10 Best Famous Disembodied Poems

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

• All Famous Disembodied Poems

 1
TO conclude—I announce what comes after me; 
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart. 

I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, 
I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations. 

When America does what was promis’d,
When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard, 
When through These States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, 
When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them, 
When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America, 
Then to me and mine our due fruition.

I have press’d through in my own right, 
I have sung the Body and the Soul—War and Peace have I sung, 
And the songs of Life and of Birth—and shown that there are many births: 
I have offer’d my style to everyone—I have journey’d with confident step; 
While my pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long!
And take the young woman’s hand, and the young man’s hand, for the last time. 

2
I announce natural persons to arise; 
I announce justice triumphant; 
I announce uncompromising liberty and equality; 
I announce the justification of candor, and the justification of pride.

I announce that the identity of These States is a single identity only; 
I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble; 
I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth
 insignificant. 

I announce adhesiveness—I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d; 
I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.

I announce a man or woman coming—perhaps you are the one, (So long!) 
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate,
 fully
 armed. 

I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold; 
I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation; 
I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded;
I announce a race of splendid and savage old men. 

3
O thicker and faster! (So long!) 
O crowding too close upon me; 
I foresee too much—it means more than I thought; 
It appears to me I am dying.

Hasten throat, and sound your last! 
Salute me—salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more. 

Screaming electric, the atmosphere using, 
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing, 
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious envelop’d messages delivering, 
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in the dirt dropping, 
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, 
To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the seed leaving, 
To troops out of me, out of the army, the war arising—they the tasks I have set
 promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing—their affection me more clearly
 explaining, 
To young men my problems offering—no dallier I—I the muscle of their brains
 trying, 
So I pass—a little time vocal, visible, contrary; 
Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for—(death making me really undying;) 
The best of me then when no longer visible—for toward that I have been incessantly
 preparing.

What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut mouth? 
Is there a single final farewell? 

4
My songs cease—I abandon them; 
From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally, solely to you. 

Camerado! This is no book;
Who touches this, touches a man; 
(Is it night? Are we here alone?) 
It is I you hold, and who holds you; 
I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth. 

O how your fingers drowse me!
Your breath falls around me like dew—your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears; 
I feel immerged from head to foot; 
Delicious—enough. 

Enough, O deed impromptu and secret! 
Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summ’d-up past!

5
Dear friend, whoever you are, take this kiss, 
I give it especially to you—Do not forget me; 
I feel like one who has done work for the day, to retire awhile; 
I receive now again of my many translations—from my avataras ascending—while
 others
 doubtless await me; 
An unknown sphere, more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts awakening rays about
 me—So long!
Remember my words—I may again return, 
I love you—I depart from materials; 
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

 Prelude 

Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July 
Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea: 
Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony 
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. 
Shall we not call im Prospero who held 
In his enchanted hands the fateful key 
Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, 
And with controlling wand our spirits spelled, 
With him to wander by a sun-bright shore, 
To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly 
With disembodied Ariel once more 
Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh 
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud, 
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud. 


I

Floating upon a swelling wave of sound, 
We seemed to overlook an endless sea: 
Poised 'twixt clear heavens and glittering surf were we. 
We drank the air in flight: we knew no bound 
To the audacious ventures of desire. 
Nigh us the sun was dropping, drowned in gold; 
Deep, deep below the burning billows rolled; 
And all the sea sang like a smitten lyre. 
Oh, the wild voices of those chanting waves! 
The human faces glimpsed beneath the tide! 
Familiar eyes gazed from profound sea-caves, 
And we, exalted, were as we had died. 
We knew the sea was Life, the harmonious cry 
The blended discords of humanity. 


II

Look deeper yet: mark 'midst the wave-blurred mass, 
In lines distinct, in colors clear defined, 
The typic groups and figures of mankind. 
Behold within the cool and liquid glass 
Bright child-folk sporting with smooth yellow shells, 
Astride of dolphins, leaping up to kiss 
Fair mother-faces. From the vast abyss 
How joyously their thought-free laughter wells! 
Some slumber in grim caverns unafraid, 
Lulled by the overwhelming water's sound, 
And some make mouths at dragons, undismayed. 
Oh dauntless innocence! The gulfs profound 
Reëcho strangely with their ringing glee, 
And with wise mermaids' plaintive melody. 


