Famous Ashen Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ashen poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ashen poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ashen poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...d haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget....Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...the shade, I wait for Laura:
To me, my friend, appear, appear!
Beloved shadow, come to me
As at our parting -- wintry, ashen
In your last minutes' agony;
Emerge in any form or fashion:
A distant star across the sphere,
A gentle sound, a puff of air or
The most appalling wraith of terror,
I care not how: appear, appear!..
I call you -- not to speak my scorn
Of people whose ill-fated malice
Has killed my friend, and not to learn
The secrets of the nether-palace,
And not becau...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
...wo small Turkish boys run out into the storm--
here, by superstition,
they must laugh and sing--like condemned lovers,
ashen and kneeling,
who are being washed
by their dead grandmothers' grandmothers....Read more of this...
by
Dubie, Norman
...ent down to benches, sarks resounding,
the war-armor of men. Their spears stood,
sea-men’s tackle, leaning together,
ashen shafts grey at the tip. That metal-bound troop
was worthied in weapons. Then a proud noble
asked the chosen champions about their lineage: (ll. 320-32)
“From where have you all ferried those fretted shields,
grey hauberks and masked helmets, this forest of battle-shafts?
I am Hrothgar’s herald and servant. Never have I seen
many strange men thu...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...Cinderella in the street
In a ragged gown,
Sloven slippers on her feet,
Shames our tidy town;
Harsh her locks of ashen grey,
Vapour vague her stare,
By the curb this bitter day
Selling papers there.
Cinderella once was sweet,
Fine and lily fair,
Silver slippers on her feet,
Ribands in her hair;
Solid men besought her hand,
Tart was she as quince,
Living in a fairy land,
Waiting for a Prince.
Days went by and years went by,
Wistful wan was she;
Heedless of a mother's ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...leads to longer living,
To make the best of things that be,
And take the weather of God's giving;
So though the sky be ashen grey,
And winds be edged and sleet be slanting,
Heap faggots on the fire and say:
"It's just the kind of day I'm wanting."...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...n the house he plays with the serpents
he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair
Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the breezes
there one lies unconfined
He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you
others sing now and play
he grabs at teh iron in his belt he waves it his
eyes are blue
jab deper you lot with your spades you others play
on for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at at noon in...Read more of this...
by
Celan, Paul
...ped, the minstrels sang,
And at the gates the trumpets rang.
The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dum.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep.
Till Durin wakes again from sleep....Read more of this...
by
Tolkien, J R R
...ld is weak !
The effluence of each is false to all,
And what we best conceive we fail to speak.
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...ften, dear Painter, have I sat and mused
Why he should still be 'n all adventures used,
If they for nothing ill, like ashen wood,
Or think him, like Herb John for nothing good;
Whether his valour they so much admire,
Or that for cowardice they all retire,
As heaven in storms, they call in gusts of state
On Monck and Parliament, yet both do hate.
All causes sure concur, but most they think
Under Herc?lean labours he may sink.
Soon then the independent troops would cl...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...g past, the ghosts of mem'ries manifold --
Youth's memories that once were green and gold
But now, alas, are grim and ashen grey.
The drowsy schoolboy wakened up from sleep,
First stays his system with substantial food,
Then off for school with tasks half understood,
Alas, alas, that cribs should be so cheap!
The journey down to town -- 'twere long to tell
The storm and riot of the rabble rout;
The wild Walpurgis revel in and out
That made the ferry boat a floating...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...wind and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall
Mighty indeed THEIR glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open to the air;
And cunning sculptor's hands have carven there
The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed with passiona...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...in our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!
Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that slope to death,
And haunts of home, who...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...the dark, nearly
Black marl of oak beds pulled from burning houses.
That year, even her hair itself was woven
With an ashen white, just single threads here & there.
Yet the effect at last was of a woman
Constructed entirely of evening shadows . . . walking
Toward you out of an antique ink-&-pearl snapshot.
Still, it was exactly the kind of sadness
I could understand, & even love; & so, I spent hours
Walking the back streets of Trastevere looking in the most
Forbidding & ...Read more of this...
by
John, David St
...avernous and vast;
And sad and dead, and dull as lead, the valleys sought the snows;
And far and wide on every side the ashen peaks arose.
"The moon was like a silent spike that pierced the sky right through;
The small stars popped and winked and hopped in vastitudes of blue;
And unto me for company came creatures of the shade,
And formed in rings and whispered things that made me half afraid.
"And strange though be, 'twas borne on me that land had lived of old,
And men had...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...alf despair,
Creaked the door of his garret den; Dick, his brother, was standing there.
Down on the pallet bed he sank, ashen his face, his voice a wail:
"Save me, brother! I've robbed the bank; to-morrow it's ruin, capture, gaol.
Yet there's a chance: I could to-day pay back the money, save our name;
You have a manuscript, they say, worth a thousand -- think, man! the shame. . . ."
Brown with his heart pain-pierced the while, with his stern, starved face,
and his lips stone...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ul takes the light of day,
even a working day in 1944.
For Baharozian at seventeen the present
was a gift. Seeing my ashen face,
the cold sweats starting, he seated me
in a corner of the boxcar and did
both our jobs, stacking the full cases
neatly row upon row and whistling
the songs of Kate Smith. In the bathroom
that night I posed naked before the mirror,
the new cross of hair staining my chest,
plunging to my groin. That was Wednesday,
for every Wednesday ended...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...hase the noontide deer;
And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air
Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare
An ashen hunting spear.
O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,
And shores the froth lips wet:
And stay a little while, and bid them weep:
Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,
And shake their coverlet.
When you have told how I weep endlessly,
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea
And home to me again,
A...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...ed?
Why? What for?
Darling, look -
I came,
I brought flowers,
but, but... I never took
silver spoons from your drawer!
Ashen-faced,
I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.
Above the capital’s madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a death-bed, its days
my heart ended.
You did not sully you...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...ble, saw you..
But then the unexpected night
Covered the before-autumn town,
That, so as to assist my flight,
The ashen shadows melted down.
I only took with me the cross,
That you had given on day of treason
That wormwood steppe should be in bloom
And winds, like sirens, sing in season.
And here upon an empty wall
He keeps me from the broodings dour
And I don't fear to recall
Anything - even the final hour.
Village of the Tsar Statue
Upon the sw...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Ashen poems.