Famous Long Fire Poems

Famous Long Fire Poems. Long Fire Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Fire long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 Strephon. 

You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines, 
You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies, 
You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests, 
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique, 
Which to my woes giues still an early morning; 
And drawes the dolor on till wery euening. 

Klaius. 

O Mercurie, foregoer to the euening, 
O heauenlie huntresse of the sauage mountaines, 
O louelie starre, entitled of the morning, 
While that my voice doth fill these wofull vallies, 
Vouchsafe your silent eares to plaining musique, 
Which oft hath Echo tir'd in secrete forrests. 

Strephon. 

I that was once free-burges of the forrests, 
Where shade from Sunne, and sports I sought at euening, 
I that was once esteem'd for pleasant musique, 
Am banisht now among the monstrous mountaines 
Of huge despaire, and foule afflictions vallies, 
Am growne a shrich-owle to my selfe each morning. 

Klaius. 

I that was once delighted euery morning, 
Hunting the wilde inhabiters of forrests, 
I that was once the musique of these vallies, 
So darkened am, that all my day is euening, 
Hart-broken so, that molehilles seeme high mountaines, 
And fill the vales with cries in steed of musique. 

Strephon. 

Long since alas, my...
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 I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said 'Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.'

I faltered, taking up the word:
'Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.

'For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.'

'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.'

'Not so,' I answered. 'Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land's sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:

'For parked-up honors that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:

'For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:

'For an oligarchic parliament,
And bribes well-meant.
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?'

'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.'

'Not so,' I answered once again.
'To curse, choose men.
For I, a woman, have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.'

'Therefore,' the voice...
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 A farmer's wife, both young and gay,
And fresh as op'ning buds of May;
Had taken to herself, a Spouse,
And plighted many solemn vows,
That she a faithful mate would prove,
In meekness, duty, and in love!
That she, despising joy and wealth,
Would be, in sickness and in health,
His only comfort and his Friend--
But, mark the sequel,--and attend!

This Farmer, as the tale is told--
Was somewhat cross, and somewhat old!
His, was the wintry hour of life,
While summer smiled before his wife;
A contrast, rather form'd to cloy
The zest of matrimonial joy!

'Twas Christmas time, the peasant throng
Assembled gay, with dance and Song:
The Farmer's Kitchen long had been
Of annual sports the busy scene;
The wood-fire blaz'd, the chimney wide
Presented seats, on either side;
Long rows of wooden Trenchers, clean,
Bedeck'd with holly-boughs, were seen;
The shining Tankard's foamy ale
Gave spirits to the Goblin tale,
And many a rosy cheek--grew pale.

It happen'd, that some sport to shew
The ceiling held a MISTLETOE.
A magic bough, and well design'd
To prove the coyest Maiden, kind.
A magic bough, which DRUIDS old
Its sacred mysteries enroll'd;
And which, or gossip Fame's a liar,
Still warms the soul with vivid fire;
Still promises a store of bliss
While bigots snatch their Idol's kiss.

This MISTLETOE was doom'd to be
The talisman of Destiny;
Beneath its ample boughs we're told
Full...
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 Tiny green birds skate over the surface of the room.
A naked girl prepares a basin with steaming water,
And in the corner away from the hearth, the red wheels
Of an up-ended chariot slowly turn.
After a long moment, the door to the other world opens
And the golden figure of a man appears. He stands
Ruddy as a salmon beside the niche where are kept
The keepsakes of the Prince of Earth; then sadly, drawing
A hammer out of his side, he advances to an oaken desk,
And being careful to strike in exact fury, pounds it to bits.
Another woman has by now taken her station
Beside the bubbling tub.
Her legs are covered with a silken blue fur,
Which in places above the knees
Grows to the thickness of a lion's mane.
The upper sphere of her chest
Is gathered into huge creases by two jeweled pins.
Transparent little boots reveal toes
Which an angel could want.
Beneath her on the floor a beautiful cinnamon cat
Plays with a bunch of yellow grapes, running
Its paws in and out like a boy being a silly king.
Her voice is round and white as she says:
'Your bath is ready, darling. Don't wait too long.'
But he has already drawn away to the window
And through its circular opening looks,
As a...
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 Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,
Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer
As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;
Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Hope sits yet hiding her war-wearied eyes,
Doubt sets her forehead earthward and denies,
But fear brought hand to hand with danger dies,
Dies and is burnt up in the fire of fight.

Hearts bruised with loss and eaten through with shame
Turn at the time's touch to devouring flame;
Grief stands as one that knows not her own name,
Nor if the star she sees bring day or night.

