Famous Wrath Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wrath poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wrath poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wrath poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Victor Hugo
("Un lion avait pris un enfant.")
{XIII.}
A Lion in his jaws caught up a child—
Not harming it—and to the woodland, wild
With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey—
The beast, as one might cull a bud in May.
It was a rosy boy, a king's own pride,
...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Quoi! ne pouvez-vous vivre ensemble?")
{XXXV., June, 1828.}
The River Deity upbraids his Daughters, the contributary Streams:—
Ye daughters mine! will naught abate
Your fierce interminable hate?
Still am I doomed to rue the fate
That such unfriendly neighbors made?
The while ye might, in peaceful cheer,
Mirror upon...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
Chill and mirk is the nightly blast,
Where Pindus' mountains rise,
And angry clouds are pouring fast
The vengeance of the skies.
Our guides are gone, our hope is lost,
And lightnings, as they play,
But show where rocks our path have crost,
Or gild the torrent's spray.
Is yon a cot I saw, though low?
When lightning broke the gloom---
How welcome were its shade!---ah, no!
'Tis but a...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
“O CAM ye here the fight to shun,
Or herd the sheep wi’ me, man?
Or were ye at the Sherra-moor,
Or did the battle see, man?”
I saw the battle, sair and teugh,
And reekin-red ran mony a sheugh;
My heart, for fear, gaed sough for sough,
To hear the thuds, and see the cluds
O’ clans frae woods, in tartan duds,
Wha glaum’d...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Enfants! Oh! revenez!")
{XXII, April, 1837}
Children, come back—come back, I say—
You whom my folly chased away
A moment since, from this my room,
With bristling wrath and words of doom!
What had you done, you bandits small,
With lips as red as roses all?
What crime?—what wild and...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:
"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.
"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,
And darkness dim the bright stars' galaxy,
I'll seize the Loved One by His skirt, and cry,
«Why hast Thou doomed these guiltless ones to die?»...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]
ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,
Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,
As his father's friend, kind courtesy.
Son and daughter, they
Had been wont to say
Should...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
A god in wrath
Was beating a man;
He cuffed him loudly
With thunderous blows
That rang and rolled over the earth.
All people came running.
The man screamed and struggled,
And bit madly at the feet of the god.
The people cried,
"Ah, what a wicked man!"
And --
"Ah, what a redoubtable god!"...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!
Revile him not—the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!
Oh! dumb be passion's stormy rage,
...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Divine wrath and mercy.
Nah. 1:1-3; Heb. 12:29.
Adore and tremble, for our God
Is a consuming fire!
His jealous eyes his wrath inflame,
And raise his vengeance higher.
Almighty vengeance, how it burns!
How bright his fury glows!
Vast magazines of plagues and storms
Lie treasured for his foes.
Those heaps of wrath, by slow degrees,
Are forced into a flame;
But kindled, oh! how fierce they blaze!
And rend...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well --
What voices heardst thou when thy petals...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him;
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed—
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend?
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said,
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.
There are far more spiders than the man in the street
supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Whate'er thou doest, never grieve thy brother,
Nor kindle fumes of wrath his peace to smother;
Dost thou desire to taste eternal bliss,
Vex thine own heart, but never vex another!...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.12
C. M.
The wisdom and equity of Providence.
When the great Judge, supreme and just,
Shall once inquire for blood,
The humble souls that mourn in dust
Shall find a faithful God.
He from the dreadful gates of death
Does his own children raise;
In Zion's gates, with cheerful breath,
They sing their Father's praise.
His foes shall fall, with heedless feet,
Into the pit they made;
And sinners perish...Read more of this...
by
Richard Aldington
Che son contenti nel fuoco
We are of those that Dante saw
Glad, for love's sake, among the flames of hell,
Outdaring with a kiss all-powerful wrath;
For we have passed athwart a fiercer hell,
Through gloomier, more desperate circles
Than ever Dante dreamed:
And yet love kept us glad....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Behold these cups! Can He who deigned to make them,
In wanton freak let ruin overtake them,
So many shapely feet and hands and heads,—
What love drives Him to make, what wrath to break them?...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear,
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ our passover.
Lo, the destroying angel flies
To Pharaoh's stubborn land;
The pride and flower of Egypt dies
By his vindictive hand.
He passed the tents of Jacob o'er,
Nor poured the wrath divine;
He saw the blood on every door,
And blessed the peaceful sign.
Thus the appointed Lamb must bleed,
To break the Egyptian yoke;
Thus Isr'el is from bondage freed,
And 'scapes the angel's stroke.
Lord, if my...Read more of this...
by
Jerome Rothenberg
I came alive
when things went
crazy.
I pulled the plug on
the reports of
sturm & drang
When someone
signaled I
left open
what I
could not close.
I broke a
covenant that
was more fierce
than murder.
I vent my wrath
on animals
pretending they will turn
divine.
I open up
rare certainties
that test free will.
I take from animals
a place in which
the taste of death
pours from their mouths
& drowns them.
I support a
lesser...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Frost of Death was on the Pane --
"Secure your Flower" said he.
Like Sailors fighting with a Leak
We fought Mortality.
Our passive Flower we held to Sea --
To Mountain -- To the Sun --
Yet even on his Scarlet shelf
To crawl the Frost begun --
We pried him back
Ourselves we wedged
Himself and her between,
Yet easy as the narrow Snake
He forked his way...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
THE FLESH
"Sweet, thou art pale."
"More pale to see,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore His Father's wrath for me."
"Sweet, thou art sad."
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The winepress of the wrath of God."
"Sweet, thou art weary."
"Not so Christ:
Whose mighty love of me suffic'd
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist."
"Sweet, thou art footsore."
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea in...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O Thou! to please whose love and wrath as well,
Allah created heaven and likewise hell;
Thou hast thy court in heaven, and I have naught,
Why not admit me in thy courts to dwell?...Read more of this...
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