III

What do the sea-nymphs in that coral cave? 
With wondering eyes their supple forms they bend 
O'er something rarely beautiful. They lend 
Their lithe white arms, and through the golden wave 
They lift it tenderly. Oh blinding sight! 
A naked, radiant goddess, tranced in sleep, 
Full-limbed, voluptuous, 'neath the mantling sweep 
Of auburn locks that kiss her ankles white! 
Upward they bear her, chanting low and sweet: 
The clinging waters part before their way, 
Jewels of flame are dancing 'neath their feet. 
Up in the sunshine, on soft foam, they lay 
Their precious burden, and return forlorn. 
Oh, bliss! oh, anguish! Mortals, Love is born! 


IV

Hark! from unfathomable deeps a dirge 
Swells sobbing through the melancholy air: 
Where love has entered, Death is also there. 
The wail outrings the chafed, tumultuous surge; 
Ocean and earth, the illimitable skies, 
Prolong one note, a mourning for the dead, 
The cry of souls not to be comforted. 
What piercing music! Funeral visions rise, 
And send the hot tears raining down our cheek. 
We see the silent grave upon the hill 
With its lone lilac-bush. O heart, be still! 
She will not rise, she will not stir nor speak. 
Surely, the unreturning dead are blest. 
Ring on, sweet dirge, and knell us to our rest! 


V

Upon the silver beach the undines dance 
With interlinking arms and flying hair; 
Like polished marble gleam their limbs left bare; 
Upon their virgin rites pale moonbeams glance. 
Softer the music! for their foam-bright feet 
Print not the moist floor where they trip their round: 
Affrighted they will scatter at a sound, 
Leap in their cool sea-chambers, nibly fleet, 
And we shall doubt that we have ever seen, 
While our sane eyes behold stray wreaths of mist, 
Shot with faint colors by the moon-rays kissed, 
Floating snow-soft, snow-white, where these had been. 
Already, look! the wave-washed sands are bare, 
And mocking laughter ripples through the air. 


VI

Divided 'twixt the dream-world and the real, 
We heard the waxing passion of the song 
Soar as to scale the heavens on pinions strong. 
Amidst the long-reverberant thunder-peal, 
Against the rain-blurred square of light, the head 
Of the pale poet at the lyric keys 
Stood boldly cut, absorbed in reveries, 
While over it keen-bladed lightnings played. 
"Rage on, wild storm!" the music seemed to sing: 
"Not all the thunders of thy wrath can move 
The soul that's dedicate to worshipping 
Eternal Beauty, everlasting Love." 
No more! the song was ended, and behold, 
A rainbow trembling on a sky of gold! 


Epilogue

Forth in the sunlit, rain-bathed air we stepped, 
Sweet with the dripping grass and flowering vine, 
And saw through irised clouds the pale sun shine. 
Back o'er the hills the rain-mist slowly crept 
Like a transparent curtain's silvery sheen; 
And fronting us the painted bow was arched, 
Whereunder the majestic cloud-shapes marched: 
In the wet, yellow light the dazzling green 
Of lawn and bush and tree seemed stained with blue. 
Our hearts o'erflowed with peace. With smiles we spake 
Of partings in the past, of courage new, 
Of high achievement, of the dreams that make 
A wonder and a glory of our days, 
And all life's music but a hymn of praise.

HOW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
The disembodied spirits of the dead  
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
And perishes among the dust we tread? 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 5 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not; 
Nor hear the voice I love nor read again 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? 
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given¡ª 10 
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer  
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven? 

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind  
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere  
And larger movements of the unfettered mind 15 
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 

The love that lived through all the stormy past  
And meekly with my harsher nature bore  
And deeper grew and tenderer to the last  
Shall it expire with life and be no more? 20 

A happier lot than mine and larger light  
Await thee there for thou hast bowed thy will 
In cheerful homage to the rule of right  
And lovest all and renderest good for ill. 

For me the sordid cares in which I dwell 25 
Shrink and consume my heart as heat the scroll; 
And wrath has left its scar¡ªthat fire of hell 
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky  
Wilt thou not keep the same belov¨¨d name 30 
The same fair thoughtful brow and gentle eye  
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate yet the same? 

Shalt thou not teach me in that calmer home  
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this¡ª 
The wisdom which is love¡ªtill I become 35 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? 

 for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright

Twice in my quickly disappearing forties
someone called while someone I loved and I were
making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer.

Seven years apart, and two different lovers:
underneath the numbers, how lives are braided,
how those women's death and lives, lived and died, were
interleaved also.

Does lip touch on lip a memento mori?
Does the blood-thrust nipple against its eager
mate recall, through lust, a breast's transformations
sometimes are lethal?

Now or later, what's the enormous difference?
If one day is good, is a day sufficient?
Is it fear of death with which I'm so eager
to live my life out

now and in its possible permutations
with the one I love? (Only four days later,
she was on a plane headed west across the
Atlantic, work-bound.)

