Famous Pulseless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Clancy Of The Mounted Police

...ilence faded away like a ghost.

The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were a shadowy mist;
 Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a dream of woe;
Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled and hissed;
 Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the untrodden snow.

Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by steaming breath;
 Through peril of open water, through ache of insensate cold;
Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced to death,
 Till he came...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William


Felo de Se

...an rich and red:--
And I cast it in crystal chalice and drank of it till I was dead.
And the mould of the man was mute, pulseless in ev'ry part,
The long limbs lay on the sand with an eagle eating the heart.
Repose for the rotting head and peace for the putrid breast,
But for that which is 'I' indeed the gods have decreed no rest;
No rest but an endless aching, a sorrow which grows amain:--
I am caught in the Circle of Being and held in the Circle of Pain.
Bitter indeed is Li...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy

In a Churchyard

...nes cut, her spirits bating breath
As the ranked pilings narrow toward the shock, 

So memory and expectation set 
Some pulseless clangor free
Of circumstance, and charm us to forget 
This twilight crumbling in the churchyard tree, 

Those swifts or swallows which do not pertain, 
Scuffed voices in the drive, 
That light flicked on behind the vestry pane, 
Till, unperplexed from all that is alive, 

It shadows all our thought, balked imminence
Of uncommitted sound, 
And still...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

In the Bay

...ing pain,
As hope to souls long weaned from hope again
Returning, or as blood revived anew
To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein,
Even so toward us should no man be but you.XXXV


One rose before the sunrise was, and one
Before the sunset, lovelier than the sun.
And now the heaven is dark and bright and loud
With wind and starry drift and moon and cloud,
And night's cry rings in straining sheet and shroud,
What help is ours if hope like yours be none?XXXVI


O well-belo...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

In the Matter of One Compass

...g above the glassy death,
Hear what the constant Needle saith:


Oh, lisping Reef! Oh, listless Cloud,
 In slumber on a pulseless main!
By Love upheld, by God allowed,
 We go, but we return again!


E'en so through Tropic and through Trade,
 Awed by the shadow of new skies,
As we shall watch old planets fade
 And mark the stranger stars arise,
So, surely, back through Sun and Cloud,
 So, surely, from the outward main
By Love recalled, by God allowed,
 Shall we return -- retur...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


The Dead Man Walking

...ne living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ...

-- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fir...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

The Old Guitar

...spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.

The keys hold only nerveless strings--
The sinews of brave old airs
Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings
So closely here declares
A sad regret in its ravelings
And the faded hue it wears.

But the old guitar, with a lenient grace,
Has cherished a smile for me;
And its features hint of a fairer face
That comes with a memory
Of a flower-and-perfume-haunted place
And a moonlit balcony.

Music sweeter than words confess,
Or ...Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb

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