Famous Artery Poems by Famous Poets

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

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There was an Old Person of Tartary

by Edward Lear
There was an Old Person of Tartary,Who divided his jugular artery;But he screeched to his Wife, and she said, "Oh, my life!Your death will be felt by all Tartary!" ...Read more of this...

The name -- of it -- is Autumn --

by Emily Dickinson
 The name -- of it -- is "Autumn" --
The hue -- of it -- is Blood --
An Artery -- upon the Hill --
A Vein -- along the Road --

Great Globules -- in the Alleys --
And Oh, the Shower of Stain --
When Winds -- upset the Basin --
And spill the Scarlet Rain --

It sprinkles Bonnets -- far below --
It gathers...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

Empty my Heart of Thee --

by Emily Dickinson
 Empty my Heart, of Thee --
Its single Artery --
Begin, and leave Thee out --
Simply Extinction's Date --

Much Billow hath the Sea --
One Baltic -- They --
Subtract Thyself, in play,
And not enough of me
Is left -- to put away --
"Myself" meanth Thee --

Erase the Root -- no Tree --
Thee -- then -- no me --
The Heavens stripped --
Eternity's vast pocket,...Read more of this...

The Raft

by Vachel Lindsay
 The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What...Read more of this...

A Kiss

by Thomas Lux
 One wave falling forward meets another wave falling
forward. Well-water,
hand-hauled, mineral, cool, could be
a kiss, or pastures
fiery green after rain, before
the grazers. The kiss -- like a shoal of fish whipped
one way, another way, like the fever dreams
of a million monkeys -- the kiss
carry me -- closer than your carotid artery -- to you...Read more of this...

Mithridates

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat,
Give me cantharids to eat,
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.

From all natures, sharp and slimy,
Salt and basalt, wild and tame,
Tree, and lichen, ape, sea-lion,
Bird and...Read more of this...

Oh give it Motion -- deck it sweet

by Emily Dickinson
 Oh give it Motion -- deck it sweet
With Artery and Vein --
Upon its fastened Lips lay words --
Affiance it again
To that Pink stranger we call Dust --
Acquainted more with that
Than with this horizontal one
That will not lift its Hat --...Read more of this...

One Anguish -- in a Crowd --

by Emily Dickinson
 One Anguish -- in a Crowd --
A Minor thing -- it sounds --
And yet, unto the single Doe
Attempted of the Hounds

'Tis Terror as consummate
As Legions of Alarm
Did leap, full flanked, upon the Host --
'Tis Units -- make the Swarm --

A Small Leech -- on the Vitals --
The sliver, in the Lung --
The Bung out -- of an Artery --
Are...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXV. L' aura soave ch' al sol spiega e vibra. HIS HEART LIES TANGLED IN HER HAIR.  The pleasant gale, that to the sun unplaitsAnd spreads the gold Love's fingers weave, and braidO'er her fine eyes, and all around her head,Fetters my heart, the wishful sigh creates:No nerve but thrills,...Read more of this...

The Big Heart

by Anne Sexton
 "Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold." - From an essay by W. B. Yeats 

Big heart, 
wide as a watermelon, 
but wise as birth, 
there is so much abundance 
in the people I have: 
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, 
Joan, Marie, Dawn, 
Arlene, Father Dunne, 
and all in their short lives 
give to me...Read more of this...

These Green-Going-to-Yellow

by Marvin Bell
 This year,
I'm raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
seeing myself among them, that is;
that is, likening
leaf-vein to artery, leaf to flesh,
the passage of a leaf in autumn
to the passage of autumn,
branch-tip and winter spaces
to possibilities, and possibility
to God. Even on East 61st Street
in the blowzy city of New York,
someone has planted a gingko
because it...Read more of this...

A Meditation In Time Of War

by William Butler Yeats
 For one throb of the artery,
While on that old grey stone I Sat
Under the old wind-broken tree,
I knew that One is animate,
Mankind inanimate phantasy....Read more of this...

Master And Mistress

by Stanley Kunitz
 As if I were composed of dust and air,
The shape confronting me upon the stair
(Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain
On its disjunctive breast--I saw it plain--)
Moved through my middle flesh. I turned around,
Shaken and it was marching without sound
Beyond the door; and when my hand was taken

From my mouth to beat the standing heart, I cried
My distant name,...Read more of this...

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