Famous Asia Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Smoke

by Erica Jong
 Can you imagine the air filled with smoke?
It was. The city was vanishing before noon
or was it earlier than that? I can't say because
the light came from nowhere and went nowhere. 
This was years ago, before you were born, before
your parents met in a bus station downtown.
She'd come on Friday after work all the way
from Toledo, and he'd dressed...Read more of this...

Hudsons Last Voyage

by Henry Van Dyke
 June 22, 1611 

THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY 

One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship 
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard 
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first, 
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...

Facing West from California-™s Shores

by Walt Whitman
 FACING west, from California’s shores, 
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, 
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the land of migrations,
 look afar, 
Look off the shores of my Western Sea—the circle almost circled; 
For, starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
From Asia—from the north—from the God, the sage, and...Read more of this...

The Sage

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Foreguarded and unfevered and serene, 
Back to the perilous gates of Truth he went— 
Back to fierce wisdom and the Orient, 
To the Dawn that is, that shall be, and has been: 
Previsioned of the madness and the mean,
He stood where Asia, crowned with ravishment, 
The curtain of Love’s inner shrine had rent, 
And after had gone scarred by...Read more of this...

Proud Music of The Storm

by Walt Whitman
 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...

Love Song

by Elinor Wylie
 My own dear love, he is strong and bold 
And he cares not what comes after. 
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, 
And his eyes are lit with laughter. 
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled -- 
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him. 
My own dear love, he is all my world, -- 
And I...Read more of this...

Alexander

by Walter de la Mare
 It was the Great Alexander, 
Capped with a golden helm, 
Sate in the ages, in his floating ship, 
In a dead calm. 

Voices of sea-maids singing 
Wandered across the deep: 
The sailors labouring on their oars 
Rowed as in sleep. 

All the high pomp of Asia, 
Charmed by that siren lay, 
Out of their weary and dreaming minds 
Faded...Read more of this...

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton

by Alan Dugan
 The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a *****,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you...Read more of this...

The Song of Australia

by Henry Lawson
 The centuries found me to nations unknown – 
My people have crowned me and made me a throne; 
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light – 
A girl called Australia – I've come to my right. 

Though no fields of conquest grew red at my birth, 
My dead were the noblest and bravest on earth; 
Their strong sons...Read more of this...

Alexandreis

by Anne Killigrew
 I Sing the Man that never Equal knew, 
Whose Mighty Arms all Asia did subdue, 
Whose Conquests through the spacious World do ring, 
That City-Raser, King-destroying King, 
Who o're the Warlike Macedons did Reign, 
And worthily the Name of Great did gain. 
This is the Prince (if Fame you will believe,
To ancient Story any credit give.) 
Who when the...Read more of this...

Forest Of Europe

by Derek Walcott
 The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.

The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you...Read more of this...

To Think of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think...Read more of this...

Be Angry At The Sun

by Robinson Jeffers
 That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,...Read more of this...

My Ladys Law

by Rudyard Kipling
 The Law whereby my lady moves
 Was never Law to me, 
 But 'tis enough that she approves 
 Whatever Law it be.

 For in that Law, and by that Law
 My constant course I'll steer; 
 Not that I heed or deem it dread,
 But that she holds it dear.

 Tho' Asia sent for my content
 Her richest...Read more of this...

Smoke and Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the...Read more of this...

Asia: From Prometheus Unbound

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean,...Read more of this...

The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives

by Fleda Brown
She reads, of course, what he's doing, shaking Nixon's hand, 
dating this starlet or that, while he is faithful to her 
like a stone in her belly, like the actual love child, 
its bills and diapers. Once he had kissed her 
and time had stood still, at least some point seems to 
remain back there as a place to return...Read more of this...

The Song of the Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 BOMBAY

Royal and Dower-royal, I the Queen
 Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands --
A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
 All races from all lands.


 CALCUTTA

Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,
 Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.
Hail, England! I am Asia -- Power on silt,
 Death in my hands, but Gold!


 MADRAS

Clive kissed me...Read more of this...

The City That Will Not Repent

by Vachel Lindsay
 Climbing the heights of Berkeley 
Nightly I watch the West. 
There lies new San Francisco, 
Sea-maid in purple dressed, 
Wearing a dancer's girdle 
All to inflame desire: 
Scorning her days of sackcloth, 
Scorning her cleansing fire. 

See, like a burning city 
Sets now the red sun's dome. 
See, mystic firebrands sparkle 
There on each store and home. 
See how...Read more of this...

Darius

by Constantine P Cavafy
 The poet Phernazis is composing
the important part of his epic poem.
How Darius, son of Hystaspes,
assumed the kingdom of the Persians. (From him
is descended our glorious king
Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator). But here
philosophy is needed; he must analyze
the sentiments that Darius must have had:
maybe arrogance and drunkenness; but no -- rather
like an understanding of the vanity of grandeurs.
The poet contemplates the...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

Incarnate Devil

by Dylan Thomas
 Incarnate devil in a talking snake,
The central plains of Asia in his garden,
In shaping-time the circle stung awake,
In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple,
And God walked there who was a fiddling warden
And played down pardon from the heavens' hill.

When we were strangers to the guided seas,
A handmade moon half holy in a cloud,
The wisemen tell me that...Read more of this...

A Tale of Two Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
 On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
 Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
 Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the...Read more of this...

Hero And Leander

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose...Read more of this...

My World Is Pyramid

by Dylan Thomas
 I

Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her horny milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.

The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was...Read more of this...

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