Famous Melting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

by George William Russell
 I WOULD I could weave in
 The colour, the wonder,
 The song I conceive in
 My heart while I ponder,


 And show how it came like
 The magi of old
 Whose chant was a flame like
 The dawn’s voice of gold;


 Whose dreams followed near them
 A murmur of birds,
 And ear still could hear them
 Unchanted in words.


...Read more of this...

Ode to Health

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, bright-eyed maid, 
Pure offspring of the tranquil mind,
Haste, my fev'rish temples bind
With olive wreaths of em'rald hue
Steep'd in morn's ethereal dew, 
Where in mild HELVETIA's shade, 
Blushing summer round her flings
Warm gales and sunny show'rs that hang upon her wings. 

I'll seek thee in ITALIA's bow'rs, 
Where supine on beds of flow'rs
Melody's soul-touching throng
Strike the soft lute or...Read more of this...

247. Ode Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive

by Robert Burns
 DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
 Hangman of creation! mark,
 Who in widow-weeds appears,
 Laden with unhonour’d years,
 Noosing with care a bursting purse,
 Baited with many a deadly curse?


STROPHE View the wither’d Beldam’s face;
 Can thy keen inspection trace
Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace?
 Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows;
 Pity’s flood there never rose,
 See these hands ne’er...Read more of this...

The Star-Splitter

by Robert Frost
 `You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To...Read more of this...

My Soul is Dark

by George (Lord) Byron
 My soul is dark - Oh! quickly string 
The harp I yet can brook to hear; 
And let thy gentle fingers fling 
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear. 
If in this heart a hope be dear, 
That sound shall charm it forth again: 
If in these eyes there lurk a tear, 
'Twill flow, and cease to burn my brain....Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIX

by Edmund Spenser
 SWeet smile, the daughter of the Queene of loue,
Expressing all thy mothers powrefull art:
with which she wonts to temper angry loue,
when all the gods he threats with thundring dart.
Sweet is thy vertue as thy selfe sweet art,
for when on me thou shinedst late in sadnesse:
a melting pleasance ran through euery part,
and me reuiued with hart robbing gladnesse.
Whylest rapt with...Read more of this...

Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid

by Thomas Carew
 GAZE not on thy beauty's pride, 
Tender maid, in the false tide 
That from lovers' eyes doth slide. 
Let thy faithful crystal show 
How thy colours come and go : 
Beauty takes a foil from woe. 

Love, that in those smooth streams lies 
Under pity's fair disguise, 
Will thy melting heart surprise. 

Nets of passion's finest thread, 
Snaring poems,...Read more of this...

Lead Soldiers

by Amy Lowell
 The nursery fire burns brightly, crackling in cheerful 
little explosions
and trails of sparks up the back of the chimney. Miniature 
rockets
peppering the black bricks with golden stars, as though a gala
flamed a night of victorious wars.
The nodding mandarin on the bookcase moves his 
head forward and back, slowly,
and looks into the air with his blue-green eyes. He stares 
into...Read more of this...

Ode to Eloquence

by Mary Darby Robinson
 HAIL! GODDESS of persuasive art! 
The magic of whose tuneful tongue 
Lulls to soft harmony the wand'ring heart 
With fascinating song; 
O, let me hear thy heav'n-taught strain, 
As thro' my quiv'ring pulses steal 
The mingling throbs of joy and pain, 
Which only sensate minds can feel; 
Ah ! let me taste the bliss supreme, 
Which thy warm touch...Read more of this...

Psalm 68 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-6,32-35 
L. M.
The vengeance and compassion of God.

Let God arise in all his might,
And put the troops of hell to flight,
As smoke that sought to cloud the skies
Before the rising tempest flies.

[He comes arrayed in burning flames
Justice and Vengeance are his names:
Behold his fainting foes expire,
Like melting wax before the fire.]

He rides and thunders through the sky;
His name, Jehovah,...Read more of this...

