Best Famous Great Mother Poems

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

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• All Famous Great Mother Poems

Written by Walt Whitman | Carol of Words 1 EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air—they are in you. Were you thinking that those were the words—those delicious sounds out of your friends’ mouths? No, the real words are more delicious than they. Human bodies are words, myriads of words; In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s, well-shaped, natural, gay, Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame. 2 Air, soil, water, fire—these are words; I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs—my name is nothing to them; Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name? A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings; The charms that go 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 show. The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough; The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either; They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print; They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth—I utter and utter, I speak not, yet if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you? To bear—to better—lacking these, of what avail am I? 4 Accouche! Accouchez! Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? Will you squat and stifle there? The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out, Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out. 5 The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still underneath; Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail. To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail; The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail; Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail. 6 Of the interminable sisters, Of the ceaseless cotillions of sisters, Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters, The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest. With her ample back towards every beholder, With the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age, Sits she whom I too love like the rest—sits undisturb’d, Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes glance back from it, Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none, Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face. 7 Seen at hand, or seen at a distance, Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day, Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion, Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with them, From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance, From the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things, From the landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky, From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them, Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same companions. 8 Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round the sun; Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-five offsets of the first, sure and necessary as they. 9 Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading, Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing, carrying, The Soul’s realization and determination still inheriting, The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing, No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, Swift, glad, content, unbereav’d, nothing losing, Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account, The divine ship sails the divine sea. 10 Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you; The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality. 11 Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such is the word of the past and present, and the word of immortality; No one can acquire for another—not one! Not one can grow for another—not one! The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him; The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him; The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him; The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him; The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him; The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail; The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not to the audience; And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own. 12 I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete! I swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken! I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth! I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the earth! No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth. 13 I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love! It is that which contains itself—which never invites, and never refuses. I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words! I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth! Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth; Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch. 14 I swear I see what is better than to tell the best; It is always to leave the best untold. When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot, My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, My breath will not be obedient to its organs, I become a dumb man. The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow—all or any is best; It is not what you anticipated—it is cheaper, easier, nearer; Things are not dismiss’d from the places they held before; The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before; Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before; But the Soul is also real,—it too is positive and direct; No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it, Undeniable growth has establish’d it. 15 This is a poem—a carol of words—these are hints of meanings, These are to echo the tones of Souls, and the phrases of Souls; If they did not echo the phrases of Souls, what were they then? If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then? I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold. 16 Say on, sayers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on—(it is materials you must bring, not breaths;) Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost; It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use; When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear. I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them and lead them; I swear to you they will understand you, and justify you; I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all, and is faithful to all; I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you—they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they; I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.

Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | The Sphinx The Sphinx is drowsy, Her wings are furled: Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world. "Who'll tell me my secret, The ages have kept?-- I awaited the seer While they slumbered and slept:-- "The fate of the man-child, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown; Daedalion plan; Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep; Life death overtaking; Deep underneath deep? "Erect as a sunbeam, Unspringeth the palm; The elephant browses, Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his wings; King leaves of his covert, Your silence he sings. "The waves, unashamed, In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Old playfellows meet; The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles. "Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred,-- Each the other adorning, Accompany still; Night veileth the morning, The vapor the hill. "The babe by its mother Lies bathed in joy; Glide its hours uncounted,-- The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being, Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies. "But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground. "Out spoke the great mother, Beholding his fear;-- At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere:-- 'Who, has drugged my boy's cup? Who, has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness, Has turned my child's head?'" I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully "Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time; They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime. "The fiend that man harries Is love of the Best; Yawns the pit of the Dragon, Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. "To vision profounder, Man's spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb At no goal will arrive; The heavens that now draw him With sweetness untold, Once found,--for new heavens He spurneth the old. "Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores; Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free?-- I would he were nobler Than to love me. "Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies; And under pain, pleasure,-- Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day. "Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; Thy sight is growing blear; Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Sphinx, Her muddy eyes to clear!" The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,-- Said, "Who taught thee me to name? I am the spirit, yoke-fellow; Of thine eye I am eyebeam. "Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Always it asketh, asketh; And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply; Ask on, thou clothed eternity; Time is the false reply." Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave: She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame; "Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am."

Written by William Butler Yeats | Parnells Funeral I Under the Great Comedian's tomb the crowd. A bundle of tempestuous cloud is blown About the sky; where that is clear of cloud Brightness remains; a brighter star shoots down; What shudders run through all that animal blood? What is this sacrifice? Can someone there Recall the Cretan barb that pierced a star? Rich foliage that the starlight glittered through, A frenzied crowd, and where the branches sprang A beautiful seated boy; a sacred bow; A woman, and an arrow on a string; A pierced boy, image of a star laid low. That woman, the Great Mother imaging, Cut out his heart. Some master of design Stamped boy and tree upon Sicilian coin. An age is the reversal of an age: When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone, We lived like men that watch a painted stage. What matter for the scene, the scene once gone: It had not touched our lives. But popular rage, Hysterica passio dragged this quarry down. None shared our guilt; nor did we play a part Upon a painted stage when we devoured his heart. Come, fix upon me that accusing eye. I thirst for accusation. All that was sung. All that was said in Ireland is a lie Bred out of the c-ontagion of the throng, Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. Leave nothing but the nothingS that belong To this bare soul, let all men judge that can Whether it be an animal or a man. II The rest I pass, one sentence I unsay. Had de Valera eaten parnell's heart No loose-lipped demagogue had won the day. No civil rancour torn the land apart. Had Cosgrave eaten parnell's heart, the land's Imagination had been satisfied, Or lacking that, government in such hands. O'Higgins its sole statesman had not died. Had even O'Duffy - but I name no more - Their school a crowd, his master solitude; Through Jonathan Swift's clark grove he passed, and there plucked bitter wisdom that enriched his blood.

