Famous Marie Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Legless Man

by Robert William Service
 (The Dark Side)

My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les...Read more of this...

Marie Bateson

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You observe the carven hand
With the index finger pointing heavenward.
That is the direction, no doubt.
But how shall one follow it?
It is well to abstain from murder and lust,
To forgive, do good to others, worship God
Without graven images.
But these are external means after all
By which you chiefly do good to yourself.
The inner kernel is freedom,
It is light, purity --
I can...Read more of this...

On Hearing The Princess Royal{1} Sing

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dans ta haute demeure.") 
 
 {Bk. III. ix., 1881.} 


 In thine abode so high 
 Where yet one scarce can breathe, 
 Dear child, most tenderly 
 A soft song thou dost wreathe. 
 
 Thou singest, little girl— 
 Thy sire, the King is he: 
 Around thee glories whirl, 
 But all things sigh in...Read more of this...

Comment

by Dorothy Parker
 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania....Read more of this...

Distress Coils

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

The waiting volcano inside us
gnaws, digs, trembles,
weighs its chances. 
Distress coils up,
shrinks silent like a sick beast.
We are unrecognizable,
unique
in the certainty of our ferocity....Read more of this...

The Peasants Confession

by Thomas Hardy
 Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew 
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn 
Men’s bones all Europe through. 

Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi, 
To move on Brussels, where the English host 
Dallied in Parc and Bois. 

The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun 
Growl through...Read more of this...

The Big Heart

by Anne Sexton
 "Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold." - From an essay by W. B. Yeats 

Big heart, 
wide as a watermelon, 
but wise as birth, 
there is so much abundance 
in the people I have: 
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, 
Joan, Marie, Dawn, 
Arlene, Father Dunne, 
and all in their short lives 
give to me...Read more of this...

Youve given me a weapon

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

You've given me a weapon.
you've flung your words
into the human herd
like stones.
The wounds were
good to lick.
You have woken the tiger. 
You've given as one takes....Read more of this...

I Am

by John Clare
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

I am the red brand
on the shoulder of the condemned,
the gallows and the rope,
the ax and the block,
the whip and the cross. 
I am the lion's tooth
in the flesh of the gazelle.
In my veins I have
the blood of the slave trader. 

Hangman,
I have deserved the hunger of the wolves. 

My victims have...Read more of this...

Diplomacy

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tell your love where the roses blow,
And the hearts of the lilies quiver,
Not in the city's gleam and glow,
But down by a half-sunned river.
Not in the crowded ball-room's glare,
That would be fatal, Marie, Marie,
How can she answer you then and there?
So come then and stroll with me, my dear,
[Pg 239]Down where the birds call, Marie, Marie.
...Read more of this...

Forgive Me

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

Forgive me if I have laughed
in your chapels,
forgive me if I have slammed
the hospital door,
forgive me for the noise,
for life,
for the love to which
I have no right. 
Forgive me for not resembling you....Read more of this...

The Last Supper

by Robert William Service
 Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips,
And the mouth so mocking gay,
A wanton you to the finger-tips,
Who break men's hearts in play;
A thing of dust I have striven for,
Honour and manhood given for,
Headlong to ruin driven for,
And this is the last, you say. . . .

Drinking your wine with dainty sips,
Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted...Read more of this...

The Burial Of The Dead

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
April is the cruellest month, breeding
  Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
  Memory and desire, stirring
  Dull roots with spring rain.
  Winter kept us warm, covering
  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
  A little life with dried tubers.
  Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
  With a shower of rain; we stopped...Read more of this...

Marie Antoinette

by Robert William Service
 They told to Marie Antoinette:
 "The beggers at your gate
Have eyes too sad for tears to wet,
 And for your pity wait."
But Marie only laughed and said:
 "My heart they will not ache:
If people starve for want of bread
 Let them eat cake."

The Court re-echoed her bon mot;
 It rang around the land,
Till masses wakened from their woe
 With...Read more of this...

