Famous Waxen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Interior

by Dorothy Parker
 Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.

There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.

Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain....Read more of this...

Tower Grove

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Oh tell me not of the lands so old
Where the Orient treasures its hills of gold,
And the rivers lie in the sun's bright rays
Forever singing the old world's praise.
Nor proudly boast of the gardens grand
That spring to earth at a king's command;
There are treasures here in the far great West
That rival the hills on the Orient's crest.
Far from the sight...Read more of this...

Far Within Us #6

by Vasko Popa
 From the wrinkle between my brows
You watch till day breaks
On my face

The waxen night
Is beginning to singe
The fingers of dawn

Black bricks
Have already tiled
The whole dome of the sky...Read more of this...

Model For The Laureate

by William Butler Yeats
 On thrones from China to Peru
All sorts of kings have sat
That men and women of all sorts
proclaimed both good and great;
And what's the odds if such as these
For reason of the State
Should keep their lovers waiting,
 Keep their lovers waiting?

Some boast of beggar-kings and kings
Of rascals black and white
That rule because a strong right arm
Puts all men in a...Read more of this...

Silver Filigree

by Elinor Wylie
 The icicles wreathing 
On trees in festoon 
Swing, swayed to our breathing: 
They're made of the moon.

She's a pale, waxen taper; 
And these seem to drip 
Transparent as paper 
From the flame of her tip.

Molten, smoking a little, 
Into crystal they pass; 
Falling, freezing, to brittle 
And delicate glass.

Each a sharp-pointed flower, 
Each a brief stalactite 
Which hangs for...Read more of this...

On the Threshold

by Amy Levy
 O God, my dream! I dreamed that you were dead;
Your mother hung above the couch and wept
Whereon you lay all white, and garlanded
With blooms of waxen whiteness. I had crept
Up to your chamber-door, which stood ajar,
And in the doorway watched you from afar,
Nor dared advance to kiss your lips and brow.
I had no part nor lot in you, as...Read more of this...

Crossing the Frontier

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time, 
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait: 
Passports in order, nothing to declare 
And surely holding hands was not a crime 
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate, 
All their most formidable friends were there. 

Wearing his conscience like a crucifix, 
Her father, rampant, nursed the Family Shame; 
And,...Read more of this...

Passing away saith the World

by Christina Rossetti
 Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty and youth, sapp'd day by day:
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answer'd: Yea.

Passing...Read more of this...

A Celebration

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 A middle-northern March, now as always— 
gusts from the South broken against cold winds— 
but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, 
it moves—not into April—into a second March, 

the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping 
upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree 
upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere. 

So...Read more of this...

Telephus you praise him still (CUM TU, LYDIA)

by Horace
Telephus—you praise him still,
         His waxen arms, his rosy-tinted neck;
       Ah! and all the while I thrill
     With jealous pangs I cannot, cannot check.
         See, my colour comes and goes,
    ...Read more of this...

The Mother

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here I lean over you, small son, sleeping
Warm in my arms,
And I con to my heart all your dew-fresh charms,
As you lie close, close in my hungry hold . . . 
Your hair like a miser's dream of gold,
And the white rose of your face far fairer,
Finer, and rarer
Than all the flowers in the young year's keeping;
Over lips half...Read more of this...

Mothers Loss

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 If I could clasp my little babe
Upon my breast to-night, 
I would not mind the blowing wind
That shrieketh in affright.
Oh, my lost babe! my little babe, 
My babe with dreamful eyes; 
Thy bed is cold; and night wind bold
Shrieks woeful lullabies.

My breast is softer than the sod; 
This room, with lighter hearth, 
Is better place for thy sweet face
Than...Read more of this...

Song V: Through the Trouble and Tangle

by William Morris
 Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,
Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light
I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. 

O great was my joy, though no rest was around me,
Though mid wastes of the world were we twain...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Lenins Tomb

by Robert William Service
 This is the yarn he told me
 As we sat in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
 In the Land of the Crimson Star;
 That Soviet guy with the single eye,
 And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb,...Read more of this...

Psalm 06

by John Milton
 Aug. 13. 1653.


Lord in thine anger do not reprehend me
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me Lord for I am much deject
Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,
For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,
Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore
And thou O Lord how long? turn Lord, restore
My soul, O save me for...Read more of this...

Englands Answer

by Rudyard Kipling
 Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;
Stark as your sons shall be -- stern as your fathers were.
Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether,
But we do not fall...Read more of this...

Young Mother

by Robert William Service
 Her baby was so full of glee,
 And through the day
It laughed and babbled on her knee
 In happy play.
It pulled her hair all out of curl
 With noisy joy;
So peppy she was glad her girl
 Was not a boy.

Then as she longed for it to sleep,
 To her surprise
It just relaxed within her keep
 With closing eyes.
And as...Read more of this...

Simples

by James Joyce
 O bella bionda,
Sei come l'onda!


Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child
Gathers the simple salad leaves.

A moondew stars her hanging hair
And moonlight kisses her young brow
And, gathering, she sings an air:
Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!

Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear
To shield me from her...Read more of this...

Army Headquarters

by Rudyard Kipling
 Ahasuerus Jenkins of the "Operatic Own,"
Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.
His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle *****.
He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.

He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day;
He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way;
His method of saluting was the joy of all...Read more of this...

The Alchemist in the City

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 My window shews the travelling clouds, 
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter'd sky, 
The making and the melting crowds: 
The whole world passes; I stand by.

They do not waste their meted hours, 
But men and masters plan and build: 
I see the crowning of their towers, 
And happy promises fulfill'd.

And I - perhaps if my intent
Could count on prediluvian age,...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
   Thou madest Life in man and brute;
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast...Read more of this...

The Portrait

by Robert William Service
 The portrait there above my bed
They tell me is a work of art;
My Wife,--since twenty years she's dead:
Her going nearly broke my heart.
Alas! No little ones we had
To light our hearth with joy and glee;
Yet as I linger lone and sad
 I know she's waiting me.

The picture? Sargent painted it,
And it has starred in many a show.
Her eyes are...Read more of this...

The Deserted Garden

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I MIND me in the days departed, 
How often underneath the sun 
With childish bounds I used to run 
To a garden long deserted. 

The beds and walks were vanish'd quite; 5 
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, 
The greenest grasses Nature laid, 
To sanctify her right. 

I call'd the place my wilderness, 
For no one enter'd there but I....Read more of this...

To A Gentlewoman For A Friend

by William Strode
 No marvell if the Sunne's bright eye
Shower downe hott flames; that qualitie
Still waytes on light; but when wee see
Those sparkling balles of ebony
Distil such heat, the gazer straight
Stands so amazed at the sight
As when the lightning makes a breach
Through pitchie clouds: can lightning reach
The marrowe hurting not the skynne?
Your eyes to me the same have byn;
Can jett invite the...Read more of this...

Pompeii And Herculaneum

by Friedrich von Schiller
 What wonder this?--we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee--and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou?--is there life in the abyss--
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome--Greece!--Oh, come!--Behold--behold! for this!
Our living world--the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
House upon house--its silent halls once more
Opes the broad portico!--Oh, haste...Read more of this...

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