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Famous Fuel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...might be it?

And yet she cannot waste by this,
 Nor long bear this torturing wrong,
For much corruption needful is
 To fuel such a fever long.

These burning fits but meteors be,
 Whose matter in thee is soon spent.
Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
 Are unchangeable firmament.

Yet 'twas of my mind, seizing thee,
 Though it in thee cannot persever.
For I had rather owner be,
Of thee one hour, than all else ever....Read more of this...
by Donne, John



...at home 
I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife 
The fire that I had met the day before
In his had found another living fuel. 
To look at her and then to think of him, 
And thereupon to contemplate the fall 
Of a dim curtain over the dark end 
Of a dark play, required of me no more
Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim 
Will exercise in seeing that his friend 
Off shore will drown except he save himself. 
To her I could say nothing, and to him 
No more than tallied with a l...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny...Read more of this...
by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...ys been, 
To trust in God, and let the Captain starve.

He must have understood that afterwards— 
When we had laid some fuel to the spark 
Of him, and oxidized it—for he laughed 
Out loud and long at us to feel it burn, 
And then, for gratitude, made game of us:
“You are the resurrection and the life,” 
He said, “and I the hymn the Brahmin sings; 
O Fuscus! and we’ll go no more a-roving.” 
We were not quite accoutred for a blast 
Of any lettered nonchalance like that,
And som...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...art.
They whisper to me that the King is cruel, 
That his reign is wicked, his law a sin, 
And every word they utter is fuel
To the flame that smoulders within.

And on nights like this, when my blood runs riot
With the fever of youth and its mad desires, 
When my brain in vain bids my heart be quiet, 
When my breast seems the centre of lava-fires, 
Oh, then is when most I miss you, 
And I swear by the stars and my soul and say
That I will have you, and hold you, and kiss you...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler



...rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ash of the matchlight.

Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.

My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first tooth
noosed in a knot to the doorknob.

Nothing can dislodge
the triangular blotch
of rot on the red roof,
a cedar hedge, or the shade of a hedge.

No ease from the eye
of the sharp-shinned hawk in the birdbook there,
with reddish-brown buffalo hair
on its shanks, one asectic ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert
...e kingdoms of earth bound in sheaves,
94 And the ancient forests of chivalry hewn, and the joys of the combat burnt for fuel;
95 Till the power and dominion is rent from the pole, sword and sceptre from sun and moon,
96 The law and gospel from fire and air, and eternal reason and science
97 From the deep and the solid, and man lay his faded head down on the rock
98 Of eternity, where the eternal lion and eagle remain to devour?
99 This to prevent--urg'd by cries in day, and p...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...th loosed 
A cloak that dropt from collar-bone to heel, 
A cloth of roughest web, and cast it down, 
And from it like a fuel-smothered fire, 
That lookt half-dead, brake bright, and flashed as those 
Dull-coated things, that making slide apart 
Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there burns 
A jewelled harness, ere they pass and fly. 
So Gareth ere he parted flashed in arms. 
Then as he donned the helm, and took the shield 
And mounted horse and graspt a spear, of grain 
Stor...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e yellow beacon of Singapore
-- leaving Australia on the right,
 Madagascar on the left --
and putting our faith in the fuel in the tank,
 we're heading for the China Sea...


 From the journal of a deckhand named John aboard a 
British vessel in the China Sea


One night
 a typhoon blows up out of the blue.
Man,
 what a hurricane!
Mounted on the back of yellow devil, the Mother of God
 whirls around and around, churning up the air.
And as luck would have it,
 I've got the wa...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...nd felt his breath upon her hair, and prayed Her 
happiness was earned.
Past Earls of Crowe should give their blood for fuel
To light this Frampton's hearth-fire. By no cruel
Affrightings would she ever be dismayed.

LIII
When Everard, next day, asked her in joke What 
name it was that she had called him by,
She told him of Gervase, and as she spoke She hardly realized 
it was a lie.
Her vision she related, but she hid The fondness into which 
she had been led.
Sir Everard ju...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...glove boxes & ignot 
 cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmo-
 sphere,
I enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums
 underground on soundless thrones and beds of
 lead
O density! This weightless anthem trumpets transcendent 
 through hidden chambers and breaks through 
 iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony 
 floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and 
 milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone bla...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...,
'Tis sad to see it so depart, -­
To watch that fire whose genial glow
Was formed to comfort and to cheer,
For want of fuel, fading so,
Sinking to embers dull and drear, -­
To see the soft soil turned to stone
For lack of kindly showers, -­
To see those yearnings of the breast,
Pining to bless and to be blessed,
Drop withered, frozen one by one,
Till, centred in itself alone,
It wastes its blighted powers. 

Oh, I have known a wondrous joy
In early friendship's pure delight,...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Anne
...not a word—I am their poet also; 
But behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for Religion’s sake; 
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the
 earth, 
Any more than such are to Religion.

10What do you seek, so pensive and silent? 
What do you need, Camerado? 
Dear son! do you think it is love? 

Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son! 
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it
 satisfies—it is great;
But ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...gave it
To flames without twice thinking, where it verges
Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear
They might find fuel there, in withered brake,
Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod,
And alder and grape vine entanglement,
To leap the dusty deadline. For my own
I took what front there was beside. I knelt
And thrust hands in and held my face away.
Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating.
A board is the best weapon if you have it.
I had my coat. And oh, I knew,...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...his journey with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with Deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel if the situation of the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or overtake them, he perishes alone in the Desart; unless he should have the good fortune to fall in with some other Tribes of Indians. It is unnecessary to add that the females are equally, or still more, expos...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...lanks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...r's fare.'
     XXXI..

     He gave him of his Highland cheer,
     The hardened flesh of mountain deer;
     Dry fuel on the fire he laid,
     And bade the Saxon share his plaid.
     He tended him like welcome guest,
     Then thus his further speech addressed:—
     'Stranger, I am to Roderick Dhu
     A clansman born, a kinsman true;
     Each word against his honour spoke
     Demands of me avenging stroke;
     Yet more,—upon thy fate, 'tis said,
     A ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...e strange countries by your warlike strokeSubmitted to a tributary yoke;The fuel erst of your ambitious fire,What help they now? The vast and bad desireOf wealth and power at a bloody rateIs wicked,—better bread and water eatWith peace; a wooden dish doth seldom holdA poison'd draught; glass is more safe than gold;Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco
...licting tempests, sweep.For truth they never toil, but feed their prideWith fuel by eternal strife supplied:No dragon of the wild with equal rage,Nor lions in nocturnal war, engageWith hate so deadly, as the learn'd and wise,Who scan their own desert with partial eyes.Carneades, renown'd for logic skill,Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things