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Best Famous Anacreon Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Anacreon poems. This is a select list of the best famous Anacreon poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Anacreon poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of anacreon poems.

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Written by Robert Herrick | Create an image from this poem

A Lyric to Mirth

 While the milder fates consent,
Let's enjoy our merriment :
Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play ;
Kiss our dollies night and day :
Crowned with clusters of the vine,
Let us sit, and quaff our wine.
Call on Bacchus, chant his praise ; Shake the thyrse, and bite the bays : Rouse Anacreon from the dead, And return him drunk to bed : Sing o'er Horace, for ere long Death will come and mar the song : Then shall Wilson and Gotiere Never sing or play more here.


Written by Robert Herrick | Create an image from this poem

AN ODE TO SIR CLIPSBY CREW

 Here we securely live, and eat
The cream of meat;
And keep eternal fires,
By which we sit, and do divine,
As wine
And rage inspires.
If full, we charm; then call upon Anacreon To grace the frantic Thyrse: And having drunk, we raise a shout Throughout, To praise his verse.
Then cause we Horace to be read, Which sung or said, A goblet, to the brim, Of lyric wine, both swell'd and crown'd, Around We quaff to him.
Thus, thus we live, and spend the hours In wine and flowers; And make the frolic year, The month, the week, the instant day To stay The longer here.
--Come then, brave Knight, and see the cell Wherein I dwell; And my enchantments too; Which love and noble freedom is:-- And this Shall fetter you.
Take horse, and come; or be so kind To send your mind, Though but in numbers few:-- And I shall think I have the heart Or part Of Clipsby Crew.
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

TO THE GRASSHOPPER

 AFTER ANACREON.
[The strong resemblance of this fine poem to Cowley's Ode bearing the same name, and beginning "Happy insect! what can be," will be at once seen.
] HAPPY art thou, darling insect, Who, upon the trees' tall branches, By a modest draught inspired, Singing, like a monarch livest! Thou possessest as thy portion All that on the plains thou seest, All that by the hours is brought thee 'Mongst the husbandmen thou livest, As a friend, uninjured by them, Thou whom mortals love to honour, Herald sweet of sweet Spring's advent! Yes, thou'rt loved by all the Muses, Phoebus' self, too, needs must love thee; They their silver voices gave thee, Age can never steal upon thee.
Wise and gentle friend of poets, Born a creature fleshless, bloodless, Though Earth's daughter, free from suff'ring, To the gods e'en almost equal.
1781.
Written by Francis Scott Key | Create an image from this poem

Defence of Fort MHenry

 Tune -- ANACREON IN HEAVEN 
O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there --
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream --
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havock of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul foot-steps' pollution, No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their lov'd home, and the war's desolation, Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto -- "In God is our trust!" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
Written by Lew Welch | Create an image from this poem

Taxi Suite (excerpt: 1. After Anacreon)

 When I drive cab
I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat

When I drive cab
I am the hunter.
My prey leaps out from where it hid, beguiling me with gestures When I drive cab all may command me, yet I am in command of all who do When I drive cab I am guided by voices descending from the naked air When I drive cab A revelation of movement comes to me.
They wake now.
Now they want to work or look around.
Now they want drunkenness and heavy food.
Now they contrive to love.
When I drive cab I bring the sailor home from the sea.
In the back of my car he fingers the pelt of his maiden When I drive cab I watch for stragglers in the urban order of things.
When I drive cab I end the only lit and waitful things in miles of darkened houses


Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

ANACREONS GRAVE

 HERE where the roses blossom, where vines round the laurels are 
twining,

Where the turtle-dove calls, where the blithe cricket is heard,
Say, whose grave can this be, with life by all the Immortals

Beauteously planted and deck'd?--Here doth Anacreon sleep
Spring and summer and autumn rejoiced the thrice-happy minstrel,

And from the winter this mound kindly hath screen'd him at last.
1789.
*
Written by Robert Herrick | Create an image from this poem

