Famous The Ashes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Suicide

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 "Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!
Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore!
And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me,
I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly
That I might eat again, and met thy sneers
With deprecations, and thy blows with tears,—
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent...Read more of this...

A Visit From St. Nicholas

by Clement Clarke Moore
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled...Read more of this...

Places

by Carl Sandburg
 ROSES and gold
For you today,
And the flash of flying flags.

 I will have
 Ashes,
 Dust in my hair,
Crushes of hoofs.

Your name
Fills the mouth
Of rich man and poor.
 Women bring
Armfuls of flowers
And throw on you.

 I go hungry
 Down in dreams
 And loneliness,
 Across the rain
 To slashed hills
Where men wait and hope for me....Read more of this...

Britannias Pastorals

by William Browne
 Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch...Read more of this...

Ashes of Soldiers

by Walt Whitman
 ASHES of soldiers! 
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought, 
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes, 
And again the advance of armies. 

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending, 
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, 
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves, 
In...Read more of this...

Ashes denote that Fire was --

by Emily Dickinson
 Ashes denote that Fire was --
Revere the Grayest Pile
For the Departed Creature's sake
That hovered there awhile --

Fire exists the first in light
And then consolidates
Only the Chemist can disclose
Into what Carbonates....Read more of this...

The Story Of The Ashes And The Flame

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,
There was her place. No matter what men said,
No matter what she was; living or dead,
Faithful or not,he loved her all the same.
The story was as old as human shame,
But ever since that lonely night she fled,
With books to blind him, he had only read
The story of the ashes and the...Read more of this...

To An Old Mate

by Henry Lawson
 Old Mate! In the gusty old weather, 
When our hopes and our troubles were new, 
In the years spent in wearing out leather, 
I found you unselfish and true -- 
I have gathered these verses together 
For the sake of our friendship and you. 

You may think for awhile, and with reason, 
Though still with a kindly regret, 
That...Read more of this...

Growing Old

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 In some summers there is so much fruit,
the peasants decide not to reap any more.
Not having reaped you, oh my days,
my nights, have I let the slow flames
of your lovely produce fall into ashes?

My nights, my days, you have borne so much!
All your branches have retained the gesture
of that long labor you are rising from:
my days, my nights. Oh...Read more of this...

The Shield Of A Greeting

by David Lehman
 for J.A., December 3, 1975


Ashes that survive the aftermath of fire
Bury the past bravely, retaining
Only those messages that are least decipherable
And therefore most desirable
To be sung by the bright-eyed few remaining
Voices of our frankly foolish choir....Read more of this...

Ode To Silence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...

Perinde AC Cadaver

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 In a vision Liberty stood
By the childless charm-stricken bed
Where, barren of glory and good,
Knowing nought if she would not or would,
England slept with her dead.

Her face that the foam had whitened,
Her hands that were strong to strive,
Her eyes whence battle had lightened,
Over all was a drawn shroud tightened
To bind her asleep and alive.

She turned and laughed in her dream
With...Read more of this...

Mourning

by Victor Hugo
 ("Charle! ô mon fils!") 
 
 {March, 1871.} 


 Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me? 
 Must all fade, naught endure? 
 Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee, 
 But still for us obscure? 
 
 My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines! 
 Sweet mutual love we've known; 
 For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...

185. The Humble Petition of Bruar Water

by Robert Burns
 MY lord, I know your noble ear
 Woe ne’er assails in vain;
Embolden’d thus, I beg you’ll hear
 Your humble slave complain,
How saucy Phoebus’ scorching beams,
 In flaming summer-pride,
Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
 And drink my crystal tide. 1


The lightly-jumping, glowrin’ trouts,
 That thro’ my waters play,
If, in their random, wanton spouts,
 They near the margin stray;
If, hapless chance! they...Read more of this...

Ambition and Art

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Ambition 
I am the maid of the lustrous eyes 
Of great fruition, 
Whom the sons of men that are over-wise 
Have called Ambition. 

And the world's success is the only goal 
I have within me; 
The meanest man with the smallest soul 
May woo and win me. 

For the lust of power and the pride of place 
To all...Read more of this...

The Task: Book IV The Winter Evening (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Hark! 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumb'ring at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his...Read more of this...

Elegy to the Memory of David Garrick Esq

by Mary Darby Robinson
 DEAR SHADE OF HIM, who grac'd the mimick scene,
And charm'd attention with resistless pow'r;
Whose wond'rous art, whose fascinating mien,
Gave glowing rapture to the short-liv'd hour! 

Accept the mournful verse, the ling'ring sigh,
The tear that faithful Mem'ry stays to shed;
The SACRED TEAR, that from Reflection's eye,
Drops on the ashes of the sainted dead. 

Lov'd by the grave, and courted by...Read more of this...

Talking To My Father Whose Ashes Sit In A Closet And Listen

by Lisa Zaran
 Death is not the final word. 
Without ears, my father still listens, 
still shrugs his shoulders 
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer. 

I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob, 
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him 
what does he think about the war in Iraq 
and how does he...Read more of this...

Ashes

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The fireplace
was eager
to put a fullstop,
in the sentence
where the road
of my dreams
stuck
upon the word of happiness
with sparkles
of wet logs
I collected
from the inside of me
that I dared
to turn to ashes....Read more of this...

To Milton

by Oscar Wilde
 Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we...Read more of this...

In the waiting Room

by Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic 
(I could read) and carefully 
studied the photographs:
the inside...Read more of this...

At Lulworth Cove A Century Back

by Thomas Hardy
 Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

"You see that man?" -- I might have looked, and said,
"O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.
So...Read more of this...

Ashes Of Life

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
 Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
 here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
 Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
 This or that or what you...Read more of this...

Take heart! Long in the weary tomb you'll lie,

by Omar Khayyam
Take heart! Long in the weary tomb you'll lie,
While stars keep countless watches in the sky,
And see your ashes moulded into bricks,
To build another's house and turrets high....Read more of this...

To The Memory Of My Beloved The Author Mr William Shakespeare And What He Hath Left Us

by Ben Jonson
 To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which when it sounds at best but...Read more of this...

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