Famous Alchemist Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Alchemist poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous alchemist poems. These examples illustrate what a famous alchemist poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Aiken, Conrad
...vermilion stalk,
the peony face behind a fan of frost,
the blue-moon eyebrow behind a fan of rain,
beyond recall by any alchemist
or incantation from the Book of Change:
unresumable, as, on Sheepfold Hill,
the fir cone of a thousand years ago:
still, in the loving, and the saying so,
as when we name the hill, and, with the name,
bestow an essence, and a meaning, too:
do we endow them with our lives?
They move
into another orbit: into a time
not theirs: and we become the bell ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...are. In lone and silent hours,
When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
Staking his very life on some dark hope,
Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
With my most innocent love, until strange tears,
Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
Such magic as compels the charmèd night
To render up thy charge; and, though ne'er yet
Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
Enough from incommunicable dream,
And twilight p...Read more of this...
by
Borges, Jorge Luis
...on
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,
save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words--
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin--
give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.
In today's dialect
I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things:
I shall try to be worthy
of the great echo of Byro...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...bre vault below,
Peppered the royal pig with peoples' woe,
And grimly glad went laboring till late—
The morose alchemist we know as Fate!
That ev'ry guest might learn to suit his taste,
Behind had Conscience, real or mock'ry, placed;
Conscience a guide who every evil spies,
But royal nurses early pluck out both his eyes!
Oh! at the table there be all the great,
Whose lives are bubbles that best joys inflate!
Superb, magnificent of revels—doubt...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ansubstantiate: What redounds, transpires
Through Spirits with ease; nor wonder;if by fire
Of sooty coal the empirick alchemist
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold,
As from the mine. Mean while at table Eve
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquours crowned: O innocence
Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,
Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamoured at that sight; but in those hearts
Love...Read more of this...
by
Bogan, Louise
...I burned my life, that I may find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.
With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I had found unmysterious flesh--
Not...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...My window shews the travelling clouds,
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter'd sky,
The making and the melting crowds:
The whole world passes; I stand by.
They do not waste their meted hours,
But men and masters plan and build:
I see the crowning of their towers,
And happy promises fulfill'd.
And I - perhaps if my intent
Could count on prediluvi...Read more of this...
by
Fitzgerald, Edward
...and 'twas—the Grape!
43
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Thrice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.
44
The mighty Mahmud, the victorious Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.
45
But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...VI. ? TO ALCHEMISTS. If all you boast of your great art be true ; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you. Adriaen Jansz van Ostade. Alchemist. 1661. [detail]
Adriaen Jansz van Ostade. Alchemist. 1661. [detail]...Read more of this...
by
Carew, Thomas
...scribbling due;
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening, when she goes to bed;
Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light
With which all stars shall gild the following night.
Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may
Endure the sunny trial, if we say
This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine
Tric...Read more of this...
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