Famous Volcano Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Volcano poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous volcano poems. These examples illustrate what a famous volcano poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Stevens, Wallace
...Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The sprin...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...A still -- Volcano -- Life --
That flickered in the night --
When it was dark enough to do
Without erasing sight --
A quiet -- Earthquake Style --
Too subtle to suspect
By natures this side Naples --
The North cannot detect
The Solemn -- Torrid -- Symbol --
The lips that never lie --
Whose hissing Corals part -- and shut --
And Cities -- ooze away --...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s, from savage men,
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,
Rugged and dark, winding among the springs
Of fire and poison, inaccessible
To avarice or pride, their starry domes
Of diamond and of gold expand above
Numberless and i...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...the evening hour;
Or wake the echoes, mournful, lone and deep,
Of that sad city, in its dreaming bower
By the volcano seized, where mansions keep
The likeness which they wore at that last fatal sleep;
Or be his bark at Posillippo laid,
While as the swarthy boatman at his side
Chants Tasso's lays to Virgil's pleased shade,
Ever he sees, throughout that circuit wide,
From shaded nook or sunny lawn espied,
From rocky headland viewed, or flow'ry ...Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...t climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.
I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.
In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Insi...Read more of this...
by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.
Ding dong! ding dong!
The world is in a simmer like a sea
Over a pent volcano, -- woe is me
All the day long!
From crib to shroud!
Nurse o'er our cradles screameth lullaby,
And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,
Snuffling aloud.
At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.
When evening dim
Draws round us, then the lonel...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...And then—to go to sleep—
And then—if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor
The privilege to die—
601
A still—Volcano—Life—
That flickered in the night—
When it was dark enough to do
Without erasing sight—
A quiet—Earthquake Style—
Too subtle to suspect
By natures this side Naples—
The North cannot detect
The Solemn—Torrid—Symbol—
The lips that never lie—
Whose hissing Corals part—and shut—
And Cities—ooze away—
613
They shut me up in Prose—
As...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...the mountains;
sometimes among men you will find a piece of polished
primeval pain, or a petrified slag from an ancient volcano.
Yes, that came from there. Once we were rich.-
And she leads him gently through the vast landscape
of Lamentation, shows him the columns of temples,
the ruins of strongholds from which long ago
the princes of Lament wisely governed the country.
Shows him the tall trees of tears,
the fields of flowering sadness,
(the living know them...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...rope sprung
Were but divided by the running brook;
And happy where no Rhenish trumpet sung,
On plains no sieging mine's volcano shook,
The blue-eyed German changed his sword to pruning-hook.
Nor far some Andalusian saraband
Would sound to many a native roundelay--
But who is he that yet a dearer land
Remembers, over hills and far away?
Green Albin! what though he no more survey
Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore,
Thy pelloch's rolling from the mountain bay,
Thy lone ...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...e I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round w...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...On my volcano grows the Grass
A meditative spot --
An acre for a Bird to choose
Would be the General thought --
How red the Fire rocks below --
How insecure the sod
Did I disclose
Would populate with awe my solitude....Read more of this...
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...tain
Lightning and thunder pummeled the mountain
Pierced the heart of the earth,
Becoming lava and exploding as a volcano.
I imagined I was a star
Light traveling into space
Then I grew as a tree
With leaves of galaxies eating the light
Becoming the angel of life and the bearer of light.
I imagined I was a black hole
Flying through myself and swallowing myself
While eating others to consume the abyss of energy
But still, holding the whole g...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ng what they’d like to do to us
For what they’d better wait till we have done.
Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano,
If that is what the mountain ever was—
And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will….”
“And scare you too?” the children said together.
“Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire
Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know
That still, if I repent, I may recall it,
But in a moment not: a little spurt
Of burning fatness, and then nothing ...Read more of this...
by
Davies, William Henry
...strange Chinese
Conversed much as our homely Blackbirds sing.
He told us how he sailed in one old ship
Near that volcano Martinique, whose power
Shook like dry leaves the whole Caribbean seas;
And made the sun set in a sea of fire
Which only half was his; and dust was thick
On deck, and stones were pelted at the mast.
Into my greedy ears such words that sleep
Stood at my pillow half the night perplexed.
He told how isles sprang up and sank again,
Betwee...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...'er now),
An' I took with a shiny she-devil,
The wife of a ****** at Mhow;
'Taught me the gipsy-folks' bolee;
Kind o' volcano she were,
For she knifed me one night 'cause I wished she was white,
And I learned about women from 'er!
Then I come 'ome in a trooper,
'Long of a kid o' sixteen --
'Girl from a convent at Meerut,
The straightest I ever 'ave seen.
Love at first sight was 'er trouble,
She didn't know what it were;
An' I wouldn't do such, 'cause I liked 'er to...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...dy
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
but I will be back again."
Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...er spark
Be struck from out the clash of warring wills;
Or whether, since our nature cannot rest,
The smoke of war's volcano burst again
From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West,
Old Empires, dwellings of the kings of men;
Or should those fail, that hold the helm,
While the long day of knowledge grows and warms,
And in the heart of this most ancient realm
A hateful voice be utter'd, and alarms
Sounding 'To arms! to arms!'
A simpler, saner lesson might he lear...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan --
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality....Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ed still to ask from what God, by what law?
In their last sad embrace, 'midst their honor and awe,
Of this mighty volcano the drift.
'Neath great slabs of marble they hid them in vain,
'Gainst this everliving fire, God's own flaming rain!
'Tis the rash whom God seeks out the first;
They call on their gods, who were deaf to their cries,
For the punishing flame caused their cold granite eyes
In tears of hot lava to burst!
Thus away in the whirlwind di...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
like the mouth of an extinct volcano.
Not one,
not five--
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his stick,
you quickly join the flock
and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
I mean you're strangest creature on earth--
even stranger than the fish
that couldn't see the ocean for the water.
And the o...Read more of this...
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