Famous Language Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Language poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous language poems. These examples illustrate what a famous language poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rg Gregory
(1) the ordinary
you are not interested in me
a receiver of food and a giver of ****
my brain knuckled under
i have rendered the skills of my
limbs to generations of caesars
and caesar's gods have siphoned off my spirit
by day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers
my own pieces travel through the night yearning for union
in every land i...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Drinkers alone know how to appreciate the language
of the roses and of wine, and not the feeble in heart or
the poor in spirit. Those who have no idea of what is
occult, to them ignorance is pardonable, for drunkards
alone can understand what belongs to such an order of
of things....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Crumey
In a cafe, once more I heard
Your voice - those sparse and frugal notes.
Do they not say that you spoke your native Greek
With an English accent?
Briefest of visions: eyes meet across the cafe;
A man of about my age - eyelids heavy,
Perhaps from recent pleasures.
I begin the most innocent of conversations.
Again I see that image;
Ancient delight of flesh
Against guiltless flesh.
Sweeter...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
Sweet girl! though only once we met,
That meeting I shall ne'er forget;
And though we ne'er may meet again,
Remembrance will thy form retain.
I would not say, "I love," but still
My senses struggle with my will:
In vain, to drive thee from my breast,
My thoughts are more and more represt;
In vain I check the rising sighs,
Another to the last replies:
Perhaps this is...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Dors-tu? mère de notre mère.")
{III., 1823.}
"To die—to sleep."—SHAKESPEARE.
Still asleep! We have been since the noon thus alone.
Oh, the hours we have ceased to number!
Wake, grandmother!—speechless say why thou art grown.
Then, thy lips are so cold!—the Madonna of stone
Is like thee in thy holy...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Many a phrase has the English language --
I have heard but one --
Low as the laughter of the Cricket,
Loud, as the Thunder's Tongue --
Murmuring, like old Caspian Choirs,
When the Tide's a' lull --
Saying itself in new inflection --
Like a Whippoorwill --
Breaking in bright Orthography
On my simple sleep --
Thundering its Prospective --
Till I stir, and weep --
Not for the Sorrow,...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
'Twas grav'd on the Stone of Destiny,
In letters four, and letters three;
And ne'er did the King of the Gulls go by
But those awful letters scar'd his eye;
For he knew that a Prophet Voice had said
"As long as those words by man were read,
The ancient race of the Gulls should ne'er
One hour of peace or plenty share."
But years and years...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and...Read more of this...
by
James Lee Jobe
Quiet! Today the earth tells me, be quiet.
Ssh! No talking now. Our soul
is listening to tiny things, almost silent.
This is a language that you feel.
Our soul, says the earth, hears every little sound....Read more of this...
by
Howard Nemerov
Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That's done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.
The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty...Read more of this...
by
Jack Spicer
This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry....Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
Before I am completely shriven
I shall reject my inch of heaven.
Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink
Into my deepest self; there drink
Memory down. The banner of
My blood, unfurled, will not be love,
Only the pity and the pride
Of it, pinned to my open side.
When I have utterly refined
The composition of my mind,
Shaped language of my marrow till
Its forms are instant to...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth it is in vain you say
"Love not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love — was cured of all beside —
His follie...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I AM put high over all others in the city today.
I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing today.
Here is a strong young man who killed.
There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;
White is their colour, and behold my head.
But must they have my brain? must they dispark
Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred?
Must dulnesse turn me to a clod?
Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God.
Good men ye be, to leave me my best room,...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the tell-tale cheek,
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye –
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh –
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache,
While new emotions,...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Confession of our poverty.
Preserve me, Lord, in time of need,
For succor to thy throne I flee,
But have no merits there to plead:
My goodness cannot reach to thee.
Oft have my heart and tongue confessed
How empty and how poor I am;
My praise can never make thee blessed,
Nor add new glories to thy name.
Yet, Lord, thy saints on earth may reap
Some profit...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Philips
If honor to an ancient name be due,
Or riches challenge it for one that's new,
The British language claims in either sense
Both for its age, and for its opulence.
But all great things must be from us removed,
To be with higher reverence beloved.
So landskips which in prospects distant lie,
With greater wonder draw the pleasèd eye.
Is not great Troy to one dark ruin...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
XLIX. — TO PLAYWRIGHT. PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns, He says I want the tongue of epigrams ; I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ; For witty, in his language, is obscene. Playwright, I loath to have thy manners known In my chaste book ; I profess them in thine own....Read more of this...
by
Bret Harte
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
It was...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
DEAR SHADE OF HIM, who grac'd the mimick scene,
And charm'd attention with resistless pow'r;
Whose wond'rous art, whose fascinating mien,
Gave glowing rapture to the short-liv'd hour!
Accept the mournful verse, the ling'ring sigh,
The tear that faithful Mem'ry stays to shed;
The SACRED TEAR, that from Reflection's eye,
Drops on the ashes of the sainted dead.
Lov'd by the grave, and courted by...Read more of this...
by
Shel Silverstein
Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. ....Read more of this...
by
Razvan Tupa
a romanian body knows how to sidestep decisions it feels
that in such cases it can no longer justify its comfortable suffering
for this with your entire body you must stay here until it’s very late
you can be a keychain or a gummed sticker
but one day the music of breathing will disappear
all on its own
or conversely
my hands ready to receive silence
like a...Read more of this...
by
Naomi Shihab Nye
You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.
At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed mamool.
This morning we lit the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth
Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark
In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts
Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s
Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…
Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,
Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol
Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...
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