Famous Waxes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Let Love Go If Go She Will

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 LET love go, if go she will.
Seek not, O fool, her wanton flight to stay.
Of all she gives and takes away
The best remains behind her still.

The best remains behind; in vain
Joy she may give and take again,
Joy she may take and leave us pain,
If yet she leave behind
The constant mind
To meet all fortunes nobly, to endure
All things with a...Read more of this...

When Like A Running Grave

by Dylan Thomas
 When, like a running grave, time tracks you down,
Your calm and cuddled is a scythe of hairs,
Love in her gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,

Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed...Read more of this...

Badger

by John Clare
 When midnight comes a host of dogs and men
Go out and track the badger to his den,
And put a sack within the hole, and lie
Till the old grunting badger passes by.
He comes an hears - they let the strongest loose.
The old fox gears the noise and drops the goose.
The poacher shoots and hurries from the cry,
And the old hare...Read more of this...

The Final Tax

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Said Statesman A to Statesman Z:
“What can we tax that is not paying?
We’re taxing every blessed thing—
Here’s what our people are defraying:

“Tariff tax, income tax,
Tax on retail sales,
Club tax, school tax,
Tax on beers and ales,

“City tax, county tax,
Tax on obligations,
War tax. wine tax,
Tax on corporations,

“Brewer tax, sewer tax,
Tax on motor cars,
Bond tax, stock tax,
Tax on liquor bars,

“Bridge tax, check...Read more of this...

The German Parnassus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 in the wares before you spread,
Types of all things may be read.

'NEATH the shadow

Of these bushes,
On the meadow

Where the cooling water gushes.
Phoebus gave me, when a boy,
All life's fullness to enjoy.
So, in silence, as the God
Bade them with his sov'reign nod,
Sacred Muses train'd my days
To his praise.--
With the bright and silv'ry flood
Of Parnassus stirr'd my blood,
And the seal so...Read more of this...

The Pupil In Magic

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I AM now,--what joy to hear it!--

Of the old magician rid;
And henceforth shall ev'ry spirit

Do whate'er by me is bid;

I have watch'd with rigour

All he used to do,

And will now with vigour

Work my wonders too.


Wander, wander

Onward lightly,

So that rightly

Flow the torrent,

And with teeming waters yonder

In the bath discharge its current!

And now come, thou well-worn broom,

And thy wretched form bestir;
Thou...Read more of this...

Stanza

by Emily Brontë
 Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in...Read more of this...

your tiger

by Rg Gregory
 (in china it is symbolic
of darkness and the new moon)

in your night's hollow
the tiger stalks
black grasses have licked 
it into nothingness

hooked by moon
i hover on your hollow's lip
i feel the smell of fire
the leap of a bright cat-fur

my eye is dumb
asking to be devoured
i am trembled over
(a bag of fear-bones)

there is a whoosh of flame
streaking but static at
your night's...Read more of this...

Mycerinus

by Matthew Arnold
 'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

'I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime--that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of...Read more of this...

Parables And Riddles

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Banished And Returning Count

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe began to write an opera called Lowenstuhl, 
founded upon the old tradition which forms the subject of this Ballad, 
but he never carried out his design.]

OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
Our mother is praying, our father is gone

To the forest, on wolves to make...Read more of this...

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