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Famous Sallow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...A faded Boy -- in sallow Clothes
Who drove a lonesome Cow
To pastures of Oblivion --
A statesman's Embryo --

The Boys that whistled are extinct --
The Cows that fed and thanked
Remanded to a Ballad's Barn
Or Clover's Retrospect --...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...ace,
seventy-five cents in my pocket.
 SPRING IN THE AIR...

In the barbershops
 they're powdering
 the sallow cheeks
 of the pariah of Publishers Row.
And in the store windows
 three-color bookcovers
 flash like sunstruck mirrors.
But me,
I don't have even a book of ABC's
that lives on this street
and carries my name on its door!
But what the hell...
I don't look back,
the lead dirt of the composing room
 on my face,
seventy-five cents in ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...own in his own West-Saxonland,
Glad of the war. 

Many a carcase they left to be carrion,
Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin--
Left for the white-tail'd eagle to tear it, and
Left for the horny-nibb'd raven to rend it, and
Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the weald. 

Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge--
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories--
Hapt in this isle, since
Up from the East hith...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...their ears
To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence!
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste?
And set to work millions of spinning worms,
That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk,
To deck her so...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...o see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street 
 Drifting on, drifting on,
 To the scrape of restless feet;
I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street. 

In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky
The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,
Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,
Till like a pall...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...her
At either hand,
Like weeds uplifted,
The tree-trunks rifted
In spars are drifted,
Like foam or sand,
Past swamp and sallow
And reed-beds callow,
Through pool and shallow,
To wind and lee,
Till, no more tongue-tied,
Full flood and young tide
Roar down the rapids and storm the sea.

As men's cheeks faded
On shores invaded,
When shorewards waded
The lords of fight;
When churl and craven
Saw hard on haven
The wide-winged raven
At mainmast height;
When monks affrighted
To ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...er, then must Kay, 
The master of the meats and drinks, be thine.' 

He rose and past; then Kay, a man of mien 
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself 
Root-bitten by white lichen, 

'Lo ye now! 
This fellow hath broken from some Abbey, where, 
God wot, he had not beef and brewis enow, 
However that might chance! but an he work, 
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop, 
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog.' 

Then Lancelot standing near, 'Sir Seneschal, 
Sleuth-h...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and tart,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...
"The last alternative befits me best, 
And thus I answer for mine absent guest." 

With cheek unchanging from its sallow gloom, 
However near his own or other's tomb; 
With hand, whose almost careless coolness spoke 
Its grasp well-used to deal the sabre-stroke; 
With eye, though calm, determined not to spare, 
Did Lara too his willing weapon bare. 
In vain the circling chieftains round them closed, 
For Otho's frenzy would not be opposed; 
And from his lip those wo...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...m is seen, 
Thy native blush, thy timid mien, 
Thy hour is past ! thy charms are vain! 
ILL-NATURE haunts thee with her sallow train, 
Mean JEALOUSY deceives thy list'ning ear, 
And SLANDER stains thy cheek with many a bitter tear. 

In calm retirement form'd to dwell, 
NATURE, thy handmaid fair and kind, 
For thee, a beauteous garland twin'd; 
The vale-nurs'd Lily's downcast bell 
Thy modest mien display'd, 
The snow-drop, April's meekest child, 
With myrtle blossoms und...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...
Moves in the wind, and from another wound
That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition's lean and ina...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ain
Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
They should inherit nought; and he,
To whom next came their patrimony, 
A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
Aye watched me, as the will was read,
With eyes askance, which sought to see
The secrets of my agony;
And with close lips and anxious brow
Stood canvassing still to and fro
The chance of my resolve, and all
The dead man's caution just did call;
For in that killing lie 't was said--
'She is adulterous, and doth hold 
In secret t...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t, I loathe thy race,
But in thy lineaments I trace
What time shall strengthen, not efface:
Though young and pale, that sallow front
Is scathed by fiery passion's brunt;
Though bent on earth thine evil eye,
As meteor-like thou glidest by,
Right well I view thee and deem thee one
Whom Othman's sons should slay or shun.


On - on he hastened, and he drew
My gaze of wonder as he flew:
Though like a demon of the night
He passed, and vanished from my sight,
His aspect and his ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
..., *taken away from him*
That lean he wex*, and dry as any shaft. *became
His eyen hollow, grisly to behold,
His hue sallow, and pale as ashes cold,
And solitary he was, ever alone,
And wailing all the night, making his moan.
And if he hearde song or instrument,
Then would he weepen, he might not be stent*. *stopped
So feeble were his spirits, and so low,
And changed so, that no man coulde know
His speech, neither his voice, though men it heard.
And in his gear...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...ering Copse. Mean while, the Leaves, 
That, late, the Forest clad with lively Green,
Nipt by the drizzly Night, and Sallow-hu'd,
Fall, wavering, thro' the Air; or shower amain,
Urg'd by the Breeze, that sobs amid the Boughs.
Then list'ning Hares forsake the rusling Woods, 
And, starting at the frequent Noise, escape
To the rough Stubble, and the rushy Fen.
Then Woodcocks, o'er the fluctuating Main,
That glimmers to the Glimpses of the Moon,
Stretch their long Voya...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...hey've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous on...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...'d at seventy-five,
And so I send a birthday line
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt
In some forgotten book of mine
With sallow scraps of manuscript,
And dating many a year ago,
Has hit on this, which you will take,
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know,
Less for its own than for the sake
Of one recalling gracious times,
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes,
And I more pleasure in your praise.

TIRESIAS

I WISH I were as in the years of old
While y...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ad, funereal frown, that still
Survives its power to wound or kill;
Or from thy looks, with desperate rage,
Chafing the sallow hue of age,
And cursing dire with rueful faces,
The repartees of looking-glasses.


Now at tea-table take thy station,
Those shambles vile of reputation,
Where butcher'd characters and stale
Are day by day exposed for sale:
Then raise the floodgates of thy tongue,
And be the peal of scandal rung;
While malice tunes thy voice to rail,
And whisperin...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...de, the latter
Grows quick with seed.
Grass-couched in her labor's pride,
She bears a king. Turned bitter 

And sallow as any lemon,
The other, wry virgin to the last,
Goes graveward with flesh laid waste,
Worm-husbanded, yet no woman....Read more of this...

by Justice, Donald
...up for the long weekend
and vivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.

How frail our generation has got, how sallow
and pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end
finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.
And why this is, I'll never be able to tell you....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things