Famous Wrack Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wrack poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wrack poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wrack poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ar Mother, what's your woe?
46 Pray, do not fear Spain's bragging Armado.
47 Doth your Ally, fair France, conspire your wrack,
48 Or doth the Scots play false behind your back?
49 Doth Holland quit you ill for all your love?
50 Whence is this storm, from Earth or Heaven above?
51 Is 't drought, is 't Famine, or is 't Pestilence?
52 Dost feel the smart, or fear the consequence?
53 Your humble Child entreats you shew your grief.
54 Though Arms nor Purse she hath for your relief...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...Where's the lamp that Hero lit
Once to call Leander home?
Equal Time hath shovelled it
'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.
Neither wait we any more
That worn sail which Argo bore.
Dust and dust of ashes close
All the Vestal Virgin's care;
And the oldest altar shows
But an older darkness there.
Age-encamped Oblivion
Tenteth every light that shone.
Yet shall we, for Suns that die,
Wall our wanderings from desire?
Or, because the Moon is high,
Scorn ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.
These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...t many moons, King Uther died himself,
Moaning and wailing for an heir to rule
After him, lest the realm should go to wrack.
And that same night, the night of the new year,
By reason of the bitterness and grief
That vext his mother, all before his time
Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born
Delivered at a secret postern-gate
To Merlin, to be holden far apart
Until his hour should come; because the lords
Of that fierce day were as the lords of this,
Wild beasts, a...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...And lighted up the white Queen's changeless smile.
Nought noted he the shallow-flowing sea
As step by step it set the wrack a-swim;
The yellow torchlight nothing noted he
Wherein with fluttering gown and half-bared limb
The temple damsels sung their midnight hymn;
And nought the doubled stillness of the fane
When they were gone and all was hushed again.
But when the waves had touched the marble base,
And steps the fish swim over twice a-day,
The dawn beheld him sunke...Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...that gift-seat
or its treasures because of the Measurer—
he did not know his love. (ll. 164-69)
That was a mighty wrack for the Scyldings’ friend,
a breaking of his heart. Often many sat,
the capable at council, stewing upon a course
what best to do by the much-spirited
against terror’s ferocity. (ll. 170-74)
Sometimes they offered at heathen fanes
honoring wooden gods, worshipping wordfully
so that the soul-slayer might give solace
in the people’s peril. Such...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...this sinful creature, frail and vain,
205 This lump of wretchedness, of sin and sorrow,
206 This weather-beaten vessel wrackt with pain,
207 Joys not in hope of an eternal morrow.
208 Nor all his losses, crosses, and vexation,
209 In weight, in frequency and long duration
210 Can make him deeply groan for that divine Translation.
31
211 The Mariner that on smooth waves doth glide
212 Sings merrily and steers his Barque with ease
213 As if he had command of wind and tide
...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...that strong passion
Which paled Thee once with sighs,—by that strong death
Which made Thee once unbreathing—from the wrack
Themselves have called around them, call them back,
Back to Thee in continuous aspiration!
For here, O Lord,
For here they travel vainly,—vainly pass
From city-pavement to untrodden sward,
Where the lark finds her deep nest in the grass
Cold with the earth’s last dew. Yea, very vain
The greatest speed of all these souls of men
Unless they trav...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...l not cease, nor any cowering-place
Her fear shall find her, till he drive her back,
From city to city exiled, from wrack to wrack
Slain out of life, to find the native hell
Whence envy loosed her.
For thyself were
well
To follow where I lead, and thou shalt see
The spirits in pain, and hear the hopeless woe,
The unending cries, of those whose only plea
Is judgment, that the second death to be
Fall quickly. Further shalt thou climb, and go
To those who ...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...nor only Paradise
In this commotion, but the starry cope
Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements
At least had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn
With violence of this conflict, had not soon
The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,
Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen
Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein all things created first he weighed,
The pendulous round earth with balanced air
In counterpoise, now ponders all events,
Battles and realms: In...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...war seemed a civil game
To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped
Upon confusion rose: And now all Heaven
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread;
Had not the Almighty Father, where he sits
Shrined in his sanctuary of Heaven secure,
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen
This tumult, and permitted all, advised:
That his great purpose he might so fulfil,
To honour his anointed Son avenged
Upon his enemies, and to declare
All power on him transferred: Whence to his...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Shall build a wonderous ark, as thou beheldst,
To save himself, and houshold, from amidst
A world devote to universal wrack.