Men and women, mortally wounded where we
love and nourish, dying at thirty, forty,
fifty, not on barricades, but in beds of
unfulfilled promise:

tell me, senators, what you call abnormal?
Each day's obits read as if there's a war on.
Fifty-eight-year-old poet dead of cancer:
warrior woman

laid down with the other warrior women.
Both times when the telephone rang, I answered,
wanting not to, knowing I had to answer,
go from two bodies'

infinite approach to a crest of pleasure
through the disembodied voice from a distance
saying one loved body was clay, one wave of
mind burst and broken.

Each time we went back to each other's hands and
mouths as to a requiem where the chorus
sings death with irrelevant and amazing
bodily music.

 Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender as sun-smitten dew;
Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes
The wastes of your limitless lakes,
Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue.

O strong-winged soul with prophetic
Lips hot with the bloodheats of song,
With tremor of heartstrings magnetic,
With thoughts as thunders in throng,
With consonant ardours of chords
That pierce men's souls as with swords
And hale them hearing along,

Make us too music, to be with us
As a word from a world's heart warm,
To sail the dark as a sea with us,
Full-sailed, outsinging the storm,
A song to put fire in our ears
Whose burning shall burn up tears,
Whose sign bid battle reform;

A note in the ranks of a clarion,
A word in the wind of cheer,
To consume as with lightning the carrion
That makes time foul for us here;
In the air that our dead things infest
A blast of the breath of the west,
Till east way as west way is clear.

Out of the sun beyond sunset,
From the evening whence morning shall be,
With the rollers in measureless onset,
With the van of the storming sea,
With the world-wide wind, with the breath
That breaks ships driven upon death,
With the passion of all things free,

With the sea-steeds footless and frantic,
White myriads for death to bestride
In the charge of the ruining Atlantic
Where deaths by regiments ride,
With clouds and clamours of waters,
With a long note shriller than slaughter's
On the furrowless fields world-wide,

With terror, with ardour and wonder,
With the soul of the season that wakes
When the weight of a whole year's thunder
In the tidestream of autumn breaks,
Let the flight of the wide-winged word
Come over, come in and be heard,
Take form and fire for our sakes.

For a continent bloodless with travail
Here toils and brawls as it can,
And the web of it who shall unravel
Of all that peer on the plan;
Would fain grow men, but they grow not,
And fain be free, but they know not
One name for freedom and man?

One name, not twain for division;
One thing, not twain, from the birth;
Spirit and substance and vision,
Worth more than worship is worth;
Unbeheld, unadored, undivined,
The cause, the centre, the mind,
The secret and sense of the earth.

Here as a weakling in irons,
Here as a weanling in bands,
As a prey that the stake-net environs,
Our life that we looked for stands;
And the man-child naked and dear,
Democracy, turns on us here
Eyes trembling with tremulous hands

It sees not what season shall bring to it
Sweet fruit of its bitter desire;
Few voices it hears yet sing to it,
Few pulses of hearts reaspire;
Foresees not time, nor forehears
The noises of imminent years,
Earthquake, and thunder, and fire:

When crowned and weaponed and curbless
It shall walk without helm or shield
The bare burnt furrows and herbless
Of war's last flame-stricken field,
Till godlike, equal with time,
It stand in the sun sublime,
In the godhead of man revealed.

Round your people and over them
Light like raiment is drawn,
Close as a garment to cover them
Wrought not of mail nor of lawn;
Here, with hope hardly to wear,
Naked nations and bare
Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn.

Chains are here, and a prison,
Kings, and subjects, and shame;
If the God upon you be arisen,
How should our songs be the same?
How, in confusion of change,
How shall we sing, in a strange
Land, songs praising his name?

God is buried and dead to us,
Even the spirit of earth,
Freedom; so have they said to us,
Some with mocking and mirth,
Some with heartbreak and tears;
And a God without eyes, without ears,
Who shall sing of him, dead in the birth?

The earth-god Freedom, the lonely
Face lightening, the footprint unshod,
Not as one man crucified only
Nor scourged with but one life's rod;
The soul that is substance of nations,
Reincarnate with fresh generations;
The great god Man, which is God.

But in weariest of years and obscurest
Doth it live not at heart of all things,
The one God and one spirit, a purest
Life, fed from unstanchable springs?
Within love, within hatred it is,
And its seed in the stripe as the kiss,
And in slaves is the germ, and in kings.

Freedom we call it, for holier
Name of the soul's there is none;
Surelier it labours if slowlier,
Than the metres of star or of sun;
Slowlier than life into breath,
Surelier than time into death,
It moves till its labour be done.

Till the motion be done and the measure
Circling through season and clime,
Slumber and sorrow and pleasure,
Vision of virtue and crime;
Till consummate with conquering eyes,
A soul disembodied, it rise
From the body transfigured of time.

