Famous Calm Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Calm poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous calm poems. These examples illustrate what a famous calm poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilde, Oscar
...till could bear a son!
And yet I cannot tread the Portico
And live without desire, fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.
Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
Is childless; in the night w...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...rn must be King.
Yes, there must be a golden victory;
There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children; I will give command:
Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?"
This passion lifted him upon his feet,
And made his hands to struggle in the air,
His ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ir lord.
X.
It was the night — and Lara's glassy stream
The stars are studding, each with imaged beam:
So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide like happiness away;
Reflecting far and fairy-like from high
The immortal lights that live along the sky:
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree,
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee;
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,
And Innocence would offer to her love.
These deck...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...; That I might rather feel than see The Swelling of her Heart. I calm'd her Tears; and she was calm, And told her love with virgin Pride. And so I won my Genevieve, My bright and beauteous Bride! The MAD MOTHER. Her eyes are wild, her head is bare, The sun has burnt her coal-black hair, Her eye-b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
8
O to resume the joys of the soldier:
To feel the presence of a brave general! to feel his sympathy!
To behold his calmness! to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle! to hear the bugles play, and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery! to see the glittering of the bayonets and musket-barrels
in the
sun!
To see men fall and die, and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood! to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of th...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...e 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 passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary face of Dante; - to this day,
Here in his place of resting, far away
From Arno's yellow waters, rushing down
Through the wide bridges of that fairy town,
Where the tall...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...n the string-piece;
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast, and loosens over his hip-band;
His glance is calm and commanding—he tosses the slouch of his hat away from
his forehead;
The sun falls on his crispy hair and moustache—falls on the black of his
polish’d and perfect limbs.
I behold the picturesque giant, and love him—and I do not stop there;
I go with the team also.
In me the caresser of life wherever moving—backward as well as fo...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hese laid-up stores—however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain
here;
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a
little
while.
10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and wild seas;
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liber...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...n rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew—
For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gen...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ngly heart at ease,
My thought swims like a ship, that with the weight
Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas
Becalm'd, and cannot stir her golden freight.
6
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels intera...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...p; And cannot find her idiot boy. Your pony's worth his weight in gold, Then calm your terrors, Betty Foy! She's coming from among the trees, And now all full in view she sees Him whom she loves, her idiot boy. And Betty sees the pony too: Why stand you thus Good Betty Foy? It is no goblin, 'tis no ghost, 'Tis he whom you ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...
Wasted around their rich perfume;
The birch-trees wept in fragrant balm;
The aspens slept beneath the calm;
The silver light, with quivering glance,
Played on the water's still expanse,—
Wild were the heart whose passion's sway
Could rage beneath the sober ray!
He felt its calm, that warrior guest,
While thus he communed with his breast:—
'Why is it, at each turn I trace
Some memory of that exiled race?
C...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...s all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.
It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly.
While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird.
Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own.
"Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other thoug...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...unknown time
"Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
And from it came a gentle rivulet
Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
"Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sound which all who hear must needs forget
"All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
Which they had known before that hour of rest:
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
"The only child who died upon her breast
At eventide, a king would mourn no...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...farther, in the last confusion,
Was, that King George slipp'd into heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
Notes
The first publication of this satire on Southey's poem A Vision of Judgement was under the nom de plume of Quevedo Redivivus in volume number 1 of The Liberal, a periodical edited by Leigh Hunt and largely financed by Byron. In the copy of the first volume of The Liberal that I have (which...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...or a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...vening I overheard two men
In Claridge's— white waistcoats, coats I know
Were built in Bond Street or in Savile Row—
So calm, so confident, so finely bred—
Young gods in tails— and this is what they said:
'Not your first visit to the States?' 'Oh no,
I'd been to Canada two years ago.'
Good God, I thought, have they not heard that we
Were those ***** colonists who would be free,
Who took our desperate chance, and fought and won
Under a colonist called Washington?
One does...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...et us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'
FIRST VOICE:
I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors. It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten. Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off....Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...in to blow
And pigeon from my palms eats wheat..
The pages that I did not complete
Divinely light she is and calm,
Will finish Muse's suntanned arm.
x x x
Just like a cold noreaster
At first she'll sting,
And then a single salty tear
The heart will wring.
The evil heart will pity
Something and then regret.
But this light-headed sadness
It will not forget.
I only sow. To harvest.
Others will come. And yes!
The l...Read more of this...
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