Written by William Butler Yeats | Colonus Praise (From Oedipus at Colonus) Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies, The nightingale that deafens daylight there, If daylight ever visit where, Unvisited by tempest or by sun, Immortal ladies tread the ground Dizzy with harmonious sound, Semele's lad a gay companion. And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives Athenian intellect its mastery, Even the grey-leaved olive-tree Miracle-bred out of the living stone; Nor accident of peace nor war Shall wither that old marvel, for The great grey-eyed Athene stares thereon. Who comes into this country, and has come Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom, Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter And beauty-drunken by the water Glittering among grey-leaved olive-trees, Has plucked a flower and sung her loss; Who finds abounding Cephisus Has found the loveliest spectacle there is. because this country has a pious mind And so remembers that when all mankind But trod the road, or splashed about the shore, Poseidon gave it bit and oar, Every Colonus lad or lass discourses Of that oar and of that bit; Summer and winter, day and night, Of horses and horses of the sea, white horses.

Written by Oscar Wilde | The Grave Of Shelley Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, And the slight lizard show his jewelled head. And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, In the still chamber of yon pyramid Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead. Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep, But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb In the blue cavern of an echoing deep, Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep. ROME.

Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | The Sphynx The Sphynx is drowsy, Her wings are furled, Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world.? "Who'll tell me my secret The ages have kept? ? I awaited the seer, While they slumbered and slept;? The fate of the manchild, The meaning of man; Known fruit of the unknown, Dædalian plan; Out of sleeping a waking, Out of waking a sleep, Life death overtaking, Deep underneath deep. Erect as a sunbeam Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert! Your silence he sings. The waves unashamed In difference sweet, Play glad with the breezes, Old playfellows meet. The journeying atoms, Primordial wholes, Firmly draw, firmly drive, By their animate poles. Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, Plant, quadruped, bird, By one music enchanted, One deity stirred, Each the other adorning, Accompany still; Night veileth the morning, The vapor the hill. The babe by its mother Lies bathed in joy, Glide its hours uncounted, The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being Without cloud in its eyes, And the sum of the world In soft miniature lies. But man crouches and blushes, Absconds and conceals, He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an accomplice, He poisons the ground. Out spoke the great mother Beholding his fear, At the sound of her accents Cold shuddered the sphere;? Who has drugged my boy's cup, Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who with sadness and madness Has turned the manchild's head?"? I heard a poet answer Aloud and cheerfully, "Say on, sweet Sphynx! thy dirges Are pleasant songs to me. Deep love lieth under These pictures of time, They fade in the light of Their meaning sublime. The fiend that man harries, Is love of the Best; Yawns the Pit of the Dragon Lit by rays from the Blest. The Lethe of Nature Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the Perfect, Which his eyes seek in vain. Profounder, profounder, Man's spirit must dive; To his aye-rolling orbit No goal will arrive. The heavens that draw him With sweetness untold, Once found, ?for new heavens He spurneth the old. Pride ruined the angels, Their shame them restores, And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse. Have I a lover Who is noble and free,? I would he were nobler Than to love me. Eterne alternation Now follows, now flies, And under pain, pleasure, Under pleasure, pain lies. Love works at the centre, Heart-heaving alway; Forth speed the strong pulses To the borders of day. Dull Sphynx, Jove keep thy five wits! Thy sight is growing blear, Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphynx, Her muddy eyes to clear." The old Sphynx bit her thick lip,? "Who taught thee me to name? I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow! Of thine eye I am eyebeam. Thou art the unanswered question; Couldst see thy proper eye, Alway it asketh, asketh, And each answer is a lie. So take thy quest through nature, It through thousand natures ply, Ask on, thou clothed eternity,? Time is the false reply." Uprose the merry Sphynx, And crouched no more in stone, She melted into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon, She spired into a yellow flame, She flowered in blossoms red, She flowed into a foaming wave, She stood Monadnoc's head. Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame, "Who telleth one of my meanings, Is master of all I am."

Written by Anne Sexton | In Excelsis It is half winter, half spring, and Barbara and I are standing confronting the ocean. Its mouth is open very wide, and it has dug up its green, throwing it, throwing it at the shore. You say it is angry. I say it is like a kicked Madonna. Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever. We breathe in its fury. I, the inlander, am here with you for just a small space. I am almost afraid, so long gone from the sea. I have seen her smooth as a cheek. I have seen her easy, doing her business, lapping in. I have seen her rolling her hoops of blue. I have seen her tear the land off. I have seen her drown me twice, and yet not take me. You tell me that as the green drains backward it covers Britain, but have you never stood on that shore and seen it cover you? We have come to worship, the tongues of the surf are prayers, and we vow, the unspeakable vow. Both silently. Both differently. I wish to enter her like a dream, leaving my roots here on the beach like a pan of knives. And my past to unravel, with its knots and snarls, and walk into ocean, letting it explode over me and outward, where I would drink the moon and my clothes would slip away, and I would sink into the great mother arms I never had, except here where the abyss throws itself on the sand blow by blow, over and over, and we stand on the shore loving its pulse as it swallows the stars, and has since it all began and will continue into oblivion, past our knowing and the wild toppling green that enters us today, for a small time in half winter, half spring.

Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Mortality Ashes to ashes, dust unto dust, What of his loving, what of his lust? What of his passion, what of his pain? What of his poverty, what of his pride? Earth, the great mother, has called him again: Deeply he sleeps, the world's verdict defied. Shall he be tried again? Shall he go free? Who shall the court convene? Where shall it be? No answer on the land, none from the sea. Only we know that as he did, we must: You with your theories, you with your trust,— Ashes to ashes, dust unto dust!