No sooner he, with them of man and beast
Select for life, shall in the ark be lodged,
And sheltered round; but all the cataracts
Of Heaven set open on the Earth shall pour
Rain, day and night; all fountains of the deep,
Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp
Beyond all bounds; till inundation rise
Above the highest hills: Then shall this mou...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d in a careless mood thus to him said:—
"Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
After a dismal night. I heard the wrack,
As earth and sky would mingle; but myself
Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them,
As dangerous to the pillared frame of Heaven,
Or to the Earth's dark basis underneath,
Are to the main as inconsiderable
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone.
Yet, as being ofttimes noxious where they light...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...blew a mouldy wind by me'
(`Cold?' quoth Love)
"`As I rode down, and the River was black,
And yon-side, lo! an endless wrack
And rabble of souls,' sighed Sense,
`Their eyes upturned and begged and burned
In brimstone lakes, and a Hand above
Beat back the hands that upward yearned --'
`Nay!' quoth Love --
"`Yea, yea, sweet Prince; thyself shalt see,
Wilt thou but down this slope with me;
'Tis palpable,' whispered Sense.
-- At the foot of the hill a living rill
Shone, and the...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...wander by a sun-bright shore,
To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly
With disembodied Ariel once more
Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud,
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud.
I
Floating upon a swelling wave of sound,
We seemed to overlook an endless sea:
Poised 'twixt clear heavens and glittering surf were we.
We drank the air in flight: we knew no bound
To the audacious ventures of desire.
Nigh us t...Read more of this...
by
Lazarus, Emma
...he shroud with my breath,
And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
"But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
"The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it -- the frozen dews have kissed --
The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
What is the Flag of Englan...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ier?
But bear this ring, his own of old,
And tell him - what thou dost behold!
The withered frame, the ruined mind,
The wrack by passion left behind,
A shrivelled scroll, a scattered leaf,
Seared by the autumn blast of grief!
'Tell me no more of fancy's gleam,
No, father, no, 'twas not a dream;
Alas! the dreamer first must sleep.
I only watched, and wished to weep;
But could not, for my burning brow
Throbbed to the very brain as now:
I wished but for a single tear,
As someth...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e above thee.
27
The fabled sea-snake, old Leviathan,
Or else what grisly beast of scaly chine
That champ'd the ocean-wrack and swash'd the brine,
Before the new and milder days of man,
Had never rib nor bray nor swindging fan
Like his iron swimmer of the Clyde or Tyne,
Late-born of golden seed to breed a line
Of offspring swifter and more huge of plan.
Straight is her going, for upon the sun
When once she hath look'd, her path and place are plain;
With tireless speed she ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...t, one Christmas Eve,
I watched a gale go roaring through the sky,
Making the cauldrons of clouds upheave.
Then the wrack tattered and the stars appeared,
Millions of stars that seemed to speak in fire;
A byre cock cried aloud that morning neared,
The swinging wind-vane flashed upon the spire.
And soon men looked upon a glittering earth,
Intensely sparkling like a world new-born;
Only to look was spiritual birth,
So bright the raindrops ran along the thorn
So br...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...of leaguing odds --
The spur of trust, the curb of lust,
Thou handmaid of the Gods!
O Charity, all patiently
Abiding wrack and scaith!
O Faith, that meets ten thousand cheats
Yet drops no jot of faith!
Devil and brute Thou dost transmute
To higher, lordlier show,
Who art in sooth that lovely Truth
The careless angels know!
Thy face is far from this our war,
Our call and counter-cry,
I may not find Thee quick and kind,
Nor know Thee till I die.
Yet may I look with he...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
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