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Famous Short Savage Poems

Famous Short Savage Poems. Short Savage Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Savage short poems


by George (Lord) Byron
 Who killed John Keats? 
'I,' says the Quarterly, 
So savage and Tartarly; 
''Twas one of my feats.' 

Who shot the arrow? 
'The poet-priest Milman 
(So ready to kill man), 
Or Southey or Barrow.'



by Walter Savage Landor
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh! if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, who ever felt as I?

No longer could I doubt him true;
All other men may use deceit:
He always said my eyes were blue,
And often swore my lips were sweet.

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

by Thomas Hardy
 I

If seasons all were summers, 
And leaves would never fall, 
And hopping casement-comers 
Were foodless not at all, 
And fragile folk might be here 
That white winds bid depart; 
Then one I used to see here 
Would warm my wasted heart!

II

One frail, who, bravely tilling 
Long hours in gripping gusts, 
Was mastered by their chilling, 
And now his ploughshare rusts. 
So savage winter catches 
The breath of limber things, 
And what I love he snatches, 
And what I love not, brings.



by Walter Savage Landor
 THE leaves are falling; so am I; 
The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; 
 So have I too. 
Scarcely on any bough is heard 
Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird 
 The whole wood through. 

Winter may come: he brings but nigher 
His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire 
 Where old friends meet. 
Let him; now heaven is overcast, 
And spring and summer both are past, 
 And all things sweet.

by Walter Savage Landor
 ‘Do you remember me? or are you proud?’
Lightly advancing thro’ her star-trimm’d crowd,
Ianthe said, and look’d into my eyes.
‘A yes, a yes to both: for Memory
Where you but once have been must ever be,
And at your voice Pride from his throne must rise.’

by Theodore Roethke
 Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, --
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.

by Walter Savage Landor
 MOTHER, I cannot mind my wheel; 
 My fingers ache, my lips are dry: 
O, if you felt the pain I feel! 
 But O, who ever felt as I? 

No longer could I doubt him true-- 
 All other men may use deceit; 
He always said my eyes were blue, 
 And often swore my lips were sweet.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
If not quite dim, yet rather so,
Still yours from others they shall know
Twenty years hence.

Twenty years hence though it may hap
That I be called to take a nap
In a cool cell where thunderclap
Was never heard,

There breathe but o'er my arch of grass
A not too sadly sighed Alas,
And I shall catch, ere you can pass,
That winged word.

by Walter Savage Landor
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Here, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change, no change I see,
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walkt by me.

Yes; I forgot; a change there is;
Was it of that you bade me tell?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.

Only two months since you stood here!
Two shortest months! then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Lately our poets loiter'd in green lanes,
Content to catch the ballads of the plains;
I fancied I had strength enough to climb
A loftier station at no distant time,
And might securely from intrusion doze
Upon the flowers thro' which Ilissus flows.
In those pale olive grounds all voices cease,
And from afar dust fills the paths of Greece.
My sluber broken and my doublet torn,
I find the laurel also bears a thorn.

by Walter Savage Landor
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Well I remember how you smiled
To see me write your name upon
The soft sea-sand . . . "O! what a child!
You think you're writing upon stone!"

I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide
And find Ianthe's name again.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Very true, the linnets sing 
Sweetest in the leaves of spring: 
You have found in all these leaves 
That which changes and deceives, 
And, to pine by sun or star, 
Left them, false ones as they are. 
But there be who walk beside 
Autumn's, till they all have died, 
And who lend a patient ear 
To low notes from branches sere.

by Walter Savage Landor
 To my ninth decade I have tottered on, 
And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; 
She, who once led me where she would, is gone, 
So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Death stands above me, whispering low 
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know 
Is, there is not a word of fear.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Ah, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.

Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.

by Louise Bogan
 She has no need to fear the fall 
Of harvest from the laddered reach 
Of orchards, nor the tide gone ebbing 
 From the steep beach.

Nor hold to pain's effrontery 
Her body's bulwark, stern and savage, 
Nor be a glass, where to forsee 
 Another's ravage.

What she has gathered, and what lost, 
She will not find to lose again. 
She is possessed by time, who once 
 Was loved by men.

by Walter Savage Landor
 THERE is a mountain and a wood between us, 
Where the lone shepherd and late bird have seen us 
 Morning and noon and eventide repass. 
Between us now the mountain and the wood 
Seem standing darker than last year they stood, 
 And say we must not cross--alas! alas!

by Walter Savage Landor
 WHY, why repine, my pensive friend, 
 At pleasures slipp'd away? 
Some the stern Fates will never lend, 
 And all refuse to stay. 

I see the rainbow in the sky, 
 The dew upon the grass; 
I see them, and I ask not why 
 They glimmer or they pass. 

With folded arms I linger not 
 To call them back; 'twere vain: 
In this, or in some other spot, 
 I know they'll shine again.

Dirce  Create an image from this poem
by Walter Savage Landor
 Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old and she a shade.

by Walter Savage Landor
 Soon, O Ianthe! life is o'er,
And sooner beauty's heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.

Quebec  Create an image from this poem
by John McCrae
 -1908



Of old, like Helen, guerdon of the strong --
Like Helen fair, like Helen light of word, --
"The spoils unto the conquerors belong.
Who winneth me must win me by the sword."

Grown old, like Helen, once the jealous prize
That strong men battled for in savage hate,
Can she look forth with unregretful eyes,
Where sleep Montcalm and Wolfe beside her gate?


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry