10 Best Famous Deep Thoughts Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Deep Thoughts poems. This is a select list of the best famous Deep Thoughts poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Deep Thoughts poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of deep thoughts poems.

• All Famous Deep Thoughts Poems

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel 
And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
Ceasing their hymns attend the spell
Of his voice all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon 
The enamored moon
Blushes with love 
While to listen the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads even 
Which were seven )
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod 
Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love's a grown-up God-
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong 
Israfeli who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong 
Best bard because the wisest!
Merrily live and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief thy joy thy hate thy love 
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely- flowers 
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt and he where I 
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody 
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

 I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame;
But the tear that now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.
Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace,
Were those hours - can their joy or their bitterness cease?
We repent, we abjure, we will break from our chain, - 
We will part, we will fly to - unite it again!
Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt!
Forgive me, adored one! - forsake if thou wilt;
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And man shall not break it - whatever thou may'st.
And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee,
This soul in its bitterest blackness shall be;
And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet,
With thee at my side, than with worlds at our feet.
One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love,
Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove.
And the heartless may wonder at all I resign - 
Thy lips shall reply, not to them, but to mine.

 Eternally the choking steam goes up 
From the black pools of seething oil. . . . 
How merry 
Those little devils are! They've stolen the pitchfork 
From Bel, there, as he slept . . . Look! -- oh look, look! 
They've got at Nero! Oh it isn't fair! 
Lord, how he squeals! Stop it . . . it's, well -- indecent! 
But funny! . . . See, Bel's waked. They'll catch it now! 

. . . Eternally that stifling reek arises, 
Blotting the dome with smoky, terrible towers, 
Black, strangling trees, whispering obscene things 
Amongst their branches, clutching with maimed hands, 
Or oozing slowly, like blind tentacles 
Up to the gates; higher than that heaped brick 
Man piled to smite the sun. And all around 
Are devils. One can laugh . . . but that hunched shape 
The face one stone, like those Assyrian kings! 
One sees in carvings, watching men flayed red 
Horribly laughable in leaps and writhes; 
That face -- utterly evil, clouded round 
With evil like a smoke -- it turns smiles sour! 
. . . And Nero there, the flabby cheeks astrain 
And sweating agony . . . long agony . . . 
Imperishable, unappeasable 
For ever . . . well . . . it droops the mouth. Till I 
Look up. 
There's one blue patch no smoke dares touch. 
Sky, clear, ineffable, alive with light, 
Always the same . . . 
Before, I never knew 
Rest and green peace. 
She stands there in the sun. 
. . . It seems so quaint she should have long gold wings. 
I never have got used -- folded across 
Her breast, or fluttering with fierce, pure light, 
Like shaken steel. Her crown too. Well, it's *****! 
And then she never cared much for the harp 
On earth. Here, though . . . 
She is all peace, all quiet, 
All passionate desires, the eloquent thunder 
Of new, glad suns, shouting aloud for joy, 
Over fresh worlds and clean, trampling the air 
Like stooping hawks, to the long wind of horns, 
Flung from the bastions of Eternity . . . 
And she is the low lake, drowsy and gentle, 
And good words spoken from the tongues of friends, 
And calmness in the evening, and deep thoughts, 
Falling like dreams from the stars' solemn mouths. 
All these. 
They said she was unfaithful once. 
Or I remembered it -- and so, for that, 
I lie here, I suppose. Yes, so they said. 
You see she is so troubled, looking down, 
Sorrowing deeply for my torments. I 
Of course, feel nothing while I see her -- save 
That sometimes when I think the matter out, 
And what earth-people said of us, of her, 
It seems as if I must be, here, in heaven, 
And she -- 
. . . Then I grow proud; and suddenly 
There comes a splatter of oil against my skin, 
Hurting this time. And I forget my pride: 
And my face writhes. 
Some day the little ladder 
Of white words that I build up, up, to her 
May fetch me out. Meanwhile it isn't bad. . . . 

But what a sense of humor God must have!

 ("Dans les vieilles forêts.") 
 
 {X., April 20, 1837.} 


 Through ancient forests—where like flowing tide 
 The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide, 
 Mounting the column of the alder dark 
 And silv'ring o'er the birch's shining bark— 
 Hast thou not often, Albert Dürer, strayed 
 Pond'ring, awe-stricken—through the half-lit glade, 
 Pallid and trembling—glancing not behind 
 From mystic fear that did thy senses bind, 
 Yet made thee hasten with unsteady pace? 
 Oh, Master grave! whose musings lone we trace 
 Throughout thy works we look on reverently. 
 Amidst the gloomy umbrage thy mind's eye 
 Saw clearly, 'mong the shadows soft yet deep, 
 The web-toed faun, and Pan the green-eyed peep, 
 Who deck'd with flowers the cave where thou might'st rest, 
 Leaf-laden dryads, too, in verdure drest. 
 A strange weird world such forest was to thee, 
 Where mingled truth and dreams in mystery; 
 There leaned old ruminating pines, and there 
 The giant elms, whose boughs deformed and bare 
 A hundred rough and crooked elbows made; 
 And in this sombre group the wind had swayed, 
 Nor life—nor death—but life in death seemed found. 
 The cresses drink—the water flows—and round 
 Upon the slopes the mountain rowans meet, 
 And 'neath the brushwood plant their gnarled feet, 
 Intwining slowly where the creepers twine. 
 There, too, the lakes as mirrors brightly shine, 
 And show the swan-necked flowers, each line by line. 
 Chimeras roused take stranger shapes for thee, 
 The glittering scales of mailèd throat we see, 
 And claws tight pressed on huge old knotted tree; 
 While from a cavern dim the bright eyes glare. 
 Oh, vegetation! Spirit! Do we dare 
 Question of matter, and of forces found 
 'Neath a rude skin-in living verdure bound. 
 Oh, Master—I, like thee, have wandered oft 
 Where mighty trees made arches high aloft, 
 But ever with a consciousness of strife, 
 A surging struggle of the inner life. 
 Ever the trembling of the grass I say, 
 And the boughs rocking as the breezes play, 
 Have stirred deep thoughts in a bewild'ring way. 
 Oh, God! alone Great Witness of all deeds, 
 Of thoughts and acts, and all our human needs, 
 God only knows how often in such scenes 
 Of savage beauty under leafy screens, 
 I've felt the mighty oaks had spirit dower— 
 Like me knew mirth and sorrow—sentient power, 
 And whisp'ring each to each in twilight dim, 
 Had hearts that beat—and owned a soul from Him! 
 
 MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND 


 

 XVIII

Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench
Of Brittish Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounc't and in his volumes taught our Lawes,
Which others at their Barr so often wrench:
To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth, that after no repenting drawes;
Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intend, and what the French.
To measure life, learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; 
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

 XXI

Cyriac, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounced and in his volumes taught our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench;
Today deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth, that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
That with superfluous burden loads the day,
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

 THE KNEES
 of this proud woman
are bone.

The elbows
 of this proud woman
are bone.

The summer-white stars
 and the winter-white stars
never stop circling
 around this proud woman.

The bones
 of this proud woman
answer the vibrations
 of the stars.

 In summer
the stars speak deep thoughts
 In the winter
the stars repeat summer speeches.

The knees
 of this proud woman
know these thoughts
 and know these speeches
of the summer and winter stars.