Famous On The Brink Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous On The Brink poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous on the brink poems. These examples illustrate what a famous on the brink poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...'A letter from my love to-day!
Oh, unexpected, dear appeal!'
She struck a happy tear away,
And broke the crimson seal.
'My love, there is no help on earth,
No help in heaven; the dead-man's bell
Must toll our wedding; our first hearth
Must be the well-paved floor of hell.'
The colour died from out her face,
Her eyes like ghostly candles shone;
She cast d...Read more of this...
by
Davidson, John
...Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood!
If our great Mother has imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And Winter robing with pure s...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...heath-rover, harried by dogs,
the horn-proud hart, this holt should seek,
long distance driven, his dear life first
on the brink he yields ere he brave the plunge
to hide his head: ’tis no happy place!
Thence the welter of waters washes up
wan to welkin when winds bestir
evil storms, and air grows dusk,
and the heavens weep. Now is help once more
with thee alone! The land thou knowst not,
place of fear, where thou findest out
that sin-flecked being. Seek if thou d...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ENDYMION.
A Poetic Romance.
"THE STRETCHED METRE OF AN AN ANTIQUE SONG."
INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS CHATTERTON.
Book I
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on eve...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...O Sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o'er their ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...--hast thou not aided me?
Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity
Has been thy meed for many thousand years;
Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,
Mourn'd as if yet thou wert a forester,--
Forgetting the old tale.
He did not stir
His eyes from the dead leaves, or one small pulse
Of joy he might have felt. The spirit culls
Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays
Through the old garden-ground of boyish days.
A little onward ran the very stream
By which he took his first soft poppy ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...
THE KNIGHT ERRANT.
("Qu'est-ce que Sigismond et Ladislas ont dit.")
{Bk. XV. iii. 1.}
I.
THE ADVENTURER SETS OUT.
What was it Sigismond and Ladisläus said?
I know not if the rock, or tree o'erhead,
Had heard their speech;—but when the two spoke low,
Among the trees, a shudder seemed to go
Through all t...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
As astrologers and seers of eld;
Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,
Like the burning stars, which they beheld.
Wondrous truths,...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...CANTO I
ONE night, when half my life behind me lay,
I wandered from the straight lost path afar.
Through the great dark was no releasing way;
Above that dark was no relieving star.
If yet that terrored night I think or say,
As death's cold hands its fears resuming are.
Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell,
The hopeless, pathless, li...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds--
Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) than when Bellona storms
With all her battering engines, bent to rase
Some capital city; or less than if this frame
Of Heaven were falling, and these elements ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Mean while the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan, done in Paradise; and how
He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit,
Was known in Heaven; for what can 'scape the eye
Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart
Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just,
Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind
Of Man, with str...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...pieced
The broken vision; for I dream'd that still
The motion of the great deep bore me on,
And that the woman walk'd upon the brink:
I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it:
"It came," she said, "by working in the mines:"
O then to ask her of my shares, I thought;
And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head.
And then the motion of the current ceased,
And there was rolling thunder; and we reach'd
A mountain, like a wall of burs and thorns;
But she with her strong fe...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...To the Memory of the Household It Describes
This Poem is Dedicated by the Author
"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the ...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...(It is not for them to criticize too minutely
the methods the Irish followed, though they might deplore some of
their results. During the past few years Ireland had been going
through what was tantamount to a revolution. -- EARL SPENCER)
Red Earl, and will ye take for guide
The silly camel-birds,
That ye bury your head in an Irish thorn,
On a desert o...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...DEDICATION
Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?
Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?
In cloud of clay so cast to ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...The IDIOT BOY. 'Tis eight o'clock,—a clear March night, The moon is up—the sky is blue, The owlet in the moonlight air, He shouts from nobody knows where; He lengthens out his lonely shout, Halloo! halloo! a long halloo! —Why bustle thus about your door,&n...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...CANTO FIRST.
The Chase.
Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung
On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring
And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,
Till envious ivy did around thee cling,
Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,—
O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...I.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
II.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."
III.
A...Read more of this...
by
Khayyam, Omar
...BY
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS
SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF 'WAT TYLER'
'A Daniel come to judgment! yes a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.'
PREFACE
It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —
'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope
If Mr. So...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
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