Famous Apparitions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Boston Ballad 1854

...nathan! 
Way for the President’s marshal! Way for the government cannon! 
Way for the Federal foot and dragoons—and the apparitions copiously tumbling.

I love to look on the stars and stripes—I hope the fifes will play Yankee Doodle. 

How bright shine the cutlasses of the foremost troops! 
Every man holds his revolver, marching stiff through Boston town. 

A fog follows—antiques of the same come limping, 
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

W...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

...pirit of the body and the mind, 
The Soul—its destinies.

The Soul, its destinies—the real real, 
(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;) 
In thee, America, the Soul, its destinies; 
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! 
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls’d—(by these thyself solidifying;)
Thou mental, moral orb! thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! 
The Present holds thee not—for such vast growth as thine—for such
 unparallel’d
 flight as thine, 
The Fu...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Circles of Doors

...new the doors that opened
Into doors and more doors, no end of doors,
And full length mirrors doubling and tripling
The apparitions of doors: circling corridors of
Looking glasses and doors, some with knobs, some
With no knobs, some opening slow to a heavy push,
And some jumping open at a touch and a hello.
And he knew if he so wished he could follow her
Swift running through circles of doors, hearing
Sometimes her whisper, I love him, I love him,
And sometimes only a high ch...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Keeping Going

...roof.

*

That scene, with Macbeth helpless and desperate
In his nightmare--when he meets the hags agains
And sees the apparitions in the pot--
I felt at home with that one all right. Hearth,
Steam and ululation, the smoky hair
Curtaining a cheek. 'Don't go near bad boys
In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget!'
And then the postick quickening the gruel,
The steam crown swirled, everything intimate
And fear-swathed ...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

Of nearness to her sundered Things

...d --
Divided -- by a world --

The Grave yields back her Robberies --
The Years, our pilfered Things --
Bright Knots of Apparitions
Salute us, with their wings --

As we -- it were -- that perished --
Themself -- had just remained till we rejoin them --
And 'twas they, and not ourself
That mourned....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

...flowing
 waters,
The skies of day and night—colors, densities, forms—May-be these are, (as
 doubtless
 they
 are,) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known; 
(How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me! 
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them;) 
May-be seeming to me what they are, (as doubtless they indeed but seem,) as from my
 present
 point of
 view—And might prove, (as of course they would,) naug...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

...my soul and body, 
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way, 
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O
 pioneers! 

19

 Lo! the darting bowling orb! 
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets, 
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers! 

20
 These are of us, they are with us, 
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Rowing

...ho seldom touched-
though touch is all-
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Shepherd And Goatherd

...u have measured out the road that the soul treads
When it has vanished from our natural eyes;
That you have talked with apparitions.

Goatherd. Indeed
My daily thoughts since the first stupor of youth
Have found the path my goats' feet cannot find.

Shepherd. Sing, for it may be that your thoughts have
 plucked
Some medicable herb to make our grief
Less bitter.

Goatherd. They have brought me from that ridge
Seed-pods and flowers that are not all wild poppy.

 [Sings.]

"He g...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Sin (II)

...flat opposite to th' Almighty, seeing
It wants the good of virtue, and of being.

But God more care of us hath had: 
If apparitions make us sad, 
By sight of sin we should grow mad.
Yet as in sleep we see foul death, and live: 
So devils are our sins in perspective....Read more of this...
by Herbert, George

The Apparitions

...le 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 friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.

When a man grows old his joy
Grow...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

The Fortune-Favored

...And where the glad one goes, shed gladness round the way.
It is not they who boast the best to see,
Whose eyes the holy apparitions bless;
The stately light of their divinity
Hath oft but shone the brightest on the blind;--
And their choice spirit found its calm recess
In the pure childhood of a simple mind.
Unasked they come delighted to delude
The expectation of our baffled pride;
No law can call their free steps to our side.
Him whom he loves, the sire of men and gods
(Sel...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Souls of the Slain

...t that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now 
 A thousand times more!" 

XIV 

 Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions 
 Began to disband 
 And resolve them in two: 
 Those whose record was lovely and true 
Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions 
 Again left the land, 

XV 

 And, towering to seaward in legions, 
 They paused at a spot 
 Overbending the Race - 
 That engulphing, ghast, sinister place - 
Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathom...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Venus and Adonis

...o the ground below,
Shaking their scratch'd ears, bleeding as they go.

Look, how the world's poor people are amazed
At apparitions, signs, and prodigies,
Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,
Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;
So she at these sad signs draws up her breath
And sighing it again, exclaims on Death.

"Hard-favour'd tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,
Hateful divorce of love,"--thus chides she Death,--
"Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm, what dost thou mea...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

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