Famous Memorial Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Memorial poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous memorial poems. These examples illustrate what a famous memorial poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...doors,
Plucks from the flinty walls the clanking chains,
Where many a dreadful tale of woe remains,
Where many a sad memorial marks the hour,
That gave the rights of man to rav'nous pow'r;
Now snatch'd from death, the wond'ring wretch shall prove
The rapt'rous energies of social love;
Whose limbs each faculty deniedwhose sight
Had long resign'd all intercourse with light;
Whose wasted form the humid earth receiv'd,
Who numb'd with anguishscarcely felt he liv'd;
W...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...tear
Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages.
Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns;
But bending us-ward with memorial urns
The most high Muses that fulfil all ages
Weep, and our God's heart yearns.
For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often
Among us darkling here the lord of light
Makes manifest his music and his might
In hearts that open and in lips that soften
With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine.
Thy lips indeed he touch'd with bitt...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...d to make a mound
bright after the pyre upon the cliffs by the sea—
which must tower high upon the Whale’s Ness
as a memorial to my people, so that the sea-farers
will call it afterwards Beowulf’s Barrow,
when the ships drive from afar out of the darkened flood.” (ll. 2802-08)
The bold-minded prince pulled off his golden torque
from around his neck, giving it to his thane,
the young spear-soldier, and his gold-spangled helmet,
rings and his byrnie, ordering him to ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...tarry.
A barrow bid ye the battle-fanned raise
for my ashes. ’Twill shine by the shore of the flood,
to folk of mine memorial fair
on Hrones Headland high uplifted,
that ocean-wanderers oft may hail
Beowulf’s Barrow, as back from far
they drive their keels o’er the darkling wave.”
From his neck he unclasped the collar of gold,
valorous king, to his vassal gave it
with bright-gold helmet, breastplate, and ring,
to the youthful thane: bade him use them in joy.
“Thou...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...
Their bones and counted
Their skulls and moved
Them in barrows.
The railway’s banks
Are buttressed with the
Moved memorial stones
The diggers wore sacking
Over their faces and
Burned their shovels.
8
Every garden and park
Is a hypothesis for God
When I hear a distant buzz
I cannot tell if it is
A bee or saw.
That is what we must
Decide, patterned being
Or random chance, God
Or nothing, your choice
And mine.
9
The caf? by the lake was closed
...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...amber water glasses, walnut
tables, captain's chairs,
plastic doilies, papier-mâché bas-relief wall ballerinas,
German memorial plates "bought on a trip to Europe,"
Puritan crosshatch green-yellow wallpaper,
frilly shades, cowhide
booths--
I thought of Cambridge:
the lovely congruent elegance
of Revolutionary architecture, even of
ersatz thirties Georgian
seemed alien, a threat, sign
of all I was not--
to bode order and lucidity
as an ideal, if not reality--
not th...Read more of this...
by
Bidart, Frank
...stered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being ...Read more of this...
by
Gray, Thomas
...let me freeze,
And float my brittle limbs o'er polar seas?
Or will he touch me with his searing hand,
And leave a black memorial on the sand?
Or tear me piece-meal with a bony saw,
And keep me as a chosen food to draw
His magian fish through hated fire and flame?
O misery of hell! resistless, tame,
Am I to be burnt up? No, I will shout,
Until the gods through heaven's blue look out!--
O Tartarus! but some few days agone
Her soft arms were entwining me, and on
Her voice I hung...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...Memorial day for the war dead. Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you. Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.
Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this som...Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...incely Dignities;
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones,
Though on their names in Heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the earth,
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and th' invisible
Glory of him that ma...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d colour, shape, or size
Assume, as?kikes them best, condense or rare.
Mean while in other parts like deeds deserved
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king; who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wi...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...m to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in bliss...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...44 Lay grovelling. Triton incomplicate with that
45 Which made him Triton, nothing left of him,
46 Except in faint, memorial gesturings,
47 That were like arms and shoulders in the waves,
48 Here, something in the rise and fall of wind
49 That seemed hallucinating horn, and here,
50 A sunken voice, both of remembering
51 And of forgetfulness, in alternate strain.
52 Just so an ancient Crispin was dissolved.
53 The valet in the tempest was annulled.
54 Bord...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
..., grace them well in the brief hour they last!
Another's turn prepares, another follows fast.
Yet not without one fond memorial
Let my sun set who found the world so fair!
Frail verse, when Time the singer's coronal
Has rent, and stripped the rose-leaves from his hair,
Be thou my tablet on the temple wall!
Among the pious testimonials there,
Witness how sweetly on my heart as well
The miracles of dawn and starry evening fell!
Speak of one then who had the lust to feel,
And,...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...a few short years, perchance
A few short months, and all the various pain
I now endure shall be forgotten there,
And no memorial shall remain of me,
Save in your bosoms; while even your regret
Shall lose its poignancy, as ye reflect
What complicated woes that grave conceals!
But, if the little praise, that may await
The Mother's efforts, should provoke the spleen
Of Priest or Levite; and they then arraign
The dust that cannot hear them; be it yours
To vindicate my humble fame...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go - and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!
'How name ye yon lone Caloyer?
His features I have scanned before
In mine own land: 'tis many a year,
Since, das...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...face
Against all men, and lived but for mine own.
Far off from men I built a fold for them:
I stored it full of rich memorial:
I fenced it round with gallant institutes,
And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey
And prospered; till a rout of saucy boys
Brake on us at our books, and marred our peace,
Masked like our maids, blustering I know not what
Of insolence and love, some pretext held
Of baby troth, invalid, since my will
Sealed not the bond--the striplings! ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ir names who dare
For that sweet mother land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,
Graven on memorial columns, are a song
Heard in the future; few, but more than wall
And rampart, their examples reach a hand
Far thro' all years, and everywhere they meet
And kindle generous purpose, and the strength
To mould it into action pure as theirs.
Fairer thy fate than mine, if life's best end
Be to end well! and thou refusing this,
Unvenerable will thy...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
On...Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...eggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.
Unification
I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house -
Let life be empty and with light complete.
I'll sing the glory to you in my verse
Like not one woman has sung glory yet.
And that dear girlfriend you remember
In heaven you created for her...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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