Famous Savour Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ash Wednesday

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the...Read more of this...

Sonnet 125: Weret aught to me I bore the canopy

by William Shakespeare
 Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take...Read more of this...

A Dialogue

by George Herbert
 Man. SWEETEST Saviour, if my soul 
 Were but worth the having, 
Quickly should I then control 
 Any thought of waving. 
But when all my care and pains 
Cannot give the name of gains 
To Thy wretch so full of stains, 
What delight or hope remains? 

Saviour. What, child, is the balance thine, 
 Thine the poise and...Read more of this...

Book Lover

by Robert William Service
 I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I...Read more of this...

Birthday

by Robert William Service
 (16th January 1949)

I thank whatever gods may be
For all the happiness that's mine;
That I am festive, fit and free
To savour women, wit and wine;
That I may game of golf enjoy,
And have a formidable drive:
In short, that I'm a gay old boy
Though I be
 Seventy-and-five.

My daughter thinks. because I'm old
(I'm not a crock, when all is said),
I mustn't let my...Read more of this...

A Decade

by Amy Lowell
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished....Read more of this...

Learn To Like

by Robert William Service
 School yourself to savour most
Joys that have but little cost;
Prove the best of life is free,
Sun and stars and sky and sea;
Eager in your eyes to please,
Proffer meadows, brooks and trees;
Nature strives for your content,
Never charging you a cent.

Learn to love a garden gay,
Flowers and fruit in rich array.
Care for dogs and singing birds,
Have for children cheery words.
Find plain...Read more of this...

Hymn to Lucifer

by Aleister Crowley
 Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body...Read more of this...

An Epicure

by Robert William Service
 Should you preserve white mice in honey
Don't use imported ones from China,
For though they cost you less in money
You'll find the Japanese ones finer.
But if Chinese, stuff them with spice,
Which certainly improves their savour,
And though the Canton mice are nice,
The Pekinese have finer flavour.

If you should pickle bracken shoots
The way the wily Japanese do,
Be sure to pluck then young...Read more of this...

My Hundred Books

by Robert William Service
 A thousand books my library
 Contains;
And all are primed, it seems to me
 With brains.
Mine are so few I scratch in thought
 My head;
For just a hundred of the lot
 I've read.

A hundred books, but of the best,
 I can
With wisdom savour and digest
 And scan.
Yet when afar from kin and kith
 In nooks
Of quietness I'm happy with
 Sweet...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXV

by William Shakespeare
  Were 't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which prove more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy...Read more of this...

Desolation

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
Of love unrequited, or cold death’s woe, 
Is sweet, compared to that hour when we know
That some grand passion is on the wane.

When we see that the glory, and glow, and grace
Which lent a splendour to night and day, 
Are surely fading, and showing grey
And dull groundwork of the commonplace.

When fond expressions...Read more of this...

Bacchus

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
BRING me wine but wine which never grew 
In the belly of the grape  
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots reaching through 
Under the Andes to the Cape  
Suffer'd no savour of the earth to 'scape. 5 

Let its grapes the morn salute 
From a nocturnal root  
Which feels the acrid juice 
Of Styx and Erebus; 
And...Read more of this...

A Virginal

by Ezra Pound
 No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. 
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, 
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness; 
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly 
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther; 
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness. 
Oh, I have picked...Read more of this...

The end

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The savour of fruits
still remains
in my mouth,
but the bitterness of words
demolishes the clouds
and wrings the snow
counting the pebbles.
But you never told me
why you deceived me,
why with pain
and injustice did you desire
to say that the end
always in tears
is cast to flames....Read more of this...

Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, 
 Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? 
 Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, 
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, 
 Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, 
 Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? 
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,...Read more of this...

Pullman Porter

by Robert William Service
 The porter in the Pullman car
Was charming, as they sometimes are.
He scanned my baggage tags: "Are you
The man who wrote of Lady Lou?"
When I said "yes" he made a fuss -
Oh, he was most assiduous;
And I was pleased to think that he
Enjoyed my brand of poetry.

He was forever at my call,
So when we got to Montreal
And he had brushed...Read more of this...

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

by Hilaire Belloc
 To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the...Read more of this...

Genesis

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 In the outer world that was before this earth,
That was before all shape or space was born,
Before the blind first hour of time had birth,
Before night knew the moonlight or the morn;

Yea, before any world had any light,
Or anything called God or man drew breath,
Slowly the strong sides of the heaving night
Moved, and brought forth the strength of life...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Kings Jest

by Rudyard Kipling
 When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
As the snowbound trade of the North comes down
To the market-square of Peshawur town.

In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill,
A kafila camped at the foot of the hill.
Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose,
And...Read more of this...

The Play House

by Barry Tebb
 We had a new house

And split the decorating.

You took the piled rolls of paper,

While I stacked the cans of gloss,

One to each corner-white-what else?

And when we began our slow labour

We did not even sigh except in some relief

In being there at last.

There were no spaces for our children’s visits

Nor for the children they would never bring.

All rooms sat square...Read more of this...

Ye Old Mule

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 Ye old mule that think yourself so fair,
Leave off with craft your beauty to repair,
For it is true, without any fable,
No man setteth more by riding in your saddle. 
Too much travail so do your train appair. 
Ye old mule

With false savour though you deceive th'air, 
Whoso taste you shall well perceive your lair
Savoureth somewhat of a Kappurs stable.
Ye...Read more of this...

Thoreau in Italy

by Robert Francis
 Lingo of birds was easier than lingo of peasants-
they were elusive, though, the birds, for excellent reasons.
He thought of Virgil, Virgil who wasn't there to chat with.

History he never forgave for letting Latin
lapse into Italian, a renegade jabbering
musical enough but not enough to call music

So he conversed with stones, imperial and papal.
Even the preposterous popes he could condone
a moment...Read more of this...

A Panegyric To Sir Lewis Pemberton

by Robert Herrick
 Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...

My Library

by Robert William Service
 Like prim Professor of a College
I primed my shelves with books of knowledge;
And now I stand before them dumb,
Just like a child that sucks its thumb,
And stares forlorn and turns away,
With dolls or painted bricks to play.

They glour at me, my tomes of learning.
"You dolt!" they jibe; "you undiscerning
Moronic oaf, you make a fuss,
With highbrow swank selecting us;
Saying: "I'll...Read more of this...

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