enamell'd verdure o'er the landscape threw; 
HE taught the scaly host to glide 
Sportive, amidst the limpid tide; 
HIS breath sustain'd the EAGLE's wing; 
With vocal sounds bade hills and valleys ring; 
Then, with his Word supreme, awoke to birth 
THE HUMAN FORM SUBLIME! THE SOV'REIGN LORD OF EARTH! 

VALOUR! thy pure and sacred flame
D...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...ade shall be!
"The Cliff that like a Tyrant stands
"Exulting o'er the wave lash'd sands,
"With its weedy crown, and its flinty crest,
"Shall, on its hard bosom, rock me to rest;
"And I'll watch for the Eagle's unfledg'd brood,
"And I'll scatter their nest, and I'll drink their blood;
"And under the crag I will kneel and pray
"And silver my robe, with the moony ray:
"And who shall scorn the lone retreat
"Which Heaven has chose, for MARGUERITE?

"Here, did the exil'd HENRY stra...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...at bathe the grief-dew'd eye,The love-impassion'd strainTo move thy flinty bosom tryFull oft;—but, ah! in vainWould tears, and melting song avail;As vainly might the silken breeze,That bends the flowers, that fans the trees,Some rugged rock's tremendous brow assail. 
Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in cea...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...XI.

     The western waves of ebbing day
     Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
     Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
     Was bathed in floods of living fire.
     But not a setting beam could glow
     Within the dark ravines below,
     Where twined the path in shadow hid,
     Round many a rocky pyramid,
     Shooting abruptly from the dell
     Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
     Round many an insulated mass,
     The native bulwarks of the pas...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...,
Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway:
Nor youth, nor science, nor the ties of love,
Nor aught on earth thy flinty heart can move.
The friend, the spouse from his dire dart to save,
In vain we ask the sovereign of the grave.
Fair mourner, there see thy lov'd Leonard laid,
And o'er him spread the deep impervious shade;
Clos'd are his eyes, and heavy fetters keep
His senses bound in never-waking sleep,
Till time shall cease, till many a starry world
...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
..., 
Yet each, a fiery integument, 
Wrapped round a sinner. 


On the bridge intent, 
Gazing I stood, and grasped its flinty side, 
Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide, 
Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "Behold 
Where swathed each in his unconsuming fold, 
The spirits lie confined." Whom answering, 
"Master," I said, "thy words assurance bring 
To that which I already had supposed; 
And I was fain to ask who lies enclosed 
In the embrace of that dividin...Read more of this...

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