Famous Heraldic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Haunted House

by Thomas Hood
 Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The...Read more of this...

The Marmoreal Slumbers

by Jean Delville
Thus, the souls of dismal feudal lineage,
Perpetuating their pride in illustrious sepulchres,
Stretch out their long, marble sleep upon the flagstones,
Weighted with dead centuries and funereal pasts,

The heraldic and grandiose white cadavers,
With righteous hands joined in ardent rigidity,
Pallid with faith, that rise from their bosoms
With sacerdotal gestures of prayer in eternity.

Beneath a heavy mourning of shadows in the tumulous crypts,
Within the...Read more of this...

Afternoon Rain in State Street

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,
Slant lines of black rain
In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.
Below,
Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,
The street.
And over it, umbrellas,
Black polished dots
Struck to white
An instant,
Stream in two flat lines
Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.
Like a four-sided wedge
The Custom House Tower
Pokes at the low, flat sky,
Pushing it farther and...Read more of this...

Marriage And Feasts

by Victor Hugo
 ("La salle est magnifique.") 
 
 {IV. Aug. 23, 1839.} 


 The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright— 
 The feast to pampered palate gives delight— 
 The sated guests pick at the spicy food, 
 And drink profusely, for the cheer is good; 
 And at that table—where the wise are few— 
 Both sexes and all...Read more of this...

Variations of an Air

by G K Chesterton
 Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he
He called for his pipe 
and he called for his bowl 
and he called for his fiddlers three


after Lord Tennyson


Cole, that unwearied prince of Colchester, 
Growing more gay with age and with long days 
Deeper in laughter and desire of life 
As that Virginian climber on our...Read more of this...

The Blinded Bourbons

by Victor Hugo
 ("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?") 
 
 {II. v., November, 1836.} 


 Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story? 
 Or said that France, low bowed before their glory, 
 One day would mindful be 
 Of them and of their mournful fate no more, 
 Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er 
...Read more of this...

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