Famous Arc Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Arc poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous arc poems. These examples illustrate what a famous arc poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Vachel Lindsay
OLD Euclid drew a circle
On a sand-beach long ago.
He bounded and enclosed it
With angles thus and so.
His set of solemn greybeards
Nodded and argued much
Of arc and circumference,
Diameter and such.
A silent child stood by them
From morning until noon
Because they drew such charming
Round pictures of the moon....Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Swing of the heart. O firmly hung, fastened on what
invisible branch. Who, who gave you the push,
that you swung with me into the leaves?
How near I was to the exquisite fruits. But not-staying
is the essence of this motion. Only the nearness, only
toward the forever-too-high, all at once the possible
nearness. Vicinities, then
from an irresistibly swung-up-to place
--already, once again, lost--the new...Read more of this...
by
Antonio Machado
Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red rocks
through which the Duero bends
its crossbow arc
round Soria, shadowed oaks,
stone dry-lands, naked mountains,
white roads and river poplars,
twilights of Soria, warlike and mystical,
today I feel, for you,
in my hearts depths, sadness,
sadness of love! Fields of Soria,
where it seems the stones have dreams,
you go with me! Hills of silver plate,
grey heights, dark red...Read more of this...
by
Hermann Hesse
In this evil year, autumn comes early...
I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,
The wind on my hat...And you? And you, my friend?
You are standing--maybe--and seeing the sickle moon
Move in a small arc over the forests
And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.
You are lying--maybe--in a straw field and sleeping
And dew falls cold on your forehead...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
She staked her Feathers -- Gained an Arc --
Debated -- Rose again --
This time -- beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men --
And now, among Circumference --
Her steady Boat be seen --
At home -- among the Billows -- As
The Bough where she was born --...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes
Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .
As...Read more of this...
by
Richard Wilbur
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.
You who have sounded William Blake,
And the still pool, to Plato's mark,
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark.
Yet, for your friends' benighted sake,
Detain your upward-flying spark;
Get...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Under the Light, yet under,
Under the Grass and the Dirt,
Under the Beetle's Cellar
Under the Clover's Root,
Further than Arm could stretch
Were it Giant long,
Further than Sunshine could
Were the Day Year long,
Over the Light, yet over,
Over the Arc of the Bird --
Over the Comet's chimney --
Over the Cubit's Head,
Further than Guess can gallop
Further than Riddle ride --
Oh for a Disc to...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I'm ceded -- I've stopped being Theirs --
The name They dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church
Is finished using, now,
And They can put it with my Dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools,
I've finished threading -- too --
Baptized, before, without the choice,
But this time, consciously, of Grace --
Unto supremest name --
Called to my Full -- The Crescent...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her sisters lived. . .she attended an adult education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . .
The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter
Bessie, you've made space dizzy
with your perfected technique for...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
A dream tree, Polly's tree:
a thicket of sticks,
each speckled twig
ending in a thin-paned
leaf unlike any
other on it
or in a ghost flower
flat as paper and
of a color
vaporish as frost-breath,
more finical than
any silk fan
the Chinese ladies use
to stir robin's egg
air. The silver-
haired seed of the milkweed
comes to roost there, frail
...Read more of this...
by
Larry Levis
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brother
Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?
And can immense Mortality but...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.
I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
I
The girl in the room beneath
Before going to bed
Strums on a mandolin
The three simple tunes she knows.
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels!
When she has finished them several times
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.
II
I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings --
Like fallow Article --
And not a song pervade his Lips --
Or none perceptible.
His small Umbrella quaintly halved
Describing in the Air
An Arc alike inscrutable
Elate Philosopher.
Deputed from what Firmament --
Of what Astute Abode --
Empowered with what Malignity
Auspiciously withheld --
To his adroit Creator
Acribe no less the praise --
Beneficent, believe me,
His Eccentricities --...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room below—his floor her ceiling—
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,
His watch—the same he has heard these cycles of ages—
Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow.
The clock,...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I
Living in a land
Where only the dying correspond
I am borne on the wings of love
II
I cannot join in a poem
The interstices of clouds
I watched a lapwing
Hover in the air
Glide in an arc
Veer from the sheer cliff
III
Who shall I meet
On this journey to eternity?
Alone and yet not alone
The dust of immortality
Lies in strangers’ eyes
Girls in all the beauty
Of their youth,...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Too far away, oh love, I know,
To save me from this haunted road,
Whose lofty roses break and blow
On a night-sky bent with a load
Of lights: each solitary rose,
Each arc-lamp golden does expose
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows
Night blenched with a thousand snows.
Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,
White lilac; shows...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade
Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.
For she is there in armor clad, today,
All the young poets of the wide world say.
Which of our freemen did she greet the first,
Seeing him come against the fires accurst?
Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,
Leading to war our youngest and our best.
The Yankee to...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Spider sewed at Night
Without a Light
Upon an Arc of White.
If Ruff it was of Dame
Or Shroud of Gnome
Himself himself inform.
Of Immortality
His Strategy
Was Physiognomy....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God's lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees! ---The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
******-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks ---
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air ---
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel ---
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Arc poems.