Famous Argent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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St. Agnes Eve

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
DEEP on the convent-roof the snows 
Are sparkling to the moon: 
My breath to heaven like vapour goes: 
May my soul follow soon! 
The shadows of the convent-towers 5 
Slant down the snowy sward, 
Still creeping with the creeping hours 
That lead me to my Lord: 
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 
As are the frosty skies, 10 
Or...Read more of this...

Honors - Part I

by Jean Ingelow
A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)

To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
  I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
      With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
  I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among...Read more of this...

That Bright Chimeric Beast

by Countee Cullen
 That bright chimeric beast
Conceived yet never born,
Save in the poet's breast,
The white-flanked unicorn,
Never may be shaken
From his solitude;
Never may be taken
In any earthly wood. 

That bird forever feathered,
Of its new self the sire,
After aeons weathered,
Reincarnate by fire,
Falcon may not nor eagle
Swerve from his eyrie,
Nor any crumb inveigle
Down to an earthly tree.

That fish of the dread regime
Invented to become
The fable...Read more of this...

Vita Nuova

by Oscar Wilde
 I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray;
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee:
'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets...Read more of this...

The Younger Son

by Robert William Service
 If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land,
 Where all except the flag is strange and new,
There's a bronzed and stalwart fellow who will grip you by the hand,
 And greet you with a welcome warm and true;
For he's your younger brother, the one you sent away
 Because there wasn't room for him at...Read more of this...

Afternoon Rain in State Street

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls,
Slant lines of black rain
In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings.
Below,
Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal,
The street.
And over it, umbrellas,
Black polished dots
Struck to white
An instant,
Stream in two flat lines
Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil.
Like a four-sided wedge
The Custom House Tower
Pokes at the low, flat sky,
Pushing it farther and...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

Panthea

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight, -
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse...Read more of this...

Recollection of the Arabian Nights

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 
In the silken sail of infancy, 
The tide of time flow'd back with me, 
The forward-flowing tide of time; 
And many a sheeny summer-morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-walled gardens green and old; 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 
For it was...Read more of this...

Insomnia

by Robert William Service
 Heigh ho! to sleep I vainly try;
Since twelve I haven't closed an eye,
And now it's three, and as I lie,
From Notre Dame to St. Denis
The bells of Paris chime to me;
"You're young," they say, "and strong and free."

I do not turn with sighs and groans
To ease my limbs, to rest my bones,
As if my bed were stuffed with stones,
No...Read more of this...

The Red -- Blaze -- is the Morning

by Emily Dickinson
 The Red -- Blaze -- is the Morning --
The Violet -- is Noon --
The Yellow -- Day -- is falling --
And after that -- is none --

But Miles of Sparks -- at Evening --
Reveal the Width that burned --
The Territory Argent -- that
Never yet -- consumed --...Read more of this...

The Silence

by Emile Verhaeren
Ever since ending of the summer weather.
When last the thunder and the lightning broke,
Shatt'ring themselves upon it at one stroke,
The Silence has not stirred, there in the heather.


All round about stand steeples straight as stakes,
And each its bell between its fingers shakes;
All round about, with their three-storied loads,
The teams prowl down the roads;
All round about, where'er the pine woods end,
The...Read more of this...

Athanasia

by Oscar Wilde
 To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl was brought
Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body,...Read more of this...

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