Famous Image Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Image poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous image poems. These examples illustrate what a famous image poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crowley, Aleister
...pageant, sign to sign,
Stately proceeded, mine not only so
In the glamour of memory and austral glow
Of ardour, but by image of my brow
Stronger than sense, you are even here and now
Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife,
Mother of my children, mistress of my life!
O wild swan winging through the morning mist!
The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed,
The infinite device our love devised
If by some chance its truth might be surprised,
Are these all past? Are these ...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...er ev'ry right, and privilege of man.
Vain were their searches, and their reason vain,
Else whence the sculptur'd image of a god,
And marble bust ador'd as deity,
Altar and hecatomb prepar'd for these,
Or human sacrifice when hecatomb
Consum'd in vain with ceremony dire,
And rites abhorr'd, denied the wish'd success.
Reason is dark, else why heroic deem'd
Fell suicide, as if 'twere fortitude
And higher merit to recede from life,
Shunning the ills of poverty...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...altar each man brought some goodly offering,
A beechen cup brimming with milky foam,
A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery
Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee
Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil
Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked
spoil
Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
To please Athena, and the dappled hide
Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade
Had met the shaft; and then the...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...mers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre.
Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...had Phoebe wandered;
And many else were free to roam abroad,
But for the main, here found they covert drear.
Scarce images of life, one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November, and their chancel vault,
The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.
Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave
Or word, or look, or action of despair.
Creus was o...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upo...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...s prattled of their 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...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out up...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...; but O, how glad I waked
To find this but a dream! Thus Eve her night
Related, and thus Adam answered sad.
Best image of myself, and dearer half,
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep
Affects me equally; nor can I like
This uncouth dream, of evil sprung, I fear;
Yet evil whence? in thee can harbour none,
Created pure. But know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all e...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...t
Is the reflection once removed.
The glass chose to reflect only what he saw
Which was enough for his purpose: his image
Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle.
The time of day or the density of the light
Adhering to the face keeps it
Lively and intact in a recurring wave
Of arrival. The soul establishes itself.
But how far can it swim out through the eyes
And still return safely to its nest? The surface
Of the mirror being convex, the distance inc...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...now."
VI.
Fair, as the first that fell of womankind,
When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling,
Whose image then was stamp'd upon her mind —
But once beguiled — and evermore beguiling;
Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision
To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given,
When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian,
And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven;
Soft, as the memory of buried love;
Pure as the prayer which Childhood wafts above, ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...> Vain thought! yet be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the poet bless, Who, pouring here a later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress, But in the milder grief of pity. Remembrance! as we float along, For him susp...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ad upon the living gaze?
Or rather doth the mind, that can behold
The wondrous beauty of the works and days,
Create the image that her thoughts enfold?
19
Rejoice, ye dead, where'er your spirits dwell,
Rejoice that yet on earth your fame is bright;
And that your names, remember'd day and night,
Live on the lips of those that love you well.
'Tis ye that conquer'd have the powers of hell,
Each with the special grace of your delight:
Ye are the world's creators, and thro' ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hur's hall;
For good ye are and bad, and like to coins,
Some true, some light, but every one of you
Stamped with the image of the King; and now
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?'
`Nay,' said the knight; `for no such passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...his head;
Not Ellen's spell had lulled to rest
The fever of his troubled breast.
In broken dreams the image rose
Of varied perils, pains, and woes:
His steed now flounders in the brake,
Now sinks his barge upon the lake;
Now leader of a broken host,
His standard falls, his honor's lost.
Then,—from my couch may heavenly might
Chase that worst phantom of the night!—
Again returned the scenes of youth,
Of c...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
....
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid
you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn
of the crow.
PLATE 9
The fox provides for himself. but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep
in the night.
He who has sufferd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rew...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...aves & shadows dun;
"And as I looked the bright omnipresence
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
And the Sun's image radiantly intense
"Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
With winding paths of emerald fire--there stood
"Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
"A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...talent gives birth there to children immortal,
Suckled in liberty's arms, flourish the arts there of joy.
With the image of life the eyes by the sculptor are ravished,
And by the chisel inspired, speaks e'en the sensitive stone.
Skies artificial repose on slender Ionian columns,
And a Pantheon includes all that Olympus contains.
Light as the rainbow's spring through the air, as the dart from the bowstring,
Leaps the yoke of the bridge over the boisterous stream.<...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...amaze
They fall in love and find their love returned,
And the lights brighten, and their eyes are clear
To see God's image in their common clay.
Is it the music of the spheres they hear?
Is it the prelude to that noble play,
The drama of Joined Lives? Ah, they forget
They cannot write their parts; the bell has rung,
The curtain rises and the stage is set
For tragedy-they were in love and young.
V
We went to the Tower,
We went to the Zoo,
We saw every flowe...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ngstful,
In that blue room she still to this day lives,
She waits for guests from city beyond midnight
And to enamel image gives a kiss.
And things are not quite well around the house:
It still is dark, although they lit the flame..
Not from all this the hostess is in boredom,
Not from all this the host drinks all the same
And hears how on the other side of the thin wall
The guest arrived talks to me at all?
x x x
I see capital through the flu...Read more of this...
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