Famous Waned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ninth Birthday

...yes have looked upon the spring
Three times thrice.

II.

Three times thrice the world has fallen on slumber,
Shone and waned and withered in a trice,
Frost has fettered Thames and Tyne and Humber
Three times thrice,

Fogs have swoln too thick for steel to slice,
Cloud and mud have soiled with grime and umber
Earth and heaven, defaced as souls with vice,

Winds have risen to wreck, snows fallen to cumber,
Ships and chariots, trapped like rats or mice,
Since my king first smil...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles


Al Aaraaf

...eritage of men,
And thy star trembled- as doth Beauty then!"

Thus, in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts....Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

An Ancient To Ancients

..., 
Gentlemen. 

This season's paintings do not please, 
Gentlemen 
Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise; 
Throbbing romance had waned and wanned; 
No wizard wields the witching pen 
Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand, 
Gentlemen. 

The bower we shrined to Tennyson, 
Gentlemen, 
Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon 
Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust, 
The spider is sole denizen; 
Even she who voiced those rhymes is dust, 
Gentlemen! 

We who met sunrise sanguine-souled, 
Gentl...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Beowulf (Modern English)

...man what Grendel has done to me,
a shame in Heorot through his hateful ideas
and a fearful malice. My hall-troop has waned,
the warrior’s company. Misfortune has swept them away
into the terror of Grendel. Only God can easily
put an end to this maddened scather of deeds! (ll. 473-79)

“All too often, drunk with beer, my loyal thanes
boasted over their ale-horns that they wished
to await the enmity of Grendel in the drinking-hall
with a flurry of blades. Always afte...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...ttle that I
could serve him in struggle; yet shift I made
(hopeless it seemed) to help my kinsman.
Its strength ever waned, when with weapon I struck
that fatal foe, and the fire less strongly
flowed from its head. -- Too few the heroes
in throe of contest that thronged to our king!
Now gift of treasure and girding of sword,
joy of the house and home-delight
shall fail your folk; his freehold-land
every clansman within your kin
shall lose and leave, when lords high...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Charmides

...s to kiss,
And all her maidenhood was his to slay,
And limb to limb in long and rapturous bliss
Their passion waxed and waned, - O why essay
To pipe again of love, too venturous reed!
Enough, enough that Eros laughed upon that flowerless mead.

Too venturous poesy, O why essay
To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings
O'er daring Icarus and bid thy lay
Sleep hidden in the lyre's silent strings
Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill,
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drow...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Crowned

...ur lover,
And I walked aureoled and apart.
Enslaved and encircled, I bore it,
Proud token of my gift to you.
The petals waned paler, and shriveled,
And dropped; and the thorns started through.
Bitter thorns to proclaim me your lover,
A diadem woven with rue....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Dire Cure

...ags of poison she endured somewhat
better than her cancer cells could, though not
by much. And indeed, the cancer cells waned
more slowly than the chemical "cocktails"
(one the bright color of Campari), as the chemo
nurses called them, dripped into her. There were
three hundred days of this: a week inside
the hospital and two weeks out, the fierce
elixirs percolating all the while.
She did five weeks of radiation, too,
Monday to Friday like a stupid job.
She wouldn't eat the ...Read more of this...
by Matthews, William

Endymion: Book II

...fe in the privacy
Of this still region all his winter-sleep.
Aye, sleep; for when our love-sick queen did weep
Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower
Heal'd up the wound, and, with a balmy power,
Medicined death to a lengthened drowsiness:
The which she fills with visions, and doth dress
In all this quiet luxury; and hath set
Us young immortals, without any let,
To watch his slumber through. 'Tis well nigh pass'd,
Even to a moment's filling up, and fast
She scuds with sum...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Lara

...ind? yet some would say, 
With them he could seem gay amidst the gay; 
But own'd that smile, if oft observed and near, 
Waned in its mirth and wither'd to a sneer; 
That smile might reach his lip, but pass'd not by, 
None e'er could trace its laughter to his eye: 
Yet there was softness too in his regard, 
At times, a heart as not by nature hard, 
But once perceived, his spirit seem'd to chide 
Such weakness, as unworthy of its pride, 
And steel'd itself, as scorning to redee...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Pickthorn Manor

...ne
In the pale lemon sunshine like a spurt
Of silver, bowed and damascened, and girt
With crimson spots and moons which waned and 
played.

