Famous Arena Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Letter To Doctor Ingelo then With My Lord Whitlock Amba

...Liquores,
Quum Dea praesideat fontibus ipsa sacris!
Illic Lacte ruant illic & flumina Melle,
Fulvaque inauratam tingat Arena Salam.
Upsalides Musae nunc & majora conemus,
Quaeque mihi Famae non levis Aura tulit.
Creditur haud ulli Christus signasse suorum
Occultam gemina de meliore Notam.
Quemque tenet charo descriptum Nomine semper,
Non minus exculptum Pectore fida refert.
Sola haec virgineas depascit Flamma Medullas,
Et licito pergit solvere corda foco.
Tu quoque Sanctorum...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew


Faun

...rching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.

An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns. Marked how god rose
And galloped woodward in that guise....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

For The Country

...w down the stairs 
and onto the lawn, and she walks 
carefully to meet it. Now she's 
standing in the huge, whispering 
arena of night, hearing her 
own breath tearing out of her 
like the cries of an animal. 
She could keep going into 
whatever the darkness brings, 
she could find a presence there 
her shaking hands could hold 
instead of each other.

SLEEP

A dark sister lies beside her 
all night, whispering 
that it's not a dream, that fire 
has entered the spaces between...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

Gamblers All

...kiss your 
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself, 
like millions of others you enter the arena once more. 

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now, 
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch 
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow 
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull 
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful 
and so disappoint...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

How To Paint A Water Lily

...To Paint a Water Lily

A green level of lily leaves
Roofs the pond's chamber and paves

The flies' furious arena: study
These, the two minds of this lady.

First observe the air's dragonfly
That eats meat, that bullets by

Or stands in space to take aim;
Others as dangerous comb the hum

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts
And death-cries everywhere hereabouts

But inaudible, so the eyes praise
To see the colours of these flies

Rainbow their arcs, spark, or...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Ted


Incompatabilities

...f?.

It was her wages that put bread and jam

And baked beans into your stomachs.



Her final hospitalisation

Was the arena for your father’s last rage

Her fare interfering with the night’s drinking;



He fought in the Burma Campaign but won no medals.

Some kind of psychiatric discharge- ‘paranoia’

Lurked in his papers. The madness went undiagnosed

Until his sixtieth birthday. You never let me meet him

Even after our divorce.



In the end you took me on a visit with ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

La Casada Infiel

...iero decir, por hombre,
las cosas que ella me dijo.
La luz del entendimiento
me hace ser muy comedido.
Sucia de besos y arena
yo me la llev? al r?o.
Con el aire se bat?an
las espadas de los lirios.

Me port? como quien soy.
Como un gitano leg?timo.
La regal? un costurero
grande de raso pajizo,
y no quise enamorarme
porque teniendo marido
me dijo que era mozuela
cuando la llevaba al r?o....Read more of this...
by García Lorca, Federico

La Guitarra

...lora mon?tona
como llora el agua,
como llora el viento
sobre la nevada.
Es imposible
callarla.
Llora por cosas
lejanas.
Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin ma?ana,
y el primer p?jaro muerto
sobre la rama.
?Oh guitarra!
Coraz?n malherido
por cinco espadas....Read more of this...
by García Lorca, Federico

Lara

...prey. 
Stern, unambitious, silent he had been 
Henceforth a calm spectator of life's scene; 
But dragg'd again upon the arena, stood 
A leader not unequal to the feud; 
In voice — mien — gesture — savage nature spoke, 
And from his eye the gladiator broke. 

X. 

What boots the oft-repeated tale of strife, 
The feast of vultures, and the waste of life? 
The varying fortune of each separate field, 
The fierce that vanquish, and the faint that yield? 
The smoking ruin, and the ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

...her.

XXVIII.

Hugues! I advise _Me Pn_
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,
Blare out the _mode Palestrina._

XXIX.