No song breaks with it on the violent air,
But shrieks of shame, defeat, and brute despair;
Yet something at the star's heart far up there
Burns as a beacon in our shipwrecked sight.

O strange fierce light of presage, unknown star,
Whose tongue shall tell us what thy secrets are,
What message trembles in thee from so far?
Cry wellaway. but well befall the right.

From shores laid waste across an iron sea
Where the waifs drift of hopes that were to be,
Across the red rolled foam we look for thee,
Across the fire we look up for the light.

From days laid waste across disastrous years,
From hopes cut down across a world of fears,
We gaze...
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 Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old,
We must away, ere break of day,
To seek our pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells,
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught,
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, on twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old,
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves,
And harps of gold, where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the heights,
The wind was moaning in the night,
The fire was red, it flaming spread,
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale,
And men looked up with faces pale.
The dragon's ire, more fierce than fire,
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon.
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled the hall to dying...
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 YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.

Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems and plays and romances
Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!

You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,
And take all you want, not a copper they cost,--
What is there to hinder your picking out phrases
For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"?

Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero,
Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean;
Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero
Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.

There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother
That boarding-school flavor of which we're afraid,
There is "lush"is a good one, and "swirl" is another,--
Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.

With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes
You can cheat us of smiles when you've nothing to tell
You hand us a nosegay of milliner's roses, 
And we cry with delight, "Oh, how sweet they do smell!"

Perhaps you will...
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 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chance,
purposeless accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
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...
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 We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
 We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
 (But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
 And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
 A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
 But not their hearts that roam!
We learned from our wistful mothers
 To call old England "home";
We read of the English skylark,
 Of the spring in the English lanes,
But we screamed with the painted lories
 As we rode on the dusty plains!

They passed with their old-world legends --
 Their tales of wrong and dearth --
Our fathers held by purchase,
 But we by the right of birth;
Our heart's where they rocked our cradle,
 Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith and our hope and our honour
 We pledge to our native soil!

I charge you charge your glasses --
 I charge you drink with me
To the men of the Four New Nations,
 And the Islands of the Sea --
To the last least lump of coral
 That none may stand outside,
And our own good pride shall teach us
 To praise our comrade's pride,

To the hush of the breathless...
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 Over the terminal,
 the arms and chest
 of the god

brightened by snow.
 Formerly mercury,
 formerly silver,

surface yellowed
 by atmospheric sulphurs
 acid exhalations,

and now the shining
 thing's descendant.
 Obscure passages,

dim apertures:
 these clouded windows
 show a few faces

or some empty car's
 filmstrip of lit flames
 --remember them

from school,
 how they were supposed
 to teach us something?--

waxy light hurrying
 inches away from the phantom
 smudge of us, vague

in spattered glass. Then
 daylight's soft charcoal
 lusters stone walls

and we ascend to what
 passes for brightness,
 this February,

scumbled sky
 above graduated zones
 of decline:

dead rowhouses,
 charred windows'
 wet frames

around empty space,
 a few chipboard polemics
 nailed over the gaps,

speeches too long
 and obsessive for anyone
 on this train to read,

sealing the hollowed interiors
 --some of them grand once,
 you can tell by

the fillips of decoration,
 stone leaves, the frieze
 of sunflowers.

Desolate fields--open spaces,
 in a city where you
 can hardly turn around!--

seem to center
 on little flames,
 something always burning

in a barrel or can
 As if to represent
 inextinguishable,

dogged persistence?
 Though whether what burns
 is will or rage or

harsh amalgam
 I couldn't say.
 But I can tell you this,

what I've seen that
 won my allegiance most,
 though it was also

the hallmark of our...
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 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he helped the sick and gave the
people hope.


You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers
over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.


I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't
throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I
know how much you know about Jesus.
He never came near clean people or dirty people but
they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your
crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
of the running.


I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined
up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men
now lined up with you paying your way.

This Jesus was...
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 The squatter saw his pastures wide 
Decrease, as one by one 
The farmers moving to the west 
Selected on his run; 
Selectors took the water up 
And all the black soil round; 
The best grass-land the squatter had 
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground. 

Now many schemes to shift old Ross 
Had racked the squatter's brains, 
But Sandy had the stubborn blood 
Of Scotland in his veins; 
He held the land and fenced it in, 
He cleared and ploughed the soil, 
And year by year a richer crop 
Repaid him for his toil. 

