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Famous Ravening Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
 His wretched refuge, dark despair,
 While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
 And distant far the faithful few
 Who would his sorrows share.


 False flatterer, Hope, away!
 Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
 We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
 To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
 And owning Heaven’s mysterious sway,
 Submissive, low adore.


 Ye honored, mighty Dead,
 Who nobl...Read more of this...



by Lanier, Sidney
...pulchre and Dolorous Hill,

Canst thou be he that, yester-sunset warm,
Purple with Paynim rage and wrack desire,
Dashed ravening out of a dusty lair of Storm,
Harried the west, and set the world on fire?

Hast thou perchance repented, Saracen Sun?
Wilt warm the world with peace and dove-desire?
Or wilt thou, ere this very day be done,
Blaze Saladin still, with unforgiving fire?...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...liest shone, 
Of tender maidens they the tenderest bore, 
And, drowned in tears and making piteous moan, 
Left for that ravening beast, chained on the rocks alone. 


Thither transported by enchanter's art, 
Angelica from dreams most innocent 
(As the tale mentioned in another part) 
Awoke, the victim for that sad event. 
Beauty so rare, nor birth so excellent, 
Nor tears that make sweet Beauty lovelier still, 
Could turn that people from their harsh intent. 
Alas...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...eir anguish? shall I brook to be supplicated?
Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Trinobant!
Must their ever-ravening eagle's beak and talon annihilate us?
Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable,
Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton,
Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,
Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ar batteries

Edge the silence.





34



The piggeries no more

Than corrugations

Of rust and wood

Sigh in the

Ravening wind.





35



A tethered horse

Is pawing the tired grass

Among the fork lift trucks

And oil-skinned scavengers.





36



Over the Hollows

Weeds on filled-in cellars

Cracked window-sills

At crazy angles

Are megaliths to memory.





37



By the railway cutting

Chained and padlocked

Rusty gates made

My private garden

Of th...Read more of this...



by Lewis, C S
...heathenry? 
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth, 
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm. 
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll 
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound; 
But the bond wil1 break, the Beast run free. The weary gods, 
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand, 
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope 
To be counted wort...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...d to say, 
 Our sons, our husbands, all that we love best, 
 Our hearts, our souls, are on those waves away, 
 Those ravening wolves that know not ruth, nor rest. 
 
 Think how they sport with these beloved forms; 
 And how the clarion-blowing wind unties 
 Above their heads the tresses of the storms: 
 Perchance even now the child, the husband, dies. 
 
 For we can never tell where they may be 
 Who, to make head against the tide and gale, 
 Between them and the ...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...
He is servant with Change for lord, and for wages he hath to his hire
Folly and force, and a sword that devours, and a ravening fire.
From the bed of his birth to his grave he is driven as a wind at their will;
Lest Change bow down as his slave, and the storm and the sword be still;
Lest earth spread open her wings to the sunward, and sing with the spheres;
Lest man be master of things, to prevail on their forces and fears.
By the spirit are things overcome; they are...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...ice I fed 
 At rich men's tables, in this filth I lie 
 Drenched, beaten, hungered, cold, uncomforted, 
 Mauled by that ravening greed; and these, as I, 
 With gluttonous lives the like reward have won." 

 I answered, "Piteous is thy state to one 
 Who knew thee in thine old repute, but say, 
 If yet persists thy previous mind, which way 
 The feuds of our rent city shall end, and why 
 These factions vex us, and if still there be 
 One just man left among us." 

 "T...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...Came a term to that land's old favoredness: 
Past the sea-walls, crumbled in thundering spray, 
Rolled the green waves, ravening, merciless. 


Through bearded boughs immobile in cool decay, 
Where sea-bloom covers corroding palaces, 
The mermaid glides with a curious glance to-day, 
In Lyonesse....Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...ore send thee hence, in peace
To seek thy father, not seek single fights
In vain;--but who can keep the lion's cub
From ravening, and who govern Rustum's son?
Go, I will grant thee what thy heart desires." 

So said he, and dropp'd Sohrab's hand, and left
His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he lay;
And o'er his chilly limbs his woollen coat
He pass'd, and tied his sandals on his feet,
And threw a white cloak round him, and he took
In his right hand a ruler's staff, no swor...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...under the semblance of peace
By manifold illusion; but man's life is thought,
And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
Ravening through century after century,
Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
Into the desolation of reality:
Egypt and Greece, good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!
Hermits upon Mount Meru or Everest,
Caverned in night under the drifted snow,
Or where that snow and winter's dreadful blast
Beat down upon their naked bodies, know
That day brings round the ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...--
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place, -- 'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out:

"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave,
Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news
F...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
...uild a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;
Whose ravening monsters mighty men shall slay,
Not the poor singer of an empty day....Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...d laughter and lightning of the sovereign sea;



Rivers and springs, and storms that seek your prey;
With strong wings ravening through the skies by night;
Spirits and stars that hold one choral way;
O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light
Aflame above the souls of men that sway
All generations of all years with might;
O sunrise of the repossessing day,
And sunrise of all-renovating right;
And thou, whose trackless foot
Mocks hope's or fear's pursuit,
Swift Revoluti...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...han wrong,"
The buzzards came taunting:
"Down from the north
Tiger-nations are sweeping along."

Then we ate of the ravening Leaf
As our savage fathers of old.
No longer our wounds made us weak,
No longer our pulses were cold.
Though half of my troops were afoot,
(For the great who had borne them were slain)
We dreamed we were tigers, and leaped
And foamed with that vision insane.
We cried "We are soldiers of doom,
Doom,
Sabres of glory and doom."
We wreat...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...make another crumb 
For this pernicious feast of time and men— 
Well, I have seen too much of time and men 
To fear the ravening or the wrath of either. 

Yes, it is Paul you see—the Saul of Tarsus
That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain 
For saying Something was beyond the Law, 
And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul 
Upon the Law till I went famishing, 
Not knowing that I starved. How should I know,
More then than any, that the food I had— 
What else it may h...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ed monster, writhes in its fury and pain;
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.

Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears;
Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn with our fears;
Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky like a fleece;
Then, when our dread was the greatest, crashed into safety and peace.

But what of the others that followed, losing their boats by the score?
Well could we see them and hear the...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...ng clerics murder song
With barren words and flatteries of the weak.
In what land do the powerless turn the beak
Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?
For all your croziers, they have left the path
And wander in the storms and clinging snows,
Hopeless for ever: ancient Oisin knows,
For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies
On the anvil of the world.

S. Patrick. Be still: the skies
Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,
For God has heard, a...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...o indolent procrastinations and no yawning states,
No sighs or head-scratchings. Nothing but bounce and stab 
And a ravening second.

Is it their single-mind-sized skulls, or a trained 
Body, or genius, or a nestful of brats
Gives their days this bullet and automatic
Purpose? Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's mouth
That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own 
Side and devouring of itself: efficiency which
Strikes too streamlined for any doubt to p...Read more of this...

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