Famous Awakened Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Queen Mab in the Village

by Vachel Lindsay
 Once I loved a fairy, 
Queen Mab it was. Her voice 
Was like a little Fountain 
That bids the birds rejoice. 
Her face was wise and solemn, 
Her hair was brown and fine. 
Her dress was pansy velvet, 
A butterfly design. 

To see her hover round me 
Or walk the hills of air, 
Awakened love's deep pulses 
And boyhood's...Read more of this...

Morning

by Dejan Stojanovic
He placed a rose on the bed-stand 
While she was sleeping. 
His wake-up message on the stand— 
Her smile on his face—awaken bliss. 

Remembrance; 
Memory box opened; 
Anticipation; 
Future opened and saved. 

Back and forth 
Through memory and experience, 
She recognizes this morning 
In her awakened spirit. 

She recognizes the mist, 
The rose, the moist grass; 
She recognizes his enlightened...Read more of this...

Little Boy Blue

by Eugene Field
 The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.

"Now, don't you go till I...Read more of this...

A Song at Cock-Crow

by Rudyard Kipling
 The first time that Peter denied his Lord
 He shrank from the cudgel, the scourge and the cord,
But followed far off to see what they would do,
 Till the cock crew--till the cock crew--
After Gethsemane, till the cock crew!

The first time that Peter denied his Lord
 'Twas only a maid in the palace who heard,
As he sat by the...Read more of this...

Elephant Dormitory

by Russell Edson
 An elephant went to bed and pulled a crazy quilt up under
its tusks. 

 But just as the great gray head began filling with the gray
wrinkles of sleep it was awakened by the thud of its tail
falling out of bed. 

 Would you get my tail? said the elephant to another
elephant also tucked up under a crazy quilt. 

...Read more of this...

The Return

by Philip Levine
 See, they return; ah, see the tentative
 Movements, and the slow feet,
 The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
 Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
 and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
 Inviolable.

Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
 sniffing the trace of...Read more of this...

The Valleys Singing Day

by Robert Frost
 The sound of the closing outside door was all.
You made no sound in the grass with your footfall,
As far as you went from the door, which was not far;
But had awakened under the morning star
The first song-bird that awakened all the rest.
He could have slept but a moment more at best.
Already determined dawn began to lay
In place across a...Read more of this...

The stork

by Eugene Field
 Last night the Stork came stalking,
And, Stork, beneath your wing
Lay, lapped in dreamless slumber,
The tiniest little thing!
From Babyland, out yonder
Beside a silver sea,
You brought a priceless treasure
As gift to mine and me!

Last night my dear one listened -
And, wife, you knew the cry -
The dear old Stork has sought our home
A many times gone by!
And in your gentle bosom
I...Read more of this...

Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song I

by Louisa May Alcott
 Awake! Awake! for the earliest gleam 
Of golden sunlight shines 
On the rippling waves, that brightly flow 
Beneath the flowering vines. 
Awake! Awake! for the low, sweet chant 
Of the wild-birds' morning hymn 
Comes floating by on the fragrant air, 
Through the forest cool and dim; 
Then spread each wing, 
And work, and sing, 
Through the long, bright sunny...Read more of this...

New Mexico

by Charles Bukowski
 I was fairly drunk when it
began and I took out my bottle and used it
along the way. I was reading a week or two after
Kandel and I did not look quite as
pretty but
I brought it off and we
ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of
us, and I drank scotch, wine, beer, tequila
and noticed a nice one sitting next...Read more of this...

Black Cat

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all...Read more of this...

The Valley Of The Black Pig

by William Butler Yeats
 The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey caim on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew,
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you.
Master...Read more of this...

The Roaring Days

by Henry Lawson
 The night too quickly passes 
And we are growing old, 
So let us fill our glasses 
And toast the Days of Gold; 
When finds of wondrous treasure 
Set all the South ablaze, 
And you and I were faithful mates 
All through the roaring days! 

Then stately ships came sailing 
From every harbour's mouth, 
And sought the land of promise...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

My Soul is Awakened

by Anne Bronte
 My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring, 
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; 
For, above, and around me, the wild wind is roaring 
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. 

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, 
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high; 
The dead leaves beneath them are...Read more of this...

On the Death of Robert Browning

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 He held no dream worth waking; so he said,
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.
But never death for him was dark or dread;
"Look forth," he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep,
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep
Vain memory's vision...Read more of this...

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

by Denise Levertov
 A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was...Read more of this...

Thou canst not count to-day on seeing the day after

by Omar Khayyam
Thou canst not count to-day on seeing the day after
to-morrow; even to think of this to-morrow would be the
part of folly; if thy heart is awakened, lose not in inaction
this instant of life [which remains to thee] and for
the duration of which I see no warranty....Read more of this...

Under Ben Bulben

by William Butler Yeats
 I

Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

Here's the gist of what they mean.

 II

Many times man lives...Read more of this...

Road and Hills

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 I shall go away 
To the brown hills, the quiet ones, 
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, 
Sun-fired and drowsy! 

My horse snuffs delicately 
At the strange wind; 
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. 
The road winds, straightens, 
Slashes a marsh, 
Shoulders out a bridge, 
Then -- 
Again the hills. 
Unchanged, innumerable, 
Bowing huge,...Read more of this...

Tears Idle Tears

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
  Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

  Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which...Read more of this...

The Manor Farm

by Edward Thomas
 THE rock-like mud unfroze a little, and rills 
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road 
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. 
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; 
Nor did I value that thin gliding beam 
More than a pretty February thing 
Till I came down to the old manor farm, 
And...Read more of this...

Mother Earth

by Henry Van Dyke
 Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,
Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!
Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,
Issued in some strange way, thou lying...Read more of this...

Two Songs Of A Fool

by William Butler Yeats
 I

A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the...Read more of this...

The Two Kings

by William Butler Yeats
 King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height...Read more of this...

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