Famous Nineveh Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

by Eugenio Montejo
The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our...Read more of this...

Recessional

by Rudyard Kipling
1897


God of our fathers, known of old,
   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
   Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
   The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a...Read more of this...

Fragments

by William Butler Yeats
 I

Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

 II

Where got I that truth?
Out of a medium's mouth.
Out of nothing it came,
Out of the forest loam,
Out of dark night where lay
The crowns of Nineveh....Read more of this...

The City

by Constantine P Cavafy
 WHAT domination of what darkness dies this hour,
And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal power
O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear?
Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear
O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare.
The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair
Than these blue flickering glades, where childhood in its glee
Re-echoes with fresh voice the heaven-lit...Read more of this...

Prophets at Home

by Rudyard Kipling
 Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
 Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
 Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn. 
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain, 
 They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
 But 0, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's...Read more of this...

Lemures

by Richard Aldington
 In Nineveh 
And beyond Nineveh 
In the dusk 
They were afraid. 

In Thebes of Egypt 
In the dust 
They chanted of them to the dead. 

In my Lesbos and Achaia 
Where the God dwelt 
We knew them. 

Now men say "They are not": 
But in the dusk 
Ere the white sun comes -
A gay child that bears a white...Read more of this...

Cargoes

by John Masefield
 QUINQUIREME of Nineveh from distant Ophir, 
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, 
With a cargo of ivory, 
And apes and peacocks, 
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine. 

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, 
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, 
With a cargo of diamonds, 
Emeralds, amythysts, 
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores. 

Dirty British coaster...Read more of this...

Jonah

by Robert Graves
 A purple whale 
Proudly sweeps his tail 
Towards Nineveh; 
Glassy green 
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea. 

“O town of gold, 
Of splendour multifold, 
Lucre and lust, 
Leviathan’s eye
Can surely spy 
Thy doom of death and dust.” 

On curving sands 
Vengeful Jonah stands. 
“Yet forty days,
Then down, down, 
Tumbles the town 
In flaming ruin ablaze.” 

With swift lament 
Those...Read more of this...

Vacillation

by William Butler Yeats
 I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?

 II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And...Read more of this...

Recessional (A Victorian Ode)

by Rudyard Kipling
 God of our fathers, known of old --
 Lord of our far-flung battle line --
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
 Dominion over palm and pine --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies --
 The Captains and the Kings depart --
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
 An humble and...Read more of this...

On the Building of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay
 Let not our town be large, remembering 
That little Athens was the Muses' home, 
That Oxford rules the heart of London still, 
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome. 

Record it for the grandson of your son — 
A city is not builded in a day: 
Our little town cannot complete her soul 
Till countless generations pass away. 

Now...Read more of this...

A Look Into The Gulf

by Edwin Markham
 I LOOKED one night, and there the Semiramis, 
With all her mourning doves about her head, 
Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, 
Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon 
Snatches of song they sang to her of old 
Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. 
And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: 
"The bugles! they are...Read more of this...

Always the Mob

by Carl Sandburg
 JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.

The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass...Read more of this...

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