Famous Reeking Poems by Famous Poets

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

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91. The Vision

...triot up to bare
 Corruption’s heart:
Some teach the bard—a darling care—
 The tuneful art.


“’Mong swelling floods of reeking gore,
They, ardent, kindling spirits pour;
Or, ’mid the venal senate’s roar,
 They, sightless, stand,
To mend the honest patriot-lore,
 And grace the hand.


“And when the bard, or hoary sage,
Charm or instruct the future age,
They bind the wild poetric rage
 In energy,
Or point the inconclusive page
 Full on the eye.


“Hence, Fullarton, the brave a...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...sistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world! from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls
His brother Death! A rare and regal prey
He hath prepared, prowling around the world; 
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark s...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Ghana Calls

...to heaven as I died: 
O turn me to the Golden Horde   
Summon all western nations   
Toward the Rising Sun. 

From reeking West whose day is done,   
Who stink and stagger in their dung   
Toward Africa, China, India’s strand   
Where Kenya and Himalaya stand   
And Nile and Yang-tze roll: 
Turn every yearning face of man. 

Come with us, dark America: 
The scum of Europe battened here   
And drowned a dream 
Made fetid swamp a refuge seem: 

Enslaved the Bla...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.

Mazeppa

...ll; I scarcely knew
If this were human breath I drew.

XV

'With glossy skin, and dripping mane,
And reeling limbs, and reeking flank,
The wild steed's sinewy nerves still strain
Up the repelling bank.
We gain the top. a boundless plain
Spreads through the shadow of the night,
And onward, onward, onward, seems,
Like precipices in our dreams, 
To stretch beyond the sight;
And here and there a speck of white,
Or scattered spot of dusky green, 
In masses broke into the light, 
A...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

O! Where Are You Going?

...lowing!
O! Tra-la-la-lally
Here down in the valley!

O! What are you seeking,
And where are you making?
The faggots are reeking!
The bannocks are baking!
O! Tril-lil-lil-lolly
The valley is jolly
Ha ha!

O! Where are you going,
With beards all a-wagging?
No knowing, no knowing
What brings Mister Baggins,
And Balin and Dwalin
Down into the valley
In June
Ha ha!

O! Will you be staying,
Or will you be flying?
Your ponies are straying!
The daylight is dying!
To fly would be foll...Read more of this...
by Tolkien, J R R


Paradise Lost: Book 08

...sleep, 
Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid, 
In balmy sweat; which with his beams the sun 
Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed. 
Straight toward Heaven my wondering eyes I turned, 
And gazed a while the ample sky; till, raised 
By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung, 
As thitherward endeavouring, and upright 
Stood on my feet: about me round I saw 
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains, 
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these, 
Creatures that ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paris

...om tables packed around the wall the crowds that drink and frolic there 
Spin serpentines into the air far out over the reeking hall, 


That, settling where the coils unroll, tangle with pink and green and blue 
The crowds that rag to "Hitchy-koo" and boston to the "Barcarole". . . . 


Here Mimi ventures, at fifteen, to make her debut in romance, 
And join her sisters in the dance and see the life that they have seen. 


Her hair, a tight hat just allows to brush beneath th...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

Recessional

...aw—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
   In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Ballad Of Lenins Tomb

...d daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: "O carrion crew!
I'd die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you."
I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race....
And now I saw ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Character Of Holland

...Fifteen hundred and more years ago,
But surely never any that was so.
See but their Mairmaids with their Tails of Fish,
Reeking at Church over the Chafing-Dish.
A vestal Turf enshrin'd in Earthen Ware
Fumes through the loop-holes of wooden Square.
Each to the Temple with these Altars tend,
But still does place it at her Western End:
While the fat steam of Female Sacrifice
Fills the Priests Nostrils and puts out his Eyes.
Or what a Spectacle the Skipper gross,
A Water-Hercules...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

The Dreamer

...faced the Turk.
Ah God! the glory of that great Crusade!
The bannered pomp, the gleam, the splendid urge!
The crash of reeking combat, blade to blade!
The reeling ranks, blood-avid and a-surge!
For long he thought; then feeling o'er him creep
Vast weariness, he fell into a sleep.

. . . . .

The cell door opened; soft the headsman came,
Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam,
(A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . .
And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.

* * * * ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Everlasting Mercy

...b to pub by city lamps 
Till men despise the game they started 
Till health and beauty are departed, 
and in a slum the reeking hag 
Mumbles a crust with toothy jag, 
Or gets the river's help to end 
The life too wrecked for man to mend. 
We spat and smoked and took our swipe 
Till Silas up and tap his pipe, 
And begged us all to pay attention 
Because he'd several things to mention. 
We'd seen the fight (Hear, hear. That's you); 
But still one task remained to do. 
That task...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...e
And all the blessed casks be knocked o' the head,
HORRENDUM! all his Holiness' drink to be
Profanely guzzled down the reeking throats
Of scoundrels, and inflame them on to seize
The massy coffers of the Church's gold,
And steal, mayhap, the carven silver shrine
And all the golden crucifixes? No! --
And so the holy father Pope made stir
And had sent forth a legate to Cervolles,
And treated with him, and made compromise,
And, last, had bidden all the Arch-priest's troop
To co...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Lady of the Lake

...ked with blood.
     The hand that for my father fought
     I honor, as his daughter ought;
     But can I clasp it reeking red
     From peasants slaughtered in their shed?
     No! wildly while his virtues gleam,
     They make his passions darker seem,
     And flash along his spirit high,
     Like lightning o'er the midnight sky.
     While yet a child,—and children know,
     Instinctive taught, the friend and foe,—
     I shuddered at his brow of gloom,
  ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Ladys Dressing Room

...nuff and snot.
The stockings, why should I expose,
Stained with the marks of stinking toes;
Or greasy coifs and pinners reeking,
Which Celia slept at least a week in?
A pair of tweezers next he found
To pluck her brows in arches round,
Or hairs that sink the forehead low,
Or on her chin like bristles grow.
The virtues we must not let pass,
Of Celia's magnifying glass.
When frighted Strephon cast his eye on't
It shewed the visage of a giant.
A glass that can to sight disclose
...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan

The Pleasures of Melancholy

...s, and polluted love:
Now let soft Juliet in the gaping tomb
Print the last kiss on her true Romeo's lips,
His lips yet reeking from the deadly draught:
Or Jaffier kneel for one forgiving look.
Nor seldom let the Moor on Desdemone
Pour the misguided threats of jealous rage.
By soft degrees the manly torrent steals
From my swollen eyes; and at a brother's woe
My big heart melts in sympathizing tears.

What are the splendours of the gaudy court,
Its tinsel trappings, and its pa...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas

The Siege of Corinth

...y chief that ever stood 
Triumphant in the fields of blood; 
From post to post, and deed to deed, 
Fast spurring on his reeking steed, 
Where sallying ranks the trench assail, 
And make the foremost Moslem quail; 
Or where the battery, guarded well, 
Remains as yet impregnable, 
Alighting cheerly to inspire 
The soldier slackening in his fire; 
The first and freshest of the host 
Which Stamboul's Sultan there can boast 
To guide the follower o'er the field, 
To point the tube...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

...ming
From the south as avengers of blood!
Our child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead,
The roots of the Tiger Tree reeking with red.


IV

This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,
Lord of the race since the world began.

We marched to the mammoths,
We pledged them our steel,
And scorning you, sang: —
"We are men,
We are men."
We mounted their necks,
And they stamped a wide reel.
We sang:
"We are fighting the hell-cats again,
We are mound-bu...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

The Watchman

...when he died­
There was a darkness and an agony,
And some were vastly frightened­not so I!
What cared I if that mob of reeking Jews
Had brought a nameless curse upon their heads ?
I had no part in that blood-guiltiness.
At least he died; and some few friends of his­
I think he had not very many friends­
Took him and laid him in a garden tomb.
A watch was set about the sepulchre,
Lest these, his friends, should hide him and proclaim
That he had risen as he had fore-told.
Laug...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Was It You?

..., young Smith, was it you I saw
In the battle's storm and stench,
With a roar of rage and a wound red-raw
Leap into the reeking trench?
As you stood like a fiend on the firing-shelf
And you stabbed and hacked and slew. . . .
Oh, I look at you and I ask myself,
Was it you, young Smith, was it you?

"Hullo, old Brown, with your ruddy cheek
And your tummy's rounded swell,
Your garden's looking jolly chic
And your kiddies awf'ly well.
Then you beam at me in your cheery way
As you...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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