Famous Hells Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hells poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hells poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hells poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lanier, Sidney
...ght --
Healer of hurts, free balm for bitter wrongs --
Most silent mother of all sounding songs --
Thou that dissolvest hells to make thy heaven --
Thou tempest's heir, that keep'st no tempest leaven --
But after winds' and thunders' wide mischance
Dost brood, and better thine inheritance --
Thou privacy of space, where each grave Star
As in his own still chamber sits afar
To meditate, yet, by thy walls unpent,
Shines to his fellows o'er the firmament --
Oh! as thou liv'st in...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold
To turn on the Despoilers all their age
Invents: damnations never felt before
And hells more horrible than hot and cold.
And, since in Heaven creatures purified
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds
Contemplate God and see Him face to face
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified,
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds
Mirror their own corruption and disgrace.
Now let this curse fall on my enemies
My enemies, Lord, but ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...horses bit restrained;
Or men of feeble mind
In straight-jackets confined;
Or convicts in black cells
Enduring earthly hells:
To me not to be free
Is fiendish cruelty.
To me not to be kind
Is evil of the mind.
No need to pray or preach,
Let us our children teach
With every fond caress
Pity and gentleness:
So in the end may we
God's Kingdom bring to be....Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ties end
The pure perfection of their stainless claim,
Out-herded from the shining gate they came,
Where the deep hells refused them, lest the lost
Boast something baser than themselves."
And I,
"Master, what grievance hath their failure cost,
That through the lamentable dark they cry?"
He answered, "Briefly at a thing not worth
We glance, and pass forgetful. Hope in death
They have not. Memory of them on the earth
Where once they lived rem...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,--
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up ...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...d that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.
So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.
Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...
The night has been long,
The pit has been deep,
The night has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.
The hells we have lived through and live through still,
Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.
The night has been long.
This morning I look through your anguish
Right down to your soul.
I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.
I look through the posture and past your disguise,
And see your love for family in your...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...f ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...e long day
On the long polar plains.
For he sang of a wheel returning,
And the mire trod back to mire,
And how red hells and golden heavens
Are castles in the fire.
"It is good to sit where the good tales go,
To sit as our fathers sat;
But the hour shall come after his youth,
When a man shall know not tales but truth,
And his heart fail thereat.
"When he shall read what is written
So plain in clouds and clods,
When he shall hunger without hope
Even for evil god...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold
To turn on the Despoilers all their age
Invents: damnations never felt before
And hells more horrible than hot and cold.
And, since in Heaven creatures purified
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds
Contemplate God and see Him face to face
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified,
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds
Mirror their own corruption and disgrace.
Now let this curse fall on my enemies
My enemies, Lord, but ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...as Nothing, and thy Best of being was
But not to be.
Worn Dante, I forgive
The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells
Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed
By death, nor time, nor love.
And I forgive
Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars
Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel,
Immortals smite immortals mortalwise
And fill all heaven with folly.
Also thee,
Brave Aeschylus, thee I forgive, for that
Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisk...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...rows, cannon, Indian reeds,
Cap-pistols, drums, mechanic toys,
And all th' infernal host of horns
Whereby to strenuous hells of noise
Are turned the blessed Christmas morns;
Thus, roused -- those horns! -- to sacred rage,
I rose, forefinger high in air,
When Harry cried (SOME war to wage),
"Papa, is hard times ev'ywhere?
"Maybe in Santa Claus's land
It isn't hard times none at all!"
Now, blessed Vision! to my hand
Most pat, a marvel strange did fall.
Scarce had my Har...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...desires
That are of small import to happy men
Who easily can compass them, to me
Become mere hopeless Heavens or actual Hells,
-- Sir, strengthened so with manhood's seasoned soul,
I lie in this damned cradle day and night,
Still, still, so still, my Lord: less than a babe
In powers but more than any man in needs;
Dreaming, with open eye, of days when men
Have fallen cloven through steel and bone and flesh
At single strokes of this -- of that big arm
Once wielded aught a mort...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...s bore
The shards of steel that feed the foul
Red maw of War.
Instead of butter give us guns;
Instead of sugur, shells.
Devoted mothers, bear your sons
To glut still hotter hells.
Alas! When will mad mankind wake
To banish evermore,
And damn for God in Heaven's sake
Mass Murder--WAR?...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...- "Declare thou by The Name,
"The secret of thy subtlety that turneth mine to shame.
"It is knowvn through all the Hells
"How my peoples mocked my spells,
"And my faithless Kings denied me ere I came."
Then answvered cunning Dives: "Do not gold and hate abide
"At the heart of every Magic, yea, and senseless fear beside?
"With gold and fear and hate
"I have harnessed state to state,
"And by hate and fear and gold their hates are tied.
"For hate men seek a wea...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...ho'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,
Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells
that batter a coastal town,
Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down.
And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day,
Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away --
Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,
And know the sorrow that has no tears when...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...et lips of God;
Trampled Cross and rosy core;
Brake the thunder-tool of Thor;
Meek and holy acolyte
Of the priestly hells of spite,
Sleek and shameless catamite
Of the beasts that prowl the night!
Like a star that streams from heaven
Through the virgin airs light-riven,
From the lift there shot and fell
An admirable miracle.
Carved minute and clean, a key
Of purest lapis-lazuli
More blue than the blind sky that aches
(Wreathed with the stars, her torturing s...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ow loyal hearts should kneel
To England's oldest foe.
We know the war prepared
On every peaceful home,
We know the hells declared
For such as serve not Rome --
The terror, threats, and dread
In market, hearth, and field --
We know, when all is said,
We perish if we yield.
Believe, we dare not boast,
Believe, we do not fear --
We stand to pay the cost
In all that men hold dear.
What answer from the North?
One Law, one Land, one Throne.
If England drive us for...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...est they must meet.
The hoarse roar
Of the monster guns;
And the sharp bark
Of the lesser guns;
The whine of the shells,
The rifles' clatter
Where the bullets patter,
The rattle, rattle, rattle
Of the mitrailleuse in battle,
And the yells
Of the men who charge through hells
Where the poison gas descends,
And the bursting shrapnel rends
Limb from limb
In the dim
Chaos and clamor of the strife
Where no man thinks of his life
But only of fighting through,
Blindly fighting ...Read more of this...
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