Famous Arch Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Arch poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous arch poems. These examples illustrate what a famous arch poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George (Lord) Byron
I
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King!
And arm'd with Kings to strive --
And now thou art a nameless thing:
So abject -- yet alive!
Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones,
And can he thus survive?
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
What wonder this?--we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee--and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou?--is there life in the abyss--
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome--Greece!--Oh, come!--Behold--behold! for this!
Our living world--the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
House upon house--its silent halls once more
Opes the broad portico!--Oh, haste...Read more of this...
by
Robert Desnos
Cursed!
be the father of the bride
of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe
with which the woodsman hacked down the oak
from which the bed was carved
in which was conceived the great-grandfather
of the man who was driving the carriage
in which your mother met your father....Read more of this...
by
William Henry Davies
Sing out, my soul, thy songs of joy;
Sing as a happy bird will sing
Beneath a rainbow's lovely arch
In the spring.
Think not of death in thy young days;
Why shouldst thou that grim tyrant fear?
And fear him not when thou art old,
And he is near.
Strive not for gold, for greedy fools
Measure themselves by poor...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(WASHINGTON SQUARE)
I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.”
He led me down familiar steps again,
Appealingly, and set me in a chair.
“My dreams have all come true to other men,”
Said he;...Read more of this...
by
C S Lewis
No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not
Invariably think the newer way Prosaic
mad, inelegant, or what not.
Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot
Upon the church? Did anybody say How
modern and how ugly? They did not.
Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,
Were these at first a horror?...Read more of this...
by
Henry Kendall
RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines,
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines;
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air;
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud,
Where the fading twilight lingers, when...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which is simply a path leading through an archway called adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future lives in the several postures...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.
Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.
Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN Nature her great master-piece design’d,
And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form’d of various parts the various Man.
Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And...Read more of this...
by
William Lisle Bowles
Fallen pile! I ask not what has been thy fate;
But when the winds, slow wafted from the main,
Through each rent arch, like spirits that complain,
Come hollow to my ear, I meditate
On this world's passing pageant, and the lot
Of those who once majestic in their prime
Stood smiling at decay, till bowed by time
Or...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Moune, écureuil.")
{xx.}
Squirrel, mount yon oak so high,
To its twig that next the sky
Bends and trembles as a flower!
Strain, O stork, thy pinion well,—
From thy nest 'neath old church-bell,
Mount to yon tall citadel,
And its tallest donjon tower!
To your mountain, eagle old,...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
ALONG the wind-swept platform pinched and white
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light
Offering themselves to morn¡¯s long slanting arrows.
The train¡¯s due; porters trundle laden barrows.
The train steams in volleying resplendent clouds 5
Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about
Scared people hurry storming the doors in crowds.
The officials seem to waken with a shout
Resolved to hoist and plunder;...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.
The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I rose -- because He sank --
I thought it would be opposite --
But when his power dropped --
My Soul grew straight.
I cheered my fainting Prince --
I sang firm -- even -- Chants --
I helped his Film -- with Hymn --
And when the Dews drew off
That held his Forehead stiff --
I met him --
Balm to Balm --
I told him Best...Read more of this...
by
Robert Lowell
(For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea)
Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and
the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth,
and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.
I
A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket--
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Pro Bono Publico
Went out the streets to scan,
And marching to and fro
He met a seedy man,
Who did a tale unfold
In solemn tones and slow
And this is what he told
Pro Bono Publico.
"For many years I led
The people's onward march;
I was the 'Fountain Head',
The 'Democratic Arch'.
"In more than regal...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Scott
O lovers’ eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers’ ears in hearing;
And love, in life’s extremity,
Can lend an hour of cheering.
Disease had been in Mary’s bower
And slow decay from mourning,
Though now she sits on Neidpath’s tower
To watch her Love’s returning.
All sunk and dim her eyes so bright,
Her form decay’d by pining,...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
I
Airy, Fairy Lilian,
Flitting, fairy Lilian,
When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;
She 'll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.
II
When my passion seeks
Pleasance in love-sighs,
She, looking thro' and thro' me
Thoroughly to undo me,
Smiling, never speaks:
So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple,
From beneath her gathered wimple
Glancing with black-bearded eyes,
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Erin! the tear and the smile in thine eyes
Blend like the rainbow that hangs in thy skies,
Shining through sorrow's stream,
Saddening through pleasure's beam,
Thy suns with doubtful gleam,
Weep while they rise.
Erin, thy silent tear never shall cease,
Erin, thy languid smile ne'er shall increase,
Till, like the rainbow's light,
Thy various tints unite,
And...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for guns. Bruna is teaching me
to cut a pattern.
Saturdays we buy the cloth.
She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain,...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
A was an Area ArchWhere washerwomen sat; They made a lot of lovely starchTo starch Papa's Cravat. ...Read more of this...
by
Willa Cather
THROUGH halls of vanished pleasure,
And hold of vanished power,
And crypt of faith forgotten,
A came to Ludlow tower.
A-top of arch and stairway,
Of crypt and donjan cell,
Of council hall, and chamber,
Of wall, and ditch, and well,
High over grated turrets
Where clinging ivies run,
A thousand scarlet poppies
Enticed the rising sun,
Upon the...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
When the salt wave laps on the long, dim shore,
And frets the reef with its windy sallies,
And the dawn's white light is threading once more
The purple firs in the landward valleys,
While yet the arms of the wide gray sea
Are cradling the sunrise that is to be,
The fisherman's boat, through the mist afar,
Has sailed in the...Read more of this...
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