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Famous Wailed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sidney, Sir Philip
...And her sad words my sadded sense did heare.
For me, I wept to see pearles scatter'd so;
I sigh'd her sighes, and wailed for her wo;
Yet swam in ioy, such loue in her was seene.
Thus, while th' effect most bitter was to me,
And nothing then the cause more sweet could be,
I had bene vext, if vext I had not beene. 
LXXXVIII 

Out, traytor Absence, dar'st thou counsell me
From my deare captainesse to run away,
Because in braue array heere marcheth she,
Th...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the soul had departed.
Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden
Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror.
Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on his bosom.
Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber;
And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude near her.
Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon her,
Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion.
...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d deserted 
By the West-Wind, false and faithless, 
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.
For her daughter long and loudly 
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis; 
"Oh that I were dead!" she murmured, 
"Oh that I were dead, as thou art! 
No more work, and no more weeping, 
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"
By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
By the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 
Dark behind it rose the forest, 
Rose the black and gloomy pine-...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...sm, 
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union 
 Square weeping and undressing while the sirens 
 of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 
 down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also 
 wailed, 
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked 
 and trembling before the machinery of other 
 skeletons, 
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight 
 in policecars for committing no crime but their 
 own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 
who howled ...Read more of this...

by Homer,
...ot well-girded Metaneira in her heedlessness kept watch by night from her sweet-smelling chamber and spied. But she wailed and smote her two hips, because she feared for her son and was greatly distraught in her heart; so she lamented and uttered winged words:

[Line 248] "Demophoon, my son, the strange woman buries you deep in fire and works grief and bitter sorrow for me."

Thus she spoke, mourning. And the bright goddess, lovely-crowned Demeter, heard her, ...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...comfort us with might.
What help is ours to take or give? but ye--
O, more than sunrise to the blind cold sea,
That wailed aloud with all her waves all night,
Much more, being much more glorious, should you be.XXXIV


As fire to frost, as ease to toil, as dew
To flowerless fields, as sleep to slackening pain,
As hope to souls long weaned from hope again
Returning, or as blood revived anew
To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein,
Even so toward us should no man be ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...de hot the sides of those sad sepulchres; 
 And cries of torture and most dire despair 
 Came from them, as the spirits wailed their doom. 

 I said, "Who are they, in these chests that lie 
 Confined, and join in this lamenting cry?" 

 My Master answered, "These in life denied 
 The faith that saves, and that resisting pride 
 Here brought them. With their followers, like to like, 
 Assorted are they, and the keen flames strike 
 With differing anguish, to the same ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...wound in battle, and the sword 
That made it plunges through the wound again, 
And pricks it deeper: and he shrank and wailed, 
`Is the Queen false?' and Percivale was mute. 
`Have any of our Round Table held their vows?' 
And Percivale made answer not a word. 
`Is the King true?' `The King!' said Percivale. 
`Why then let men couple at once with wolves. 
What! art thou mad?' 

But Pelleas, leaping up, 
Ran through the doors and vaulted on his horse 
And fled...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...mowed in the branches as ape and bear,
And last as a sloth, ere his body failed,
And he hung as a bat in the forks, and wailed,
And sleep the cord of his hands untied,
And he fell, and was caught on the points and died.

"Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise
To warn a King of his enemies?
We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
But no man knoweth the mind of the King.
Of the gray-coat coming who can say?
When the night is gathering all is gray.
Two things greater ...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...red capitals, for temples clean.
Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.
There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed
In a rather high key -- as delicately as possible.
A million boats of the angels sailed
With oars of silver, and prows of blue
And silken pennants that the sun shone through.
'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new creation.
Oh, a singing wind swept the ***** nation
And on through the backwoods clearing flew: --
"Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...atting
From muffled tympani made a dark slatting
Across the silver shimmering of flutes;
A bassoon grunted, and an oboe wailed;
The 'celli pizzicato-ed like great lutes,
And mutterings of double basses trailed
Away to silence, while loud harp-strings hailed
Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter
They lost themselves amid the general clatter.
Frau Altgelt in the gallery, alone,
Felt lifted up into another world.
Before her eyes a thousand candles shone
In th...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...se flower-bright brows the day-star sits above,
Whose hand unweariable and untiring wing
Strike music from a world that wailed and strove,
Each bright soul born and every glorious thing,
From very freedom to man's joy thereof,
O time, O change and death,
Whose now not hateful breath
But gives the music swifter feet to move
Through sharp remeasuring tones
Of refluent antiphones
More tender-tuned than heart or throat of dove,
Soul into soul, song into song,
Life changing into l...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ed,
Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell,
Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed,
And through those groves wailed the sweet Philomel,
The tears of Ceres swelled in yonder rill--
Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne;
And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill
Heard Cytherea mourn!--

Heaven's shapes were charmed unto
The mortal race of old Deucalion;
Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo,
Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son
Between men, heroes, gods, harmon...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...r> My Own Wife!" He lurched with 
failing pulse.
65
Along the dyke the keen air blew in gusts,
And grasses bent and wailed before the wind.
The Zuider Zee, which croons all night and thrusts
Long stealthy fingers up some way to find
And crumble down the stones, moaned baffled. Here
The wide-armed windmills looked like gallows-trees.
No lights were burning in the distant thorps.
Max laid aside his coat. His mind, half-clear,
Babbled "Christine!" A shot ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r 
Wept, and the King himself could hardly speak 
For grief, and all in middle street the Queen, 
Who rode by Lancelot, wailed and shrieked aloud, 
"This madness has come on us for our sins." 
So to the Gate of the three Queens we came, 
Where Arthur's wars are rendered mystically, 
And thence departed every one his way. 

`And I was lifted up in heart, and thought 
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists, 
How my strong lance had beaten down the knights, 
So many a...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...Came marring all the festal mirth,
     Appalling me who gave them birth,
     And, disobedient to my call,
     Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall.
     Ere Douglases, to ruin driven,
     Were exiled from their native heaven.—
     O! if yet worse mishap and woe
     My master's house must undergo,
     Or aught but weal to Ellen fair
     Brood in these accents of despair,
     No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling
     Triumph or rapture from thy ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rievous wound 
He comes again; but--if he come no more-- 
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat, 
Who shrieked and wailed, the three whereat we gazed 
On that high day, when, clothed with living light, 
They stood before his throne in silence, friends 
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?' 

Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint 
As from beyond the limit of the world, 
Like the last echo born of a great cry, 
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voic...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rain, 
And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; 
Or like a spire of land that stands apart 
Cleft from the main, and wailed about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne: and therebeside, 
Half-naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child; and on the left, 
Bowed on her palms and folded up from wrong, 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 
Melissa knelt; but Lady...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...ard that night.
Trumpeting mammoths warning us still
If we held not beside them it boded us ill.
The frail apes wailed to us all,
The parrots reëchoed the call:
"Beware of the faith of a tiger."
From the heights of the forest the watchers could see
The tiger-cats crunching the Leaf of the Tree
Lashing themselves, and scattering foam,
Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned,
And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...hardly beam or breath,
And all the coloured hills and fields were grey,
And the wind wandered seeking for the day,
And wailed as though he had found her done to death
And this grey hour had built to bury her
The hollow twilight for a sepulchre.

But in my soul I saw as in a glass
A pale and living body full of grace
There lying, and over it the prophet's face
Fixed; and the face was not of Tiresias,
For such a starry fire was in his eyes
As though their light it was that...Read more of this...

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