Famous Beauty Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Beauty poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous beauty poems. These examples illustrate what a famous beauty poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Omar Khayyam
My love is at the apogee of its flame. The beauty
of the one who captivates my soul [the Divinity] is complete.
My heart speaks, but my tongue remains mute,
refusing to express my sentiments. Great God! Has one
ever seen aught more strange? I am devoured by thirst,
and before me flows a fresh and limpid draught!
344...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
There is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,
When...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Beauty -- be not caused -- It Is --
Chase it, and it ceases --
Chase it not, and it abides --
Overtake the Creases
In the Meadow -- when the Wind
Runs his fingers thro' it --
Deity will see to it
That You never do it --...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
To what serves mortal beauty '—dangerous; does set danc-
ing blood—the O-seal-that-so ' feature, flung prouder form
Than Purcell tune lets tread to? ' See: it does this: keeps warm
Men's wits to the things that are; ' what good means—where a glance
Master more may than gaze, ' gaze out of countenance.
Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh ' windfalls of war's storm,
How then...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I bade, because the wick and oil are spent
And frozen are the channels of the blood,
My discontented heart to draw content
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when wc have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old;
The living beauty...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
To tell the Beauty would decrease
To state the Spell demean --
There is a syllable-less Sea
Of which it is the sign --
My will endeavors for its word
And fails, but entertains
A Rapture as of Legacies --
Of introspective Mines --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Seymour Bridges
'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
I HAVE seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain:
I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm April rain.
I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
Sleep! sleep! beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night;
Sleep! sleep! in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.
Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart does rest.
O! the cunning wiles that creep
In thy...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Beauty and love let no one separate,
Whom exact Nature did to each other fit,
Giving to Beauty love as finishing fate
And to Love beauty as true colour of it.
Let he but friend be who the soul finds fair,
But let none love outside the body's thought,
So the seen couple's togetherness shall bear
Truth to the beauty each in the other sought.
I could but...Read more of this...
by
Walter Savage Landor
God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers
O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours.
A hundred lights in every temple burn,
And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none --
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one....Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled,...Read more of this...
by
William Barnes
If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in e’thly light,
An’ nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an’ feace,
Would many reach thik happy pleace, -
The hopevul souls that in their prime
Ha’ seem’d a-took avore their time, -
The young that died in beauty.
But when woone’s lim’s ha’ lost their strangth
A-tweilen drough a lifetime’s langth,
An’ over cheaks...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
Part One - The Calling
Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights;
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body;
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
HE that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
She hath not beauty, that ill-fortun’d gem
Wherewith may women dazzle men’s meek eyes
Ere they enslave, un-man & slaughter them.
Nor doth she vaunt afar her heart’s hid prize,
Nor with wide-lavish’d scent of hope allure
Ere men behold her, nor with rich disguise.
Nor hath she wit, that sword wherewith to smart
Delicate souls, with flashing stroke unsure
Of sharp misprise, wounding some gentle heart.
Yet not...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamor of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHERE we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted,
We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted.
By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led
Upward to the heaven of heavens—through the star-mists overhead
Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night
Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Beauty no other thing is, than a beam
Flash'd out between the middle and extreme....Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("A Juana la Grenadine!")
{XXIX., October, 1843.}
To Juana ever gay,
Sultan Achmet spoke one day
"Lo, the realms that kneel to own
Homage to my sword and crown
All I'd freely cast away,
Maiden dear, for thee alone."
"Be a Christian, noble king!
For it were a...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest.
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
Before...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The still beauty of summer evenings on the greenswards where they lie outspread holds out to us, without empty gesture or words, a symbol of rest in gladness.
Young morning and its tricks has gone away with the breezes; noon itself and the velvet skirts of its warm winds, of its heavy winds, no longer sweeps the torrid plain; and this...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you....Read more of this...
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