Till it rise and remain and take station
With the stars of the worlds that rejoice;
Till the voice of its heart's exultation
Be as theirs an invariable voice;
By no discord of evil estranged,
By no pause, by no breach in it changed,
By no clash in the chord of its choice.

It is one with the world's generations,
With the spirit, the star, and the sod;
With the kingless and king-stricken nations,
With the cross, and the chain, and the rod;
The most high, the most secret, most lonely,
The earth-soul Freedom, that only
Lives, and that only is God.

 Avoid the reeking herd, 
Shun the polluted flock, 
Live like that stoic bird, 
The eagle of the rock.

The huddled warmth of crowds 
Begets and fosters hate; 
He keeps above the clouds 
His cliff inviolate.

When flocks are folded warm, 
And herds to shelter run, 
He sails above the storm, 
He stares into the sun. 

If in the eagle's track 
Your sinews cannot leap, 
Avoid the lathered pack, 
Turn from the steaming sheep. 

If you would keep your soul 
From spotted sight or sound, 
Live like the velvet mole: 
Go burrow underground. 

And there hold intercourse 
With roots of trees and stones, 
With rivers at their source, 
And disembodied bones.

 FAST-ANCHOR’D, eternal, O love! O woman I love! 
O bride! O wife! more resistless than I can tell, the thought of you! 
—Then separate, as disembodied, or another born, 
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation; 
I ascend—I float in the regions of your love, O man,
O sharer of my roving life.

 1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, 
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, 
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings. 

O hope and faith! 
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart! 
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh. 

And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark! 
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts, 
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor
 man’s
 wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laugh’d at in the breaking, 
Then in their power, not for all these, did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the
 nobles fall; 
The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings. 

2
But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the frighten’d
 monarchs
 come back; 
Each comes in state, with his train—hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant. 

Yet behind all, lowering, stealing—lo, a Shape, 
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in scarlet folds, 
Whose face and eyes none may see, 
Out of its robes only this—the red robes, lifted by the arm,
One finger, crook’d, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears. 

3
Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—bloody corpses of young men; 
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of
 power
 laugh aloud, 
And all these things bear fruits—and they are good. 

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets—those hearts pierc’d by the gray lead, 
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality. 

They live in other young men, O kings! 
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you! 
They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.

Not a grave of the murder’d for freedom, but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to
 bear
 seed, 
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish. 

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose, 
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning. 

4
Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.

Is the house shut? Is the master away? 
Nevertheless, be ready—be not weary of watching; 
He will soon return—his messengers come anon.

 Tossed like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,
A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,
And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,
The elastic stairway to the rising sun.
Peril below thee and above, peril
Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt
Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,
Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant
Subduéd to a whisper -- then a silence, --
And thou art but a disembodied venture
In the void.

But Death, who has learned to fly,
Still matchless when his work is to be done,
Met thee between the armies and the sun;
Thy speck of shadow faltered in the sky;
Then thy dead engine and thy broken wings
Drooped through the arc and passed in fire,
A wreath of smoke -- a breathless exhalation.
But ere that came a vision sealed thine eyes,
Lulling thy senses with oblivion;
And from its sliding station in the skies
Thy dauntless soul upward in circles soared
To the sublime and purest radiance whence it sprang.

In all their eyries, eagles shall mourn thy fate,
And leaving on the lonely crags and scaurs
Their unprotected young, shall congregate
High in the tenuous heaven and anger the sun
With screams, and with a wild audacity
Dare all the battle danger of thy flight;
Till weary with combat one shall desert the light,
Fall like a bolt of thunder and check his fall
On the high ledge, smoky with mist and cloud,
Where his neglected eaglets shriek aloud,
And drawing the film across his sovereign sight
Shall dream of thy swift soul immortal
Mounting in circles, faithful beyond death.

 After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Seemed to be raising them on trial,
As if after-while to be transplanted
To a larger garden of freer air.
And I was disembodied vision
Amid a light, as it were the sun
Had floated in and touched the roof of glass
Like a toy balloon and softly bursted,
And etherealized in golden air.
And all was silence, except the splendor
Was immanent with thought as clear
As a speaking voice, and I, as thought,
Could hear a Presence think as he walked
Between the boxes pinching off leaves,
Looking for bugs and noting values,
With an eye that saw it all: --
"Homer, oh yes! Pericles, good.
Caesar Borgia, what shall be done with it?
Dante, too much manure, perhaps.
Napoleon, leave him awhile as yet.
Shelley, more soil. Shakespeare, needs spraying --"
Clouds, eh! --