Famous Wakes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A poem on the rising glory of America

...cious day 
The rising glory of this western world, 
Where now the dawning light of science spreads 
Her orient ray, and wakes the muse's song; 
Where freedom holds her sacred standard high, 
And commerce rolls her golden tides profuse 
Of elegance and ev'ry joy of life. 



ACASTO. 
Since then Leander you attempt a strain 
So new, so noble and so full of fame; 
And since a friendly concourse centers here 
America's own sons, begin O muse! 
Now thro' the veil of ancient days r...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry


Beowulf (Old English)

...m ever an enemy: all the world
wends at his will, no worse he knoweth,
till all within him obstinate pride
waxes and wakes while the warden slumbers,
the spirit’s sentry; sleep is too fast
which masters his might, and the murderer nears,
stealthily shooting the shafts from his bow!



XXV

“UNDER harness his heart then is hit indeed
by sharpest shafts; and no shelter avails
from foul behest of the hellish fiend. {25a}
Him seems too little what long he possessed...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Bishop Blougrams Apology

...ng. God stoops o'er his head, 
Satan looks up between his feet--both tug-- 
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes 
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! 
Never leave growing till the life to come! 
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks 
That used to puzzle people wholesomely: 
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. 
What are the laws of nature, not to bend 
If the Church bid them?--brother Newman asks. 
Up with the Immaculate Conception, th...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Captain Craig

...at length as one who throws himself
Down restless on a couch when clouds are dark, 
And shuts his eyes to find, when he wakes up 
And opens them again, what seems at first 
An unfamiliar sunlight in his room 
And in his life—as if the child in him
Had laughed and let him see; and then I knew 
Some prowling superfluity of child 
In me had found the child in Captain Craig 
And let the sunlight reach him. While I slept, 
My thought reshaped itself to friendly dreams,
And in the ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Comus

...airies and the dapper elves.
By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove;
Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
Come, let us our rights begin;
'T is only daylight that makes sin,
Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Essay on Man

...
V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, 
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, "Tis for mine: 
For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, 
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r; 
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew 
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; 
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; 
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; 
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; 
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies." 
But errs not Nat...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Eviradnus

...ripe. With insolence the thorn 
 Thrives on the desolation so forlorn. 
 But winter brings revenges; then the Keep 
 Wakes all vindictive from its seeming sleep, 
 Hurls down the heavy rain, night after night, 
 Thanking the season's all-resistless might; 
 And, when the gutters choke, its gargoyles four 
 From granite mouths in anger spit and pour 
 Upon the hated ivy hour by hour. 
 
 As to the sword rust is, so lichens are 
 To towering citadel with which they w...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Inferno (English)

...by the dreadful shore. 





Canto IV 



 ARISING thunder from the vast Abyss 
 First roused me, not as he that rested wakes 
 From slumbrous hours, but one rude fury shakes 
 Untimely, and around I gazed to know 
 The place of my confining. 
 Deep, profound, 
 Dark beyond sight, and choked with doleful sound, 
 Sheer sank the Valley of the Lost Abyss, 
 Beneath us. On the utmost brink we stood, 
 And like the winds of some unresting wood 
 The gathered murmur from those dep...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Last Instructions to a Painter

...at dart along and glare 
From his clear eyes, yet these too dark with care. 
There, as in the calm horror all alone 
He wakes, and muses of th' uneasy throne; 
Raise up a sudden shape with virgin's face, 
(Though ill agree her posture, hour, or place), 
Naked as born, and her round arms behind 
With her own tresses, interwove and twined; 
Her mouth locked up, a blind before her eyes, 
Yet from beneath the veil her blushes rise, 
And silent tears her secret anguish speak 
Her ...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

November

...n checker'd moods,
Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;
One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,
The next wakes loud with unexpected storms;
A dreary nakedness the field deforms—
Yet many a rural sound, and rural sight,
Lives in the village still about the farms,
Where toil's rude uproar hums from morn till night
Noises, in which the ears of Industry delight.

At length the stir of rural labour's still,
And Industry her care awhile forgoes;
When Winter comes in ...Read more of this...
by Bryant, William Cullen

Paradise Lost: Book 04

...s, and round about him, nor from Hell 
One step, no more than from himself, can fly 
By change of place: Now conscience wakes despair, 
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory 
Of what he was, what is, and what must be 
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. 
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view 
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad; 
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun, 
Which now sat high in his meridian tower: 
Then, much revolvin...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...l-orbed the moon, and with more pleasing light 
'Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain, 
'If none regard; Heaven wakes with all his eyes, 
'Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire? 
'In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment 
'Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.' 
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not; 
To find thee I directed then my walk; 
And on, methought, alone I passed through ways 
That brought me on a sudden to the tree 
Of interdicted knowledge: f...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Ravenna

...trice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes: sleep in peace.


IV.


How lone this palace is; how grey the walls!
No minstrel now wakes echoes in these halls.
The broken chain lies rusting on the door,
And noisome weeds have split the marble floor:
Here lurks the snake, and here the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years - a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Deserted Village

...d ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs—and God has given my share— 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
I still had ho...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver

The Flight Of The Duchess

...eaks,
``And like the hand which ends a dream,
``Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
``Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,
``Then------''
Ay, then indeed something would happen!
But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's;
There grew more of the music and less of the words;
Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen
To paper and put you down every syllable
With those clever clerkly fingers,
All I've forgotten as well as what lingers
In this old brain of mine that's bu...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Lady of the Lake

...to sound the rustling trees.
     But hark! what mingles in the strain?
     It is the harp of Allan-bane,
     That wakes its measure slow and high,
     Attuned to sacred minstrelsy.
     What melting voice attends the strings?
     'Tis Ellen, or an angel, sings.
     XXIX.

     Hymn to the Virgin.

     Ave. Maria! maiden mild!
          Listen to a maiden's prayer!
     Thou canst hear though from the wild,
          Thou canst save amid despair.
     Saf...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Pleasures of Melancholy

...h'd in silence and in sleep.
O then how fearful is it to reflect,
That thro' the still globe's awful solitude,
No being wakes but me! till stealing sleep
My drooping temples bathes in opiate dews.
Nor then let dreams, of wanton folly born
My senses lead thro' flow'ry paths of joy;
But let the sacred Genius of the night
Such mystic visions send, as Spenser saw,
When thro' bewild'ring Fancy's magic maze,
To the fell house of Busyrane, he led
Th' unshaken Britomart; or Milton kn...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas

The Walk

...is lent life more sublime to the stone.
Man is brought into nearer union with man, and around him
Closer, more actively wakes, swifter moves in him the world.
See! the emulous forces in fiery conflict are kindled,
Much, they effect when they strive, more they effect when they join.
Thousands of hands by one spirit are moved, yet in thousands of bosoms
Beats one heart all alone, by but one feeling inspired--
Beats for their native land, and glows for their ancestors' precepts;...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Witch Of Atlas

...,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms;--within the brazen doors
Of the Great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.

And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased, but tremble ever
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,--
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
Th...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Wood

...herry could be moored
Along the guarded land. 

I feared not then­I fear not now; 
The interest of each stirring scene 
Wakes a new sense, a welcome glow, 
In every nerve and bounding vein; 
Alike on turbid Channel sea, 
Or in still wood of Normandy, 
I feel as born again. 

The rain descended that wild morn 
When, anchoring in the cove at last, 
Our band, all weary and forlorn, 
Ashore, like wave-worn sailors, cast­ 
Sought for a sheltering roof in vain, 
And scarce could sc...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

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