VIII
The fish hung circled for a moment, ringed And 
bright; then flung itself out, a thin blade
Of spotted lightning, and its tail was winged With chipped 
and sparkled sunshine. And the shade
Broke up and splintered into shafts of light Wheeling about 
the fish, who churned the air
And made the fish-line hum, and bent the rod Almost 
to...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Cremona Violin

...ike gold,
And noises shivered throughout its length,
And tried its strength.
They pulled it, and tore it,
And the stuff waned thinner, but still it bore 
it.
Then a wide rent
Split the arching tent,
And balls of fire spurted through,
Spitting yellow, and mauve, and blue.
One by one they were quenched as they fell,
Only the blue burned steadily.
Paler and paler it grew, and -- faded -- away.
Herr Altgelt 
stopped.
"Well, Lottachen, my Dear, what do you say?
I think I'm in good...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Everlasting Mercy

...Lower Pool, 
The Peacock screamed, the clouds were straking, 
My cut cheek felt the weather breaking; 
An orange sunset waned and thinned 
Foretelling rain and western wind, 
And while I watched I heard distinct 
The metals on the railway clinked. 
The blood-edged clouds were all in tatters, 
The sky and earth seemed mad as hatters; 
they had a death look, wild and odd, 
Of something dark foretold by God. 
And seeing it so, I felt so shaken 
I wouldn't keep the road I'd taken...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain

...owly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
 more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned, 
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
 aside,
Neither tea, nor, after an hour, whiskey,
Ice and then a pleasant glow, a burning,
And the first leaping wood fire
Since a cold night in May, too long ago to be more than
Merely a cold and vivid memory.
Staring, empty, and without thought
Beyond the rising mists of the emotion of causele...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...ad,—

And the lady, too, was dead, and all who knew her . .
Dead, and long turned to dust . . .
The thin moon waxed and waned, and left him paler,
The peach leaves flew in a gust,

And he would surely have died; but there one day
A wise man, white with age,
Stared at the portrait, and said, 'This Hiroshigi
Knew more than archimage,—

Cunningly drew the body, and called the spirit,
Till partly it entered there . . .
Sometimes, at death, it entered the portrait wholly . .
Do al...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Lady of the Lake

...p, behind me came.
     Yet trust me, Malcolm, not so proud
     Was I of all that marshalled crowd,
     Though the waned crescent owned my might,
     And in my train trooped lord and knight,
     Though Blantyre hymned her holiest lays,
     And Bothwell's bards flung back my praise,
     As when this old man's silent tear,
     And this poor maid's affection dear,
     A welcome give more kind and true
     Than aught my better fortunes knew.
     Forgive, my f...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Sick God

...olfe, by Ney anon, 
 And Nelson on his blue demesne. 

V 

 But new light spread. That god's gold nimb 
And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim; 
 Even his flushed form begins to fade, 
 Till but a shade is left of him. 

VI 

 That modern meditation broke 
His spell, that penmen's pleadings dealt a stroke, 
 Say some; and some that crimes too dire 
 Did much to mire his crimson cloak. 

VII 

 Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy 
Were sown by those more excellent than he, 
 Lo...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

The Triumph of Life

...ibly upon the shore
Until the second bursts--so on my sight
Burst a new Vision never seen before.--
"And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
"Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops--
And as the presence of that fairest planet
Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
"That his day's path may end as he began it
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breez...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Watchman

...en and so ceased to beat!
I thought of many things, but found no joy
In any thought, even the thought of thee;
The moon waned in the west and sickly grew 
Her light sucked from her in the breaking dawn­
Never was dawn so welcome as that pale, 
Faint glimmer in the cloudless, brooding sky! 

Claudia, how may I tell what came to pass? 
I have been mocked at when I told the tale 
For a crazed dreamer punished by the gods 
Because he slept on guard; but mock not thou! 
I could no...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud

Three Faces

...eep, more living, shone her eyes that drank
The breathless light and shed again on me,
Till pale before their splendour waned and shrank
The sky and sea.

II.--GENOA

Again the same strange might of eyes, that saw
In heaven and earth nought fairer, overcame
My sight with rapture of reiterate awe,
Again the same.

The self-same pulse of wonder shook like flame
The spirit of sense within me: what strange law
Had bid this be, for blessing or for blame?

To what veiled end that f...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

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