Wine is a melting ruby, cup its mine;

by Omar Khayyam
Wine is a melting ruby, cup its mine;
Cup is the body, and the soul is wine;
These crystal goblets smile with ruddy wine
Like tears, that blood of wounded hearts enshrine....Read more of this...

Middle Passage

by Robert Hayden
 I 

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: 

Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, 
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; 
horror the corposant and compass rose. 

Middle Passage: 
voyage through death 
to life upon these shores. 

"10 April 1800-- 
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says 
their moaning is a prayer for death, 
our and their own. Some...Read more of this...

The Melting

by Russell Edson
 An old woman likes to melt her husband. She puts him in
a melting device, and he pours out the other end in a hot
bloody syrup, which she catches in a series of little husband
molds. 

 What splatters on the floor the dog licks up. 

 When they have set she has seventeen little husbands.
One she throws to the dog...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXVIII. S' una fede amorosa, un cor non finto. THE MISERY OF HIS LOVE.  If faith most true, a heart that cannot feign,If Love's sweet languishment and chasten'd thought,And wishes pure by nobler feelings taught,If in a labyrinth wanderings long and vain,If on the brow each pang pourtray'd to bear,Read more of this...

The Simple Truth

by Philip Levine
 I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields 
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the...Read more of this...

The Ghost of Miltiades

by Thomas Moore
 The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill'd the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fir'd they blood or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!"


The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed --
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of...Read more of this...

O what availeth thee thy melting mood

by Hafez
O what availeth thee thy melting mood,
Thine ecstasy
When once again thy thralldoms o’er thee brood:

& what doth profit thee thy courage high,
& strength so fain;
So soon agen thy coward heart shall fly?

For more & stronger strife our strength shall strain,
Though hope’s best good
Be but this hope: to strive, & strive again.


...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXIV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXIV. Così potess' io ben chiuder in versi. HE COMPLAINS THAT TO HIM ALONE IS FAITH HURTFUL.  Could I, in melting verse, my thoughts but throw,As in my heart their living load I bear,No soul so cruel in the world was e'erThat would not at the tale with pity glow.But...Read more of this...

The snow is melting

by Kobayashi Issa
 The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children....Read more of this...

All That Love Asks

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 All that I ask, 'says Love, 'is just to stand
And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
Were still more sweet.

'All that I ask, ' says Love, 'all that I ask,
Is just thy hand clasp. Could I brush thy cheek
As...Read more of this...

Spelling

by Margaret Atwood
 My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

 *

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

 *

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

 *

I return to the story
of the woman caught in...Read more of this...

At the Melting of the Snow

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 There's a sunny Southern land, 
And it's there that I would be 
Where the big hills stand, 
In the South Countrie! 
When the wattles bloom again, 
Then it's time for us to go 
To the old Monaro country 
At the melting of the snow. 
To the East or to the West, 
Or wherever you may be, 
You will find...Read more of this...

Remember Him Whom Passions Power

by George (Lord) Byron
 Remember him, whom Passion's power
Severely---deeply---vainly proved:
Remember thou that dangerous hour,
When neither fell, though both were loved.

That yielding breast, that melting eye,
Too much invited to be blessed:
That gentle prayer, that pleading sigh,
The wilder wish reproved, repressed.

Oh! let me feel that all I lost
But saved thee all that Conscience fears;
And blush for every pang it cost
To spare the vain remorse of...Read more of this...

I Dreamed My Genesis

by Dylan Thomas
 I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking
Through the rotating shell, strong
As motor muscle on the drill, driving
Through vision and the girdered nerve.

From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled
Off from the creasing flesh, filed
Through all the irons in the grass, metal
Of suns in the man-melting night.

Heir to the scalding veins that hold love's drop, costly
A...Read more of this...

All Distance

by Erin Belieu
 Writing from Boston, where sky is simply
property, a flourish topping crowds
of condos and historic real estate,
I'm trying to imagine blue sky:
the first time, where it happened,
what I was becoming. Being taken there
by car, from a town so newly born that grass
still accounted all distance, an explanation
drawn in measureless yellows, a tone
stubbling the whole world, ten minutes away.

Consider now how...Read more of this...

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