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Famous Adept Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Adept poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous adept poems. These examples illustrate what a famous adept poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...Alderman.
Some, for a guess, would have him riding back
To be a farrier there, or say a dyer;
Or maybe one of your adept surveyors;
Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
Not you -- no fear of that; for I discern
In you a kindling of the flame that saves--
The nimble element, the true caloric;
I see it, and was told of it, moreover,
By our discriminate friend himself, no other.
Had you been one of the sad average,
As he would have it, -- meaning, as I take it,...Read more of this...



by Seeger, Alan
...forms it wore, 
Not death itself shall utterly divide 
From the belovèd shapes it thirsted for. 

Alas, how many an adept for whose arms 
Life held delicious offerings perished here, 
How many in the prime of all that charms, 
Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear! 

Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, 
But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, 
Where in the anguish of atrocious hours 
Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes, 

Rather...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...fant, and in years a boy,
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Women his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;
Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Dam?tas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs...Read more of this...

by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I still accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough! 

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answeri...Read more of this...

by Jones, Richard
...ilently hold their hand as they talked.

Small attentions
are all he requires.
Tell him you never saw anyone
so adept 
at parallel parking.

Still, your life will not be easy.
Just look in the drawer where he keeps his socks.
Nothing matches. And what's the turtle shell
doing there, or the map of the moon,
or the surgeon's plastic model of a take-apart heart?

You must understand --
he doesn't see the world clearly.
Once he screamed, "The woods are...Read more of this...



by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...a force inspired;
But none can love the wither'd husk, though even

A glorious noble kernel it contained.
To me, an adept, was the writing given

Which not to all its holy sense explained,
When 'mid the crowd, their icy shadows flinging,

I saw a form, that glorious still remained.
And even there, where mould and damp were clinging,

Gave me a blest, a rapture-fraught emotion,
As though from death a living fount were springing.

What mystic joy I felt! What rapt d...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...though
a bit like a cricketer deserted by her 
own side having to play against eleven 
thugs from the next village - so adept 
with fingers and feet she could put herself 
about as the whole team - her skills 
at batting bowling fielding keeping score
prodigious in the eyes of bemused suitors
she’s the innermost feminine dream
thread of life weaver of stories – the duck
machismo gets bowled over and out for...Read more of this...

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...en promesa e instancia
juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.

Top of page
You Men (English)

    Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

    After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

    You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
n...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...silence affords 
Of ineffable voices. 

To a realm that his words may not reach 
He may lead none to find him; 
An adept, and with nothing to teach, 
He leaves nothing behind him. 
For the rest, he will have his release, 
And his embers, attended
By the large and unclamoring peace 
Of a dream that is ended....Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...ees
That fringed his garden's glowing border,
At sunset walked, and, in the breeze
With his disciples, took his ease
An Adept of the Holy Order.

"My children," Said the holy man,
"Once more I'm willing to unmask me.
This is my birthday; and my plan
Is to bestow on you (I can)
Whatever favour you may ask me."

Nor curiosity nor greed
Brought these disciples to disaster;
For, being very wise indeed,
The adolescents all agreed
To ask His Secret of the Master. 

...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, s...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ON a Poet's lips I slept  
Dreaming like a love-adept 
In the sound his breathing kept; 
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses  
But feeds on the aerial kisses 5 
Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. 
He will watch from dawn to gloom 
The lake-reflected sun illume 
The blue bees in the ivy-bloom  
Nor heed nor see what things they be¡ª 10 
But from these create he can 
Forms more rea...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...m dew-beams while the moon yet slept.
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept--
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds--
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreams--or, if eyes needs must weep,
Could make their tears all wonder and delight--
She in her cryst...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...Spell by spell and pace by pace! 
Mystic flashes swing and trace 
Velvet soft the sigils stepped 
By the silver-starred adept. 
Back and front, and to and fro, 
Soul and body sway and flow 
In vertiginous caresses 
To imponderable recesses, 
Till at last the spell is woven, 
And the faery veil is cloven 
That was Sequence, Space, and Stress 
Of the soul-sick consciousness. 

"Give thy body to the beasts! 
Give thy spirit to the priests! 
Break in twain the hazel rod 
...Read more of this...

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...a vuestra arrogancia,
pues en promesa e instancia
juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.

(English)
Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your ...Read more of this...

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