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Famous Tapers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Smart, Christopher
...nd drops upon the leafy limes; 
 Sweet, Hermon's fragrant air: 
Sweet is the lily's silver bell, 
And sweet the wakeful tapers smell 
 That watch for early pray'r. 

 LXXIII 
Sweet the young nurse with love intense, 
Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence; 
 Sweet when the lost arrive: 
Sweet the musician's ardour beats, 
While his vague mind's in quest of sweets, 
 The choicest flow'rs to hive. 

 LXXIV 
Sweeter in all the strains of love, 
The language of thy turtle d...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished - 
The nursling of...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...is filled with some unknown perfume; 
.
The congregation of the dead make room 
.
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; 
.
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine 
.
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. 
.
From the confessionals I hear arise 
.

Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, 
.

And lamentations from the crypts below; 
.

And then a voice celestial that begins 
.

With the pathetic words, "Although your sins 
.Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...e house of God
They went their willing way.

And as they at the altar stood
And heard the sacred rite,
The hallowed tapers dimly stream'd
A pale sulphureous light.

And as the Youth with holy warmth
Her hand in his did hold,
Sudden he felt Donica's hand
Grow deadly damp and cold.

And loudly did he shriek, for lo!
A Spirit met his view,
And Eberhard in the angel form
His own Donica knew.

That instant from her earthly frame
Howling the Daemon fled,
And at the ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight:
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.

While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e outbreak,
While they repeated his prayer, and said, "O Father, forgive them!"

Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from the altar.
Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest and the people responded,
Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria
Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated,
Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven.

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidin...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...s, 
Sunk in the hills, or plunged below the streams. 
While dismal blacks hung round the universe, 
And stars (like tapers) burned upon his hearse: 
And owls and ravens with their screeching noise 
Did make the funerals sadder by their joys. 
His weeping eyes the doleful vigils keep, 
Not knowing yet the night was made for sleep; 
Still to the west, where he him lost, he turned, 
And with such accents as despairing mourned: 
`Why did mine eyes once see so bright a ray...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
...Wrung heart, how first before the knights there came
A royal bier, hung round with green and blue,
About it shone great tapers with sick flame.

"And thereupon Lucius, the Emperor,
Lay royal-robed, but stone-cold now and dead,
Not able to hold sword or sceptre more,
But not quite grim; because his cloven head

"Bore no marks now of Launcelot's bitter sword,
Being by embalmers deftly solder'd up;
So still it seem'd the face of a great lord,
Being mended as a craftsman mend...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...? 
They heard and rose, and tremulously brave 
Rush where the sound invoked their aid to save; 
They come with half-lit tapers in their hands, 
And snatch'd in startled haste unbelted brands. 

XIII. 

Cold as the marble where his length was laid, 
Pale as the beam that o'er his features play'd, 
Was Lara stretch'd; his half-drawn sabre near, 
Dropp'd it should seem in more than nature's fear; 
Yet he was firm, or had been firm till now, 
And still defiance knit his g...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...s glimmering ray
Was lent not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere
So pale grows reason at religion's sight:
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head;
And found that one first principle must be:
But what, or who, that Universal He;
Whether some soul incomp...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e. 

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; 
Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad funereal tapers 15 
May be heaven's distant lamps. 

There is no Death! What seems so is transition; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian  
Whose portal we call Death. 20 

She is not dead ¡ªthe child of our affection ¡ª 
But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protection  
And Christ himself doth r...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...s your call ye blow,
Whose bent was taken long ago. 

'Long since we pace this shadow'd nave;
We watch those yellow tapers shine,
Emblems of hope over the grave,
In the high altar's depth divine;
The organ carries to our ear
Its accents of another sphere. 

'Fenced early in this cloistral round
Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,
How should we grow in other ground?
How can we flower in foreign air?
--Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;
And leave our desert to its pea...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...eature throw
Those splashes and sprays
Of prismed rays.
When evening prayers were sung and said,
The nuns lit their tapers and went to bed.
And soon in the convent there was no light,
For the moon did not rise until late that night,
Only the shine
Of the lamp at the shrine.
Clotilde lay still in her trembling sheets.
Her heart shook her body with its beats.
She could not see till the moon should rise,
So she whispered prayers and kept her eyes
On the windo...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...post nor a pillar but's dizened
With red and blue papers;
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
A-blaze with long tapers;
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
And trumpeters bold,
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,
Who, when the priest's hoarse,
Will strike us up something that's brisk
For the feast's second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp
Through the plain, while in...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...eams,
Sunk in the Hills, or plung'd below the Streams.
While dismal blacks hung round the Universe,
And Stars (like Tapers) burn'd upon his Herse:
And Owls and Ravens with their screeching noyse
Did make the Fun'rals sadder by their Joyes.
His weeping Eyes the doleful Vigils keep,
Not knowing yet the Night was made for sleep:
Still to the West, where he him lost, he turn'd,
And with such accents, as Despairing, mourn'd:
Why did mine Eyes once see so bright a Ray;
Or w...Read more of this...

by Nwakanma, Obi
...mist: 

Behold the school of wild bucks 
Behold the meeting of incarnate 
spirits -
Behold the lost souls bearing tapers 
in rags of rich damask, 
Down Thomas - the saint of 
unbelievers - down the road to bliss 
Down to the red house, uncertain 
like a beggar's bowl hanging unto the cliff 
of withdrawn pledges, where the well is 
deepest... 

I have dared to live 
beneath the great untamed. 

To every good, to every 
flicker of stars along ...Read more of this...

by Thompson, Francis
...or wailful, or Divine.
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the Even,
when she lit her glimmering tapers round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
and its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine.
Against the red throb of its sunset heart,
I laid my own to beat
And share commingling heat.

But not by that, by that was eased my human smart.
I...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...With that twise-batter'd god of Palestine,
And mooned Ashtaroth, 
Heav'ns Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian Maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

XXIII

And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dred,
His burning Idol all of blackest hue,
In vain with Cymbals ring,
They call the grisly king,
In dismall dance about the furnace Blue; 
And Brutish gods of Nile as fast,
lsis and Orus, and the...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...nd
Had languish'd to the pangs of melting love,
More genuine transport found, as on some tomb
Reclin'd, she watch'd the tapers of the dead;
Or thro' the pillar'd aisles, amid pale shrines
Of imag'd saints, and intermingled graves,
Mus'd a veil'd votaress; than Flavia feels,
As thro' the mazes of the festive ball,
Proud of her conquering charms, and beauty's blaze,
She floats amid the silken sons of dress,
And shines the fairest of th' assembled fair.
When azure noontide c...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...without
The ceaseless Winds blow keen, be my Retreat
A rural, shelter'd, solitary, Scene;
Where ruddy Fire, and beaming Tapers join
To chase the chearless Gloom: there let me sit,
And hold high Converse with the mighty Dead,
Sages of ancient Time, as Gods rever'd,
As Gods beneficent, who blest Mankind,
With Arts, and Arms, and humaniz'd a World,
Rous'd at th'inspiring Thought -- I throw aside
The long-liv'd Volume, and, deep-musing, hail
The sacred Shades, that, slowly-rising...Read more of this...

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