THE APPARITION OF HIS MISTRESSCALLING HIM TO ELYSIUM

 THE APPARITION OF HIS, MISTRESS,
CALLING HIM TO ELYSIUM

DESUNT NONNULLA--

Come then, and like two doves with silvery wings,
Let our souls fly to th' shades, wherever springs
Sit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil,
Roses and cassia, crown the untill'd soil;
Where no disease reigns, or infection comes
To blast the air, but amber-gris and gums.
This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire More sweet than storax from the hallow'd fire; Where ev'ry tree a wealthy issue bears Of fragrant apples, blushing plums, or pears; And all the shrubs, with sparkling spangles, shew Like morning sun-shine, tinselling the dew.
Here in green meadows sits eternal May, Purfling the margents, while perpetual day So double-gilds the air, as that no night Can ever rust th' enamel of the light: Here naked younglings, handsome striplings, run Their goals for virgins' kisses; which when done, Then unto dancing forth the learned round Commix'd they meet, with endless roses crown'd.
And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and see Love's chorus led by Cupid; and we'll he Two loving followers too unto the grove, Where poets sing the stories of our love.
There thou shalt hear divine Musaeus sing Of Hero and Leander; then I'll bring Thee to the stand, where honour'd Homer reads His Odyssees and his high Iliads; About whose throne the crowd of poets throng To hear the incantation of his tongue: To Linus, then to Pindar; and that done, I'll bring thee, Herrick, to Anacreon, Quaffing his full-crown'd bowls of burning wine, And in his raptures speaking lines of thine, Like to his subject; and as his frantic Looks shew him truly Bacchanalian like, Besmear'd with grapes,--welcome he shall thee thither, Where both may rage, both drink and dance together.
Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid, by Whom fair Corinna sits, and doth comply With ivory wrists his laureat head, and steeps His eye in dew of kisses while he sleeps.
Then soft Catullus, sharp-fang'd Martial, And towering Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, And snaky Persius; these, and those whom rage, Dropt for the jars of heaven, fill'd, t' engage All times unto their frenzies; thou shalt there Behold them in a spacious theatre: Among which glories, crown'd with sacred bays And flatt'ring ivy, two recite their plays, Beaumont and Fletcher, swans, to whom all ears Listen, while they, like sirens in their spheres, Sing their Evadne; and still more for thee There yet remains to know than thou canst see By glimm'ring of a fancy; Do but come, And there I'll shew thee that capacious room In which thy father, Jonson, now is placed As in a globe of radiant fire, and graced To be in that orb crown'd, that doth include Those prophets of the former magnitude, And he one chief.
But hark! I hear the cock, The bell-man of the night, proclaim the clock Of late struck One; and now I see the prime Of day break from the pregnant east:--'tis time I vanish:--more I had to say, But night determines here;(Away!
Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Create an image from this poem

THE WANDERERS STORM-SONG

 [Goethe says of this ode, that it is the only 
one remaining out of several strange hymns and dithyrambs composed 
by him at a period of great unhappiness, when the love-affair between 
him and Frederica had been broken off by him.
He used to sing them while wandering wildly about the country.
This particular one was caused by his being caught in a tremendous storm on one of these occasions.
He calls it a half-crazy piece (halkunsinn), and the reader will probably agree with him.
] He whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Feels no dread within his heart At the tempest or the rain.
He whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Will to the rain-clouds, Will to the hailstorm, Sing in reply As the lark sings, Oh thou on high! Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt raise above the mud-track With thy fiery pinions.
He will wander, As, with flowery feet, Over Deucalion's dark flood, Python-slaying, light, glorious, Pythius Apollo.
Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt place upon thy fleecy pinion When he sleepeth on the rock,-- Thou wilt shelter with thy guardian wing In the forest's midnight hour.
Him whom thou ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt wrap up warmly In the snow-drift; Tow'rd the warmth approach the Muses, Tow'rd the warmth approach the Graces.
Ye Muses, hover round me! Ye Graces also! That is water, that is earth, And the son of water and of earth Over which I wander, Like the gods.
Ye are pure, like the heart of the water, Ye are pure like the marrow of earth, Hov'ring round me, while I hover Over water, o'er the earth Like the gods.
Shall he, then, return, The small, the dark, the fiery peasant? Shall he, then, return, waiting Only thy gifts, oh Father Bromius, And brightly gleaming, warmth-spreading fire? Return with joy? And I, whom ye attended, Ye Muses and ye Graces, Whom all awaits that ye, Ye Muses and ye Graces, Of circling bliss in life Have glorified--shall I Return dejected? Father Bromius! Thourt the Genius, Genius of ages, Thou'rt what inward glow To Pindar was, What to the world Phoebus Apollo.
Woe! Woe Inward warmth, Spirit-warmth, Central-point! Glow, and vie with Phoebus Apollo! Coldly soon His regal look Over thee will swiftly glide,-- Envy-struck Linger o'er the cedar's strength, Which, to flourish, Waits him not.
Why doth my lay name thee the last? Thee, from whom it began, Thee, in whom it endeth, Thee, from whom it flows, Jupiter Pluvius! Tow'rd thee streams my song.
And a Castalian spring Runs as a fellow-brook, Runs to the idle ones, Mortal, happy ones, Apart from thee, Who cov'rest me around, Jupiter Pluvius! Not by the elm-tree Him didst thou visit, With the pair of doves Held in his gentle arm,-- With the beauteous garland of roses,-- Caressing him, so blest in his flowers, Anacreon, Storm-breathing godhead! Not in the poplar grove, Near the Sybaris' strand, Not on the mountain's Sun-illumined brow Didst thou seize him, The flower-singing, Honey-breathing, Sweetly nodding Theocritus.
When the wheels were rattling, Wheel on wheel tow'rd the goal, High arose The sound of the lash Of youths with victory glowing, In the dust rolling, As from the mountain fall Showers of stones in the vale-- Then thy soul was brightly glowing, Pindar-- Glowing? Poor heart! There, on the hill,-- Heavenly might! But enough glow Thither to wend, Where is my cot! 1771.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things