Famous Apparition Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Civilian and Soldier

by
 My apparition rose from the fall of lead, 
Declared, 'I am a civilian.' It only served 
To aggravate your fright. For how could I 
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour 
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is 
Your quarrel of this world. 

You stood still 
For both eternities, and oh I heard the...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 298] SONNET LXXI. Del cibo onde 'l signor mio sempre abbonda. HE DESCRIBES THE APPARITION OF LAURA.  Food wherewithal my lord is well supplied,With tears and grief my weary heart I've fed;As fears within and paleness o'er me spread,Oft thinking on its fatal wound and wide:But in...Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Philip Levine
 You pull over to the shoulder
 of the two-lane
road and sit for a moment wondering
 where you were going
in such a hurry. The valley is burned
 out, the oaks
dream day and night of rain
 that never comes.
At noon or just before noon
 the short shadows
are gray and hold what little
 life survives.
In the still heat the engine
 clicks, although
the...Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

Under Siege

by Mahmoud Darwish
 Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up...Read more of this...

My Suicide

by Robert William Service
 I've often wondered why
Old chaps who choose to die
In evil passes,
Before themselves they slay,
Invariably they
Take off their glasses?

As I strolled by the Castle cliff
An oldish chap I set my eyes on,
Who stood so singularly stiff
And stark against the blue horizon;
A poet fashioning a sonnet,
I thought - how rapt he labours on it!

And then I blinked and stood astare,
And questioned...Read more of this...

The Apparitions

by William Butler Yeats
 Because there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of thar popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.

I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some...Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

Stowaway

by Robert William Service
 We'd left the sea-gulls long behind,
And we were almost in mid-ocean;
The sky was soft and blue and kind,
The boat had scarcely any motion;
Except that songfully it sped,
And sheared the foam swift as an arrow . . .
There fluttered down a city sparrow.

I stared with something of surprise;
The apparition mocked my seeming;
In fact I gently rubbed my eyes
And wondered if...Read more of this...

The Fairest Apparition

by Friedrich von Schiller
 If thou never hast gazed upon beauty in moments of sorrow,
Thou canst with truth never boast that thou true beauty hast seen.
If thou never hast gazed upon gladness in beauteous features,
Thou canst with truth never boast that thou true gladness hast seen....Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Teller

by Thomas Moore
 Down in the valley come meet me to-night, 
And I'll tell you your fortune truly 
As ever 'twas told, by the new-moon's light, 
To a young maiden, shining as newly. 

But, for the world, let no one be nigh, 
Lest haply the stars should deceive me, 
Such secrets between you and me and the sky 
Should never go farther,...Read more of this...

Carol of Words

by Walt Whitman
 1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
 said; 
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, 
Behold! these are vast words to be said. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
 angles,
 dots? 
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in...Read more of this...

Joy to have merited the Pain --

by Emily Dickinson
 Joy to have merited the Pain --
To merit the Release --
Joy to have perished every step --
To Compass Paradise --

Pardon -- to look upon thy face --
With these old fashioned Eyes --
Better than new -- could be -- for that --
Though bought in Paradise --

Because they looked on thee before --
And thou hast looked on them --
Prove Me --...Read more of this...

The Apparition Of His Mistresscalling Him To Elysium

by Robert Herrick
 THE APPARITION OF HIS, MISTRESS,
CALLING HIM TO ELYSIUM

DESUNT NONNULLA--

Come then, and like two doves with silvery wings,
Let our souls fly to th' shades, wherever springs
Sit smiling in the meads; where balm and oil,
Roses and cassia, crown the untill'd soil;
Where no disease reigns, or infection comes
To blast the air, but amber-gris and gums.
This, that, and ev'ry thicket doth transpire
More sweet...Read more of this...

The Living Beauty

by William Butler Yeats
 I bade, because the wick and oil are spent
And frozen are the channels of the blood,
My discontented heart to draw content
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when wc have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old;
The living beauty...Read more of this...

In A Station Of The Metro

by Ezra Pound
 The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough....Read more of this...

Lancelot

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...

The Souls Superior instants

by Emily Dickinson
 The Soul's Superior instants
Occur to Her -- alone --
When friend -- and Earth's occasion
Have infinite withdrawn --

Or She -- Herself -- ascended
To too remote a Height
For lower Recognition
Than Her Omnipotent --

This Mortal Abolition
Is seldom -- but as fair
As Apparition -- subject
To Autocratic Air --

Eternity's disclosure
To favorites -- a few --
Of the Colossal substance
Of Immortality...Read more of this...

Painted Head

by John Crowe Ransom
 By dark severance the apparition head 
Smiles from the air a capital on no 
Column or a Platonic perhaps head 
On a canvas sky depending from nothing; 

Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur 
By tickling the instinct of heads to be 
Absolute and to try decapitation 
And to play truant from the body bush; 

But too happy and...Read more of this...

The Apparition

by John Donne
 When by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead,
And that thou think'st thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feigned vestal, in worse arms shall see;
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call'st for...Read more of this...

The Bee Meeting

by Sylvia Plath
 Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

I am nude as a chicken neck, does...Read more of this...

Apparition

by Stephane Mallarme
 La lune s'attristait. Des s?raphins en pleurs
R?vant, l'archet aux doigts, dans le calme des fleurs
Vaporeuses, tiraient de mourantes violes
De blancs sanglots glissant sur l'azur des corolles.
—C'?tait le jour b?ni de ton premier baiser.
Ma songerie aimant ? me martyriser
s'enivrait savamment du parfum de tristesse
Que m?me sans regret et sans d?boire laisse
La cueillaison d'un R?ve au coeur qui l'a cueilli.
J'errais donc,...Read more of this...

The Wish

by Alexander Pushkin
 I shed my tears; my tears – my consolation;
And I am silent; my murmur is dead,
My soul, sunk in a depression’s shade,
Hides in its depths the bitter exultation.
I don’t deplore my passing dream of life --
Vanish in dark, the empty apparition!
I care only for my love’s infliction,
And let me die, but only die in love!...Read more of this...

When I was small a Woman died --

by Emily Dickinson
 When I was small, a Woman died --
Today -- her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac --
His face all Victory

To look at her -- How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round --

If pride shall be in Paradise --
Ourself cannot decide --
Of their imperial Conduct --
No person testified --

But, proud in Apparition --
That...Read more of this...

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