La nuit souvre lorage

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése

La nuit s'ouvre, l'orage,
accouplement mauve,
boursouflure. 
Le ciel chargè
comme un bateau marchand
jette l'ancre.
Le danger plus lourd
chaque instant
distille une moiteur
de serre. 

Miroitante de mercure,
la vallèe des sept Meuses
souffle la brume
par ses narines grises. 

La vallèe a rejoint la nuit,
deux femelles humides
que l'orage pènétre. 

Et moi, debout,
dans le vent anxieux,
j'espére la dèchirure....Read more of this...

Je Suis

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése

Je suis le fer rouge
sur l'èpaule du condamnè,
le gibet et la corde,
la hache et le billot,
le fouet et la croix. 
Je suis la dent du lion
dans la chair de la gazelle.
J'ai dans mes veines
le sang de nègriers. 

Bourreau,
j'ai mèritè la faim des loups. 

Les victimes ne m'ont laissè
que leur mort....Read more of this...

On His Lady Marie

by William Strode
 Marie, Incarnate Virtue, Soule and Skin
Both pure, whom Death not Life convincd of Sin,
Had Daughters like seven Pleiades; but She
Was a prime Star of greatest Claritie....Read more of this...

The Sightless Man

by Robert William Service
 Out of the night a crash,
A roar, a rampart of light;
A flame that leaped like a lash,
Searing forever my sight;
Out of the night a flash,
Then, oh, forever the Night!

Here in the dark I sit,
I who so loved the sun;
Supple and strong and fit,
In the dark till my days be done;
Aye, that's the hell of it,
Stalwart and twenty-one.

Marie is stanch...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

The Death Of Marie Toro

by Robert William Service
 We're taking Marie Toro to her home in Père-La-Chaise;
We're taking Marie Toro to her last resting-place.
Behold! her hearse is hung with wreaths till everything is hid
Except the blossoms heaping high upon her coffin lid.
A week ago she roamed the street, a draggle and a ****,
A by-word of the Boulevard and everybody's butt;
A week ago she haunted us, we heard...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of A Bachelor

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.

John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.

Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,

And bravely did they strive to bring
Unto their feet John Henry King.

John Henry liked them both so well,
To save his life he could not tell

Which he most wished to be...Read more of this...

Night Opens to the Storm

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.

Night opens to the storm,
a mauve coupling,
swollen. 
The sky, laden
like a merchant ship,
throws off its anchor.
Danger, heavier
each instant,
exudes the mugginess
of a greenhouse. 

Shimmering like mercury
The Valley of the Seven Muses
breathes mist
through its gray nostrils. 

The valley of has rejoined the night,
two humid females
the storm penetrates. 

And I, standing here
in the anxious wind,
I...Read more of this...

Marie Laveau Talks About Magic From A Confessional In St. Louis Cathedral

by Chris Tusa
 Marie Laveau, a colored woman who eventually became
known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, often used
her knowledge of Voodoo to manipulate and acquire power.
 --Enigma

In one quick lick I waved my mojo hand,
made the Mississippi’s muddy spine 
run crooked as a crow’s foot, 
scared politicians into my pocket
with lizard tongues and buzzard bones,
convinced the governor to sing my...Read more of this...

Pardon

by Judith Skillman
 Poem by Anne-Marie Derése.

Pardon si j'ai ri
dans vos chapelles,
pardon si j'ai claquè
la porte de l'h?pital,
pardon pour le bruit,
pour la vie,
pour l'amour auquel
je n'avais pas droit. 
Pardon de ne pas vous ressembler....Read more of this...

Julie Claire

by Robert William Service
 Oh Julie Claire was very fair,
Yet generous as well,
And many a lad of metal had
A saucy tale to tell
Of sultry squeeze beneath the trees
Or hugging in the hay . . .
Of love her share had Julie Claire
When life was lush and gay.

And then the village wealth to pillage
Came the Teuton horde;
The haughty Huns with mighty guns
And clattering of sword.
And...Read more of this...

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