Famous Audible Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Audible poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous audible poems. These examples illustrate what a famous audible poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...d dying was clear as a tune could be;
As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of life or of sleep,
Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:
Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember awake:
Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs in the live storm's wake,
In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of the labouring hour,
A harvest of stars by the storm's hand rea...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...spot
And Will at Home and well
It then goes out an Act
Or is entombed so still
That only to the ear of God
Its Doom is audible --...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...Now into the past,
the passing into future of the Now:
hut in the alteration of the bough
time becomes visible, becomes audible,
becomes the poem and the music too:
time becomes still, time becomes time, in rhyme.
Thus, in the Court of Aloes, Lady Yang
called the musicians from the Pear Tree Garden,
called for Li Po, in order that the spring,
tree-peony spring, might so be made immortal.
Li Po, brought drunk to court, took up his brush,
but washed his face among the l...Read more of this...
by
Benet, Stephen Vincent
...urge of the tides that drown the mere.
Others with subtle hands may pluck the strings,
Making even Love in music audible,
And earth one glory. I am but a shell
That moves, not of itself, and moving sings;
Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed,
A tremulous murmur from great days long dead....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...enough to seek --
Nor near enough -- to find --
A long -- long Yellow -- on the Lawn --
A Hubbub -- as of feet --
Not audible -- as Ours -- to Us --
But dapperer -- More Sweet --
A Hurrying Home of little Men
To Houses unperceived --
All this -- and more -- if I should tell --
Would never be believed --
Of Robins in the Trundle bed
How many I espy
Whose Nightgowns could not hide the Wings --
Although I heard them try --
But then I promised ne'er to tell --
How could I br...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...ht on the dark water,
The aria's closing phrases, changed and fading.
And after a gap of quiet, cheers and applause
Audible in the houses across the river,
Some in the audience weeping as if they had melted
Inside the music. Never the same. In Berlin
The daughter of an English lord, in love
With Adolf Hitler, whom she has met. She is taking
Possession of the apartment of a couple,
Elderly well-off Jews. They survive the war
To settle here in the Bay, the o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...with the mere looks of some men and women, are sayings and meanings
also.
3
The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth;
The great masters know the earth’s words, and use them more than the audible words.
Amelioration is one of the earth’s words;
The earth neither lags nor hastens;
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump;
It is not half beautiful only—defects and excrescences show just as much as
perfections...Read more of this...
by
Tate, James
...it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told....Read more of this...
by
Taylor, Edward
...it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told....Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...-and there was Rome.
As a star set in space for token
Like a live word of God's mouth spoken,
Visible sound, light audible,
In the great darkness thick as hell
A stanchless flame of love unsloken,
A sign to conquer and compel,
A law to stand in heaven unbroken
Whereby the sun shines, and wherethrough
Time's eldest empires are made new;
So rose up on our generations
That light of the most ancient nations,
Law, life, and light, on the world's way,
The very God of very day...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...press the stirrups—hands on bridle shown
Proclaim all ready, with the visors down,
And yet they stir not, nor is audible
A sound to make the sight less terrible.
Each monstrous horse a frontal horn doth bear,
If e'er the Prince of Darkness herdsman were,
These cattle black were his by surest right,
Like things but seen in horrid dreams of night.
The steeds are swathed in trappings manifold,
The armed knights are grave, and stern, and cold,
Te...Read more of this...
by
Hicok, Bob
...n this
is exactly what's happening,
it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.
I like the idea of different
theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook
of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they ar...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
Heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discovered soon the place of her retire.
O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee$ Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil! these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend,
Quiet though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in ot...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ers and breaks through
iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony
floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and
milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core,
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate
close by, my breath near deathless ever at your
side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your
mausoleum walls t...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...From star to star, from sun and spring and leaf,
And almost audible flowers whose sound is silence,
And in the common meadows, springs the seed of life.
Now the lilies open, and the rose
Released by summer from the harmless graves
That, centuries deep, are in the air we breathe,
And in our earth, and in our daily bread.
External and innate dimensions hold
The living forms, but not the force of life;
For tha...Read more of this...
by
Symons, Arthur
...grew deeper; now
The hour struck, minutes passed, and still
The passionate fervour of her vow
Ran in my heart's ear audible.
I had no doubt at all: I knew
That she would come, and I was then
Most certain, while the minutes flew:
Ah, how I scorned all other men!
Next moment! Ah! it was--was not!
I heard the stillness of the street.
Night came. The stars had not forgot.
The moonlight fell about my feet.
So I rebuked my heart, and said:
"Be s...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...The Spirit is the Conscious Ear.
We actually Hear
When We inspect -- that's audible --
That is admitted -- Here --
For other Services -- as Sound --
There hangs a smaller Ear
Outside the Castle -- that Contain --
The other -- only -- Hear --...Read more of this...
by
Herrick, Robert
...tically on the motion of mortal hearts.
Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what?--: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,--
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?
A far, was-it-audible scream,
Or did it sound on the plasm direct?
Worse than the cry of the new-born,
A scream,
A yell,
A shout,
A paean,
A death-agony,
A birth-cry,
A submission,
All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first dawn.
War-cry, triumph, acute-delight, death-scream reptilian,
Why was the veil torn?
The silken shriek of the soul's torn membrane?
The ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ity of glory, pain and lies,
The glistening wide rivers' ice
Sunless and murky gardens, and the voice,
Though barely audible, of the Muse.
x x x
I remember you only rarely
And your fate I do not view
But the mark won't be stripped from my soul
Of the meaningless meeting with you.
Your red house I avoid on purpose,
Your red house murky river beside,
But I know, that I am disturbing
Gravely your heart-pierced respite.
Would it weren't you ...Read more of this...
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