Between the homes for many years 
The devil left his tracks: 
The squatter pounded Ross's stock, 
And Sandy pounded Black's. 
A well upon the lower run 
Was filled with earth and logs, 
And Black laid baits about the farm 
To poison Ross's dogs. 

It was, indeed, a deadly feud 
Of class and creed and race; 
But, yet, there was a Romeo 
And a Juliet in the case; 
And more than once across the flats, 
Beneath the Southern Cross, 
Young Robert Black was seen to ride 
With pretty Jenny Ross. 

One Christmas time, when months of drought 
Had parched the western creeks, 
The bush-fires started in the north...
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 Far and wide among the nations
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind;
No man dared to strive with Kwasind,
No man could compete with Kwasind.
But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies,
They the envious Little People,
They the fairies and the pygmies,
Plotted and conspired against him.
"If this hateful Kwasind," said they,
"If this great, outrageous fellow
Goes on thus a little longer,
Tearing everything he touches,
Rending everything to pieces,
Filling all the world with wonder,
What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?
Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies?
He will tread us down like mushrooms,
Drive us all into the water,
Give our bodies to be eaten
By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs,
By the Spirits of the water!
So the angry Little People
All conspired against the Strong Man,
All conspired to murder Kwasind,
Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind,
The audacious, overbearing,
Heartless, haughty, dangerous Kwasind!
Now this wondrous strength of Kwasind
In his crown alone was seated;
In his crown too was his weakness;
There alone could he be wounded,
Nowhere else could weapon pierce him,
Nowhere else could weapon harm him.
Even there the only weapon
That could wound him, that could slay him,
Was the seed-cone of the pine-tree,
Was the blue cone of the fir-tree.
This was Kwasind's fatal secret,
Known to no man among mortals;
But the cunning Little People,
The Puk-Wudjies, knew the secret,
Knew the only way to kill him.
So they gathered...
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 song Fauc1

First.

[Chorus. Endymion. Luna.]

Chorus.
Th' Astrologers own Eyes are set,
And even Wolves the Sheep forget;
Only this Shepherd, late and soon,
Upon this Hill outwakes the Moon.
Heark how he sings, with sad delight,
Thorough the clear and silent Night.

Endymion
Cynthia, O Cynthia, turn thine Ear,
nor scorn Endymions plaints to hear.
As we our Flocks, so you command
The fleecy Clouds with silver wand.

Cynthia
If thou a Mortal, rather sleep;
Or if a Shepherd, watch thy Sheep.

Endmymion
The Shepherd, since he saw thine Eyes,
And Sheep are both thy Sacrifice.
Nor merits he a Mortal's name,
That burns with an immortal Flame.

Cynthia
I have enough for me to do,
Ruling the Waves that Ebb and Flow.

Endymion
Since thou disdain'st not then to share
On Sublunary things thy Care;
Rather restrain these double Seas,
Mine Eyes uncessant deluges.

Cynthia
My wakeful Lamp all night must move,
Securing their Repose above.

Endymion
If therefore thy resplendent Ray
Can make a Night more bright then Day;
Shine thorough this obscurer Brest,
With shades of deep Despair opprest.
Chorus.
Courage, Endymion, boldly Woo,
Anchises was a Shepheard too:
Yet is her younger Sister laid
Sporting with him in Ida's shade:
And Cynthia, though the strongest,
Seeks but the honour to have held out longest.

Endymion
Here unto Latmos Top I climbe:
How far below thine Orbe sublime?
O why, as well as Eyes to see,
Have I not Armes that reach to thee?

Cynthia
'Tis...
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 Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all to list to me,
And I'll relate a harrowing tale of the sea
Concerning the burning of the ship "Kent" in the Bay of Biscay,
Which is the most appalling tale of the present century. 

She carried a crew, including officers, of 148 men,
And twenty lady passengers along with them;
Besides 344 men of the 31st Regiment,
And twenty officers with them, all seemingly content. 

Also fhe soldiers' wives, which numbered forty-three,
And sixty-six children, a most beautiful sight to see;
And in the year of 1825, and on the 19th of February,
The ship "Kent" sailed from the Downs right speedily,
While the passengers' hearts felt light with glee. 

And the beautiful ship proceeded on her way to Bengal,
While the passengers were cheerful one and all;
And the sun shone out in brilliant array,
And on the evening of the 28th they entered the Bay of Biscay. 

But a gale from the south-west sprang up that night,
Which filled the passengers' hearts with fright;
And it continued to increase in violence as the night wore on,
Whilst the lady passengers looked very woe-begone. 

Part of the cargo in the hold consisted of shot and shell,
And the vessel rolled heavily as the big...
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