Famous Voice Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Voice poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous voice poems. These examples illustrate what a famous voice poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...cles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...stain, pains, dismay, feebleness
it
is bequeathing.
9
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore,
I heard the voice arising, demanding bards;
By them, all native and grand—by them alone can The States be fused into the compact
organism of a Nation.
To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account;
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of
the
limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants.Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...he Attic tomb, -
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?
Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
Death is too rude, too obvious a key
To solve one single secret in a life's philosophy.
And Love! that noble madness, whose august
And inextinguishable migh...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ay
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unscept...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ight
To that most feared before, a shade, or man
(Either he seemed), obstructing where I ran,
Called to me with a voice that few should know,
Faint from forgetful silence, "Where ye go,
Take heed. Why turn ye from the upward way?"
I cried, "Or come ye from warm earth, or they
The grave hath taken, in my mortal need
Have mercy thou!"
He answered, "Shade am I,
That once was man; beneath the Lombard sky,
In the late years of Julius born, and bred
In ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...p;His dying words—but when I reach'd That tenderest strain of all the Ditty, My falt'ring Voice and pausing Harp Disturb'd her Soul with Pity! All Impulses of Soul and Sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve, The Music, and the doleful Tale, The rich and balmy Eve; And Hopes, and Fears that kindle Hope, &nbs...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ll of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.
O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of
globes,
and all time.
2
O the engineer’s jo...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...leaves, and of the shore, and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies
of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
meeti...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ery part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me?
O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you—yet I love you;
You express ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...reen evening sky,
Holding a ruined cross on high,
Under warm westland grass to lie,
Shall we come home at last?"
And a voice came human but high up,
Like a cottage climbed among
The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft
That sits by his hovel fire as oft,
But hears on his old bare roof aloft
A belfry burst in song.
"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.
"And any litt...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects;—he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempe...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...n fresh hope and peace in me,
Gleaming above upon my groaning bark.
Whate'er my sorrow be, I then may hark
A loving voice: whate'er my terror be,
This heavenly comfort still I win from thee,
To shine my lodestar that wert once my mark.
Prodigal nature makes us but to taste
One perfect joy, which given she niggard grows;
And lest her precious gift should run to waste,
Adds to its loss a thousand lesser woes:
So to the memory of the gift that graced
Her hand, her grace...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...t blissful and innocent state--
The sound so exactly recalled to his mind
A pencil that squeaks on a slate!
"'Tis the voice of the Jubjub!" he suddenly cried.
(This man, that they used to call "Dunce.")
"As the Bellman would tell you," he added with pride,
"I have uttered that sentiment once.
"'Tis the note of the Jubjub! Keep count, I entreat;
You will find I have told it you twice.
Tis the song of the Jubjub! The proof is complete,
If only I've stated...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...single soul abroad." She listens, but she cannot hear The foot of horse, the voice of man; The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now if e'er you can. The owlets through the long blue night Are shouting to each other still: Fond lovers, yet not quite hob nob, They leng...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...at obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
PLATE 4
The voice of the Devil
All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a
Soul.
That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...The First Voice
HE trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:
It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat,
All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.
With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...f I said, "And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
I would have added--"is all here amiss?"
But a voice answered . . "Life" . . . I turned & knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainl...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...French ghost swore
In certain terms I shan't translate in full,
As the first coachman will; and 'midst the roar,
The voice of Jonathan was heard to express,
'Our president is going to war, I guess.'
LX
Besides there were the Spaniard, Dutch, and Dane;
In short, an universal shoal of shades,
From Otaheite's isle to Salisbury Plain,
Of all climes and professions, years and trades,
Ready to swear against the good king's reign,
Bitter as clubs in cards are agains...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...e of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
"Jug Jug" to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savag...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ore perfectly I could
Give to you gratitude,
Allow me to give the world
Love incorruptible.
x x x
My voice is weak, but will does not get weaker.
It has become still better without love,
The sky is tall, the mountain wind is blowing
My thoughts are sinless to true God above.
The sleeplessness has gone to other places,
I do not on grey ashes count my sorrow,
And the skewed arrow of the clock face
Does not look to me like a deadly arrow.
H...Read more of this...
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