Famous Ravens Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Psalm 147

by Isaac Watts
 v.7-9,13-18 
C. M.
The seasons of the year.

With songs and honors sounding loud,
Address the Lord on high;
Over the heav'ns he spreads his cloud,
And waters veil the sky.

He sends his showers of blessing down
To cheer the plains below;
He makes the grass the mountains crown,
And corn in valleys grow.

He gives the grazing ox his meat,
He hears the raven's cry;
But man, who tastes...Read more of this...

The Town Down by the River

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Said the Watcher by the Way 
To the young and the unladen, 
To the boy and to the maiden, 
"God be with you both to-day. 
First your song came ringing, 
Now you come, you two-- 
Knowing naught of what you do, 
Or of what your dreams are bringing.

"O you children who go singing 
To the Town down the River,...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

Variations of Greek Themes

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I
A HAPPY MAN
(Carphyllides)

When these graven lines you see, 
Traveler, do not pity me; 
Though I be among the dead, 
Let no mournful word be said. 

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind; 
Near to them and to my wife, 
I was happy all my life. 

My three sons I married right, 
And their sons I rocked...Read more of this...

Why Is This Age Worse...?

by Anna Akhmatova
 Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in....Read more of this...

When The Lamp Is Shattered

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead -- 
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute -- 
No song but...Read more of this...

He who was born

by Aleksandr Blok
 He, who was born in stagnant year 
Does not remember own way.
We, kids of Russia's years of fear,
Remember every night and day.

Years that burned everything to ashes!
Do you bring madness or grace?
The war's and freedom's fire flashes
Left bloody light on every face. 

We are struck dumb: the toxsin's pressure
Has made us tightly close lips.
In living hearts, once full of...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

74. Fragment—Her Flwoing Locks

by Robert Burns
 HER flowing locks, the raven’s wing,
Adown her neck and bosom hing;
How sweet unto that breast to cling,
 And round that neck entwine her!


Her lips are roses wat wi’ dew,
O’ what a feast her bonie mou’!
Her cheeks a mair celestial hue,
 A crimson still diviner!...Read more of this...

Lines

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
WHEN the lamp is shatter'd  
The light in the dust lies dead; 
When the cloud is scatter'd  
The rainbow's glory is shed; 
When the lute is broken 5 
Sweet tones are remember'd not 
When the lips have spoken  
Loved accents are soon forgot. 

As music and splendour 
Survive not the lamp and the lute 10 
The heart's...Read more of this...

The Wizard in the Street

by Vachel Lindsay
 [Concerning Edgar Allan Poe]


Who now will praise the Wizard in the street 
With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet — 
This Jingle-man, of strolling players born, 
Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn, 
This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good, 
With melancholy bells upon his hood? 

The hurrying great ones scorn his Raven's croak, 
And well may...Read more of this...

Tomlinson

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way...Read more of this...

The Welsh Marches

by A E Housman
 High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam 
Islanded in Severn stream; 
The bridges from the steepled crest 
Cross the water east and west. 

The flag of morn in conqueror's state 
Enters at the English gate: 
The vanquished eve, as night prevails, 
Bleeds upon the road to Wales. 

Ages since the vanquished bled 
Round my mother's marriage-bed; 
There the ravens feasted...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Hanged Men

by Francois Villon
 Men my brothers who after us live,
have your hearts against us not hardened.
For—if of poor us you take pity,
God of you sooner will show mercy.
You see us here, attached.
As for the flesh we too well have fed,
long since it's been devoured or has rotted.
And we the bones are becoming ash and dust.

Of our pain let nobody laugh,
but pray God
...Read more of this...

Finrods Song

by J R R Tolkien
 He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their song.
Reeling and foundering, as ever...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fasting

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Hiawatha 
Prayed and fasted in the forest, 
Not for greater skill in hunting, 
Not for greater craft in fishing, 
Not for triumphs in the battle, 
And renown among the warriors, 
But for profit of the people, 
For advantage of the nations.
First he built a lodge for fasting, 
Built a wigwam in the forest, 
By the...Read more of this...

Cino

by Ezra Pound
 Italian Campagna 1309, the open road


Bah! I have sung women in three cities,
But it is all the same;
And I will sing of the sun.

Lips, words, and you snare them,
Dreams, words, and they are as jewels,
Strange spells of old deity,
Ravens, nights, allurement:
And they are not;
Having become the souls of song.

Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.
Being upon the road once...Read more of this...

The Old Woman of Berkeley

by Robert Southey
 The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal, 
And the Old Woman knew what he said, 
And she grew pale at the Raven's tale, 
And sicken'd and went to her bed. 

'Now fetch me my children, and fetch them with speed,' 
The Old Woman of Berkeley said, 
'The Monk my son, and my daughter the Nun, 
Bid them...Read more of this...

Ode to Melancholy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 SORC'RESS of the Cave profound! 
Hence, with thy pale, and meagre train, 
Nor dare my roseate bow'r profane, 
Where light-heel'd mirth despotic reigns, 
Slightly bound in feath'ry chains, 
And scatt'ring blisses round. 

Hence, to thy native Chaos­where
Nurs'd by thy haggard Dam, DESPAIR, 
Shackled by thy numbing spell, 
Mis'ry's pallid children dwell; 
Where, brooding o'er thy fatal charms, 
FRENZY rolls...Read more of this...

The Tavern

by Willa Cather
 IN the tavern of my heart 
Many a one has sat before, 
Drunk red wine and sung a stave, 
And, departing, come no more. 
When the night was cold without, 
And the ravens croaked of storm, 
They have sat them at my hearth, 
Telling me my house was warm. 

As the lute and cup went round, 
They have rhymed...Read more of this...

On the Ruins of a Country Inn

by Philip Freneau
 WHERE now these mingled ruins lie 
A temple once to Bacchus rose, 
Beneath whose roof, aspiring high, 
Full many a guest forgot his woes. 

No more this dome, by tempests torn, 
Affords a social safe retreat; 
But ravens here, with eye forlorn, 
And clustering bats henceforth will meet. 

The Priestess of this ruined shrine, 
Unable to survive the stroke,...Read more of this...

Blessing The Cornfields

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!
Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten.
There was peace among the nations;
Unmolested roved the hunters,
Built the birch canoe for sailing,
Caught the...Read more of this...

Nay Lord not thus! white lilies in the spring

by Oscar Wilde
 Seven stars in the still water,
And seven in the sky;
Seven sins on the King's daughter,
Deep in her soul to lie.

Red roses are at her feet,
(Roses are red in her red-gold hair)
And O where her bosom and girdle meet
Red roses are hidden there.

Fair is the knight who lieth slain
Amid the rush and reed,
See the lean fishes that are fain
Upon dead...Read more of this...

Psalm 147 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 The Divine nature, providence, and grace.

Praise ye the Lord; 'tis good to raise
Our hearts and voices in his praise;
His nature and his works invite
To make this duty our delight.

The Lord builds up Jerusalem,
And gathers nations to his name;
His mercy melts the stubborn soul,
And makes the broken spirit whole.

He formed the stars, those heav'nly flames;
He counts their numbers, calls their...Read more of this...

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