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Famous Vulture Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...dusty gray, and perched above his lugs
There ben the very latest style of blacke and shiny pluggs;
His nose ben like a vulture beake, his blie ben swart of hue,
And curly ben ye whiskers through ye which ye zephyrs blewe;
Of all ye een that ben yseene in countries far or nigh,
None nonywhere colde hold compare unto that straunger's eye;
It was an eye of soche a kind as never ben on sleepe,
Nor did it gleam with kindly beame, nor did not use to weepe;
But soche an eye ye widd...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene



...

Know ye the land where cypress and myrtle 
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, 
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? 
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; 
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, 
Wax faint o'er the gardens of G?l in her bloom; [1] 
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
And the voice of the nigh...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...aloft, as signal for the chace--
I, who, for very sport of heart, would race
With my own steed from Araby; pluck down
A vulture from his towery perching; frown
A lion into growling, loth retire--
To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire,
And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast
Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest.

 "This river does not see the naked sky,
Till it begins to progress silverly
Around the western border of the wood,
Whence, from a certain spot, i...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...g upon this element, dismay'd,
Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid;
I look'd--'twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?
Could not thy harshest vengeance be content,
But thou must nip this tender innocent
Because I lov'd her?--Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was
I clung about her waist, nor ceas'd to pass
Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine,
Until there...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
..., splendid to the view, 
 Stifling with your prosperity—but now 
 The hour of retribution lays you low. 
 Ah, do the vulture and the crocodile 
 Shed tears! At such a sight I fain must smile. 
 It seems to me 'tis very good sometimes 
 That princes, conquerors stained with bandits' crimes, 
 Sparkling with splendor, wearing crowns of gold, 
 Should know the deadly sweat endured of old, 
 That of Jehoshaphat; should sob and fear, 
 And after crime th' unclean be brou...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor



...o murder but not to fight. 

Flower of the German Culture,
Boast of the Kaiser's Marine,
Choose for your emblem the vulture,
Cowardly, cruel, obscene! 

Forth from her sheltered haven
Our peaceful ship glides slow, 
Noiseless in flight as a raven,
Gray as a hoodie crow. 

She doubles and turns in her bearing,
Like a twisting plover she goes;
The way of her westward faring
Only the captain knows. 

In a lonely bay concealing
She lingers for days, and slips
At dusk ...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...
XVI 
Or, like the thief of fire from heaven, 
Wilt thou withstand the shock? 
And share with him, the unforgiven, 
His vulture and his rock! 
Foredoom'd by God -- by man accurst, 
And that last act, though not thy worst, 
The very Fiend's arch mock; 
He in his fall preserved his pride, 
And, if a mortal, had as proudly died! 

XVII 
There was a day -- there was an hour, 
While earth was Gaul's -- Gaul thine -- 
When that immeasurable power 
Unsated to resign 
Had been an act...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...y,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they can...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...of Old Time thou art!
 Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
 Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
 Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
 Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
 And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
 Hast thou not torn...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...f Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart 
Vulture whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise 
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies 
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not t...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...

Know ye the land where cypress and myrtle 
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime, 
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? 
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; 
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, 
Wax faint o'er the gardens of G?l in her bloom; [1] 
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
And the voice of the nigh...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...hoo-doo you.
Never again will he hoo-doo you.

Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,
And only the vulture dared again
By the far, lone mountains of the moon
To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune: --
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Dying down into a penetrating, terrified whisper.
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you."...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched a...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s lost lamb (she pointed to the child) 
Our mind is changed: we take it to ourself.' 

Thereat the Lady stretched a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 
'The plan was mine. I built the nest' she said 
'To hatch the cuckoo. Rise!' and stooped to updrag 
Melissa: she, half on her mother propt, 
Half-drooping from her, turned her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 
Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 
A Niobëan da...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d of those,-- 
Mothers,--that, with all prophetic pity, fling 
Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 
Made for all noble motion: and I saw 
That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 
With smoother men: the old leaven leavened all: 
Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, 
No woman named: therefore I set my face 
Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 
Far off from men I built a fold for them: 
I stor...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...wild-dog's maw, 
The hair was tangled round his jaw. 
But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, 
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, 
Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, 
Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; 
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, 
Pick'd by the birds, on the sands of the bay. 

XVII. 

Alp turn'd him from the sickening sight: 
Never had shaken his nerves in fight; 
Be he better could brook to behold the dying, 
Deep...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...uld subdue not--
"And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
The tutor & his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.--
"The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
"The other long outlived both woes & wars,
Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
"If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
Like lightning out of dar...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ose 
(Himself an author) only for his prose. 

XCIV 

The varlet was not an ill-favour'd knave; 
A good deal like a vulture in the face, 
With a hook nose and a hawk'd eye, which gave 
A smart and sharper-looking sort of grace 
To his whole aspect, which, though rather grave, 
Was by no means so ugly as his case; 
But that, indeed, was hopeless as can be, 
Quite a poetic felony, 'de se.' 

XCV 

Then Michael blew his trump, and still'd the noise 
With one still greate...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...' grain,
Pigeons settling on the bears' bread, buzzards
Tearing the meat the flies have clouded. . . .
 Vulture,
When you come for the white rat that the foxes left, 
Take off the red helmet of your head, the black
Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man:
The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn,
To whose hand of power the great lioness
Stalks, purring. . . .
 You know what I was,
You see what I am: change me, change me!...Read more of this...
by Jarrell, Randall
...The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination, and contemplating heavily his palace which stood upon a knoll like a birth-mark upon the cheek of a maiden. ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

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