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Famous Salve Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Heaney, Seamus
...ittle fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again...Read more of this...



by Schwartz, Delmore
...one or undone,
Converting every feature
Into its own and unknown nature;
So, once in the drugstore,
Amid all the poppy, salve and ointment,
I suddenly saw, estranged there,
Beyond all disappointment,
My own face in the mirror....Read more of this...

by Bell, Marvin
...rried in the darkness--
over things and under things--
to reach the next black pool
in time, and once
I lay in the cool salve that
so suited all I had become
for two light-ups of the sky.
I took one inside and one
face of two watches I ruined
doing things like that,
and made a watch that works.
From the combat
infiltration course and
common sense, I made a man
to survive the Army, which means
that I made a man to survive
being a man....Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...e boat there through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve....Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ade can heal. A woodland walk, 
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
Salve my worst wounds. 
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: 
'Dost love our mannersi Canst thou silent lie? 
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature pass 
Into the winter night's extinguished mood? 
Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 
And being latent, feel thyself no less? 
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, 
The river, hill, st...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...nd that bent me. All my hurts
My garden-spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds, and leave no cicatrice.
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear,
Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass
Into the winter night's extinguished mood?
Canst thou shine now, then darkle,
And being latent, feel thyself no less?
As when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,
The r...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...a. 

El estanque tiene suelta
su cabellera de algas
y al aire sus grises tetas
estremecidas de ranas. 

Dios te salve. Rezaremos
a Nuestra Se?ora de Agua
por la ni?a del estanque
muerta bajo las manzanas. 

Yo luego pondr? a su lado
dos peque?as calabazas
para que se tenga a flote,
?ay! sobre la mar salada....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ope with, or his own.
But—as a man who had been matchless held 
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite,
Still will be tempting him who foils him still,
And never cease, though to his shame the more;
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;
Or surging waves against a solid rock,
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,
(Vain...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...il meno.
 Non avea pur natura ivi dipinto,
ma di soavità di mille odori
vi facea uno incognito e indistinto.
 'Salve, Regina' in sul verde e 'n su' fiori
quindi seder cantando anime vidi,
che per la valle non parean di fuori.
 «Prima che 'l poco sole omai s'annidi»,
cominciò 'l Mantoan che ci avea vòlti,
«tra color non vogliate ch'io vi guidi.
 Di questo balzo meglio li atti e ' volti
conoscerete voi di tutti quanti,
che ne la lama giù tra essi accolti.
 ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...nown 
From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl'd mind,
And are as Balm to fester'd wounds.

Sam: Your coming, Friends, revives me, for I learn
Now of my own experience, not by talk,
How counterfeit a coin they are who friends
Bear in their Superscription (of the most 
I would be understood) in prosperous days
They swarm, but in ...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...ead our souls and learn to be?
Here a dull drove of faces harsh and vexed,
We watch our cities burning in their pit,
To salve our souls grinding dull lucre out,
We, fanatics of the frustrate and the half,
Who once set Purgatory Hill in doubt.

Now smoke and dearth and money everywhere,
Mean heirlooms of each fainter generation,
And mummied housegods in their musty niches,
Burns and Scott, sham bards of a sham nation,
And spiritual defeat wrapped warm in riches,
No pride b...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...?
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds....Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...th blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the dai...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...that I am Oedipus.

What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...excellent, since most of them are killed."
"But, Monsieur Antoine --"
"You are self-willed,
Martin. You need a salve
For your conscience, do you?
Very well, we'll halve
The compliments, also the pastes and dentifrices;
Send some to the Kings, and some to the Empresses.
`Oil of Bitter Almonds' -- the Empress Josephine can have that.
`Oil of Parma Violets' fits the other one pat."
Rap! Rap! Bang!
"What a hideous clatter!
Blaise seems determined to batter
Th...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...iracle *it pleased
In her, that we should see his mighty workes:
Christ, which that is to every harm triacle*, *remedy, salve
By certain meanes oft, as knowe clerkes*, *scholars
Doth thing for certain ende, that full derk is
To manne's wit, that for our, ignorance
Ne cannot know his prudent purveyance*. *foresight

Now since she was not at the feast y-slaw,* *slain
Who kepte her from drowning in the sea?
Who kepte Jonas in the fish's maw,
Till he was spouted up at Nineveh...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...your body.
The next sash was the one Thee, Hannah!
borrowed from her be-ribboned friend
and hid in a drawer and got salve on it,
salve on a sash, like bacon grease on a snake,
God's lard on the ribbon a Quaker girl
should not want, Satan's jism on
silk delicate as the skin of a young girl's genital.
When Hannah gave up satin her father
told her she was beautiful
just as God made her. But all sashes
lead to the sash, very sash of
very sash, begotten, not made, that...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...revenue
For sidewalks, sewers; that is well enough!
I wish to God this fight were now inspired
By other passion than to salve the pride
Of John Cabanis or his daughter. Why
Can never contests of great moment spring
From worthy things, not little? Still, if men
Must always act so, and if rum must be
The symbol and the medium to release
From life's denial and from slavery,
Then give me rum!"
Exultant cries arose.
Then, as George Trimble had o'ercome his fear
And vacilla...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...We maids would far, far whiter be
If that our eyes might sometimes see
Men maids in purity,'
Fair Lady?
Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches
With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes --
The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes
For Christ's and ladies' sakes,
Fair Lady?
Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed
To fight like a man and love like a maid,
Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade,
I' the scabbard, death, was laid,
Fair Lady,
I dare avouch my faith is bright
That ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...sily,
Him for to glade, I shal don al my peyne,
And in myn herte seken every veyne;
If to this soor ther may be founden salve,
It shal not lakken, certain, on myn halve.' 

Goth Pandarus, and Troilus he soughte,
Til in a temple he fond him allone,
As he that of his lyf no lenger roughte;
But to the pitouse goddes everichone
Ful tendrely he preyde, and made his mone, 
To doon him sone out of this world to pace;
For wel he thoughte ther was non other grace.

And shortly...Read more of this...

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