While in the roof, if I'm right there,
... Lo you, the wick in the socket!
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket.
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor de...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary

...morante dies. 
Ovid, Fastorum, Lib. vi.
"O C?sar, we who are about to die 
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry 
In the arena, standing face to face 
With death and with the Roman populace. 
O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine, 
That once were mine and are no longer mine,-- 
Thou river, widening through the meadows green 
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,-- 
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose 

Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose 
And vanished,--we who a...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Notes For The Legend Of Salad Woman

...en.
Not the dripping lush fruit
or the meat in the ribs of animals
but the green salad gardens of that place.
The whole arena of green
would have been eradicated
as if the right filter had been removed
leaving only the skeleton of coarse brightness.

All green ends up eventually
churning in her left cheek.
Her mouth is a laundromat of spinning drowning herbs.
She is never in fields
but is sucking the pith out of grass.
I have noticed the very leaves from flower decorations
gr...Read more of this...
by Ondaatje, Michael

Poem of Joys

...wd—I run! 
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure. 

O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena, in perfect condition,
 conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent. 

O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human Soul is capable of
 generating
 and emitting in steady and limitless floods. 

4
O the mother’s joys!
The watching—the endurance—the precious love—the anguish—the patiently
 yielded life. 

O the joy of increase, ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Salut au Monde

...ian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian! 
You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek! 
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville! 
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding! 
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shooting arrows to the mark! 
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary! 
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! 
You Jew journ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of the Worm

...

Cities of splendour, where palace and gate,
Where the marble of strength and the purple of state ;
Where the mart and arena, the olive and vine,
Once flourished in glory ; oh ! are ye not mine ?
Go look for famed Carthage, and I shall be found
In the desolate ruin and weed-covered mound ;
And the slime of my trailing discovers my home,
'Mid the pillars of Tyre and the temples of Rome.

I am sacredly sheltered and daintily fed
Where the velvet bedecks, and the white lawn is ...Read more of this...
by Cook, Eliza

Starting from Paumanok

..., or to me, as
 anything else.)

I too, following many, and follow’d by many, inaugurate a Religion—I
 descend into the arena; 
(It may be I am destin’d to utter the loudest cries there, the
 winner’s pealing shouts; 
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.) 

Each is not for its own sake; 
I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for Religion’s
 sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough; 
None has ever yet adored or wo...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Sunt Leones

...The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena
By indulging native appetites played was now been seen a
Not entirely negligible part
In consolidating at the very start
The position of the Early Christian Church.
Initiatory rights are always bloody
In the lions, it appears
From contemporary art, made a study
Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy
Liturgically sacrificial hue
And if the Christians felt a l...Read more of this...
by Smith, Stevie

The Incantation

...Scene: Federal Political Arena 
A darkened cave. In the middle, a cauldron, boiling. 
Enter the three witches. 
1ST WITCH: Thrice hath the Federal Jackass brayed. 

2ND WITCH: Once the Bruce-Smith War-horse neighed. 

3RD WITCH: So Georgie comes, 'tis time, 'tis time, 
Around the cauldron to chant our rhyme. 

1ST WITCH: In the cauldron boil and bake 
Fillet of a tariff snake, 
Home...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

To Gnedich

...assion he laments
At solemn fairs of Melpomena -
To smile upon the crowd's plebeian merriments,
The liberties of coarse arena.
Now Rome is calling him, now majesties of Troy,
Now elder Ossian's craggy gravels -
And in the meantime he will hear with childish joy
Of Czar Sultan's heroic travels....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander

To Ye Kings

...lion, meantime, shook his ponderous chain, 
 Loud and fierce howled the tiger, impatient to stain 
 The bloodthirsty arena; 
 Whilst the women of Rome, who applauded those deeds 
 And who hailed the forthcoming enjoyment, must needs 
 Shame the restless hyena. 
 
 They who figured as guests on that ultimate eve, 
 In their turn on the morrow were destined to give 
 To the lions their food; 
 For, behold, in the guise of a slave at that board, 
 Where his victims e...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Arena poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Reflection on the Important Things

Member Area

My Admin
Profile and Settings
Edit My Poems
Edit My Quotes
Edit My Short Stories
Edit My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder

Soup Social

Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us

Member Poems

Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread

Member Poets

Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest

Famous Poems

Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Famous Poets

Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War

Poetry Resources

Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Hide Ad