Best Famous Impression Poems

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

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• All Famous Impression Poems

Written by Allen Ginsberg | America America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go **** yourself with your atom bomb. I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I'm sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I'm trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I'm doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. I won't say the Lord's Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It's always telling me about responsibility. Business- men are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. Asia is rising against me. I haven't got a chinaman's chance. I'd better consider my national resources. My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions. I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns. I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go. My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic. America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes. America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe America free Tom Mooney America save the Spanish Loyalists America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die America I am the Scottsboro boys. America when I was seven momma took me to Com- munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sin- cere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy. America you don't really want to go to war. America it's them bad Russians. Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians. The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages. Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers' Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta- tions. That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help. America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct? I'd better get right down to the job. It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. America I'm putting my ***** shoulder to the wheel. Berkeley, January 17, 1956

Written by Billy Collins | Marginalia Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand, dismissive - "Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" - that kind of thing. I remember once looking up from my reading, my thumb as a bookmark, trying to imagine what the person must look like why wrote "Don't be a ninny" alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson. Students are more modest needing to leave only their splayed footprints along the shore of the page. One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's. Another notes the presence of "Irony" fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal. Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers, Hands cupped around their mouths. "Absolutely," they shout to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin. "Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!" Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points rain down along the sidelines. And if you have managed to graduate from college without ever having written "Man vs. Nature" in a margin, perhaps now is the time to take one step forward. We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages; we pressed a thought into the wayside, planted an impression along the verge. Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria jotted along the borders of the Gospels brief asides about the pains of copying, a bird signing near their window, or the sunlight that illuminated their page- anonymous men catching a ride into the future on a vessel more lasting than themselves. And you have not read Joshua Reynolds, they say, until you have read him enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling. Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- "Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Written by Richard Wilbur | Shame It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy, Save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language Has never been fathomed, owing to the national habit Of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion. Those who have visited Scusi, the capital city, Report that the railway-route from Schuldig passes Through country best described as unrelieved. Sheep are the national product. The faint inscription Over the city gates may perhaps be rendered, "I'm afraid you won't find much of interest here." Census-reports which give the population As zero are, of course, not to be trusted, Save as reflecting the natives' flustered insistence That they do not count, as well as their modest horror Of letting one's sex be known in so many words. The uniform grey of the nondescript buildings, the absence Of churches or comfort-stations, have given observers An odd impression of ostentatious meanness, And it must be said of the citizens (muttering by In their ratty sheepskins, shying at cracks in the sidewalk) That they lack the peace of mind of the truly humble. The tenor of life is careful, even in the stiff Unsmiling carelessness of the border-guards And douaniers, who admit, whenever they can, Not merely the usual carloads of deodorant But gypsies, g-strings, hasheesh, and contraband pigments. Their complete negligence is reserved, however, For the hoped-for invasion, at which time the happy people (Sniggering, ruddily naked, and shamelessly drunk) Will stun the foe by their overwhelming submission, Corrupt the generals, infiltrate the staff, Usurp the throne, proclaim themselves to be sun-gods, And bring about the collapse of the whole empire.

Written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Three Odes To My Friend THESE are the most singular of all the Poems of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite young. Despite, however, the extravagance of some of them, such as the Winter Journey over the Hartz Mountains, and the Wanderer's Storm-Song, nothing can be finer than the noble one entitled Mahomet's Song, and others, such as the Spirit Song' over the Waters, The God-like, and, above all, the magnificent sketch of Prometheus, which forms part of an unfinished piece bearing the same name, and called by Goethe a 'Dramatic Fragment.' TO MY FRIEND. [These three Odes are addressed to a certain Behrisch, who was tutor to Count Lindenau, and of whom Goethe gives an odd account at the end of the Seventh Book of his Autobiography.] FIRST ODE. TRANSPLANT the beauteous tree! Gardener, it gives me pain; A happier resting-place Its trunk deserved. Yet the strength of its nature To Earth's exhausting avarice, To Air's destructive inroads, An antidote opposed. See how it in springtime Coins its pale green leaves! Their orange-fragrance Poisons each flyblow straight. The caterpillar's tooth Is blunted by them; With silv'ry hues they gleam In the bright sunshine, Its twigs the maiden Fain would twine in Her bridal-garland; Youths its fruit are seeking. See, the autumn cometh! The caterpillar Sighs to the crafty spider,-- Sighs that the tree will not fade. Hov'ring thither From out her yew-tree dwelling, The gaudy foe advances Against the kindly tree, And cannot hurt it, But the more artful one Defiles with nauseous venom Its silver leaves; And sees with triumph How the maiden shudders, The youth, how mourns he, On passing by. Transplant the beauteous tree! Gardener, it gives me pain; Tree, thank the gardener Who moves thee hence! 1767. SECOND ODE. THOU go'st! I murmur-- Go! let me murmur. Oh, worthy man, Fly from this land! Deadly marshes, Steaming mists of October Here interweave their currents, Blending for ever. Noisome insects Here are engender'd; Fatal darkness Veils their malice. The fiery-tongued serpent, Hard by the sedgy bank, Stretches his pamper'd body, Caress'd by the sun's bright beams. Tempt no gentle night-rambles Under the moon's cold twilight! Loathsome toads hold their meetings Yonder at every crossway. Injuring not, Fear will they cause thee. Oh, worthy man, Fly from this land! 1767. THIRD ODE. BE void of feeling! A heart that soon is stirr'd, Is a possession sad Upon this changing earth. Behrisch, let spring's sweet smile Never gladden thy brow! Then winter's gloomy tempests Never will shadow it o'er. Lean thyself ne'er on a maiden's Sorrow-engendering breast. Ne'er on the arm, Misery-fraught, of a friend. Already envy From out his rocky ambush Upon thee turns The force of his lynx-like eyes, Stretches his talons, On thee falls, In thy shoulders Cunningly plants them. Strong are his skinny arms, As panther-claws; He shaketh thee, And rends thy frame. Death 'tis to part, 'Tis threefold death To part, not hoping Ever to meet again. Thou wouldst rejoice to leave This hated land behind, Wert thou not chain'd to me With friendships flowery chains. Burst them! I'll not repine. No noble friend Would stay his fellow-captive, If means of flight appear. The remembrance Of his dear friend's freedom Gives him freedom In his dungeon. Thou go'st,--I'm left. But e'en already The last year's winged spokes Whirl round the smoking axle. I number the turns Of the thundering wheel; The last one I bless.-- Each bar then is broken, I'm free then as thou! 1767.

Written by David Wagoner | At The Door All actors look for them-the defining moments When what a character does is what he is. The script may say, He goes to the door And exits or She goes out the door stage left. But you see your fingers touching the doorknob, Closing around it, turning it As if by themselves. The latch slides Out of the strike-plate, the door swings on its hinges, And you're about to take that step Over the threshold into a different light. For the audience, you may simply be Disappearing from the scene, yet in those few seconds You can reach for the knob as the last object on earth You wanted to touch. Or you can take it Warmly like the hand your father offered Once in forgiveness and afterward Kept to himself. Or you can stand there briefly, as bewildered As by the door of a walk-in time-lock safe, Stand there and stare At the whole concept of shutness, like a rat Whose maze has been rebaffled overnight, Stand still and quiver, unable to turn Around or go left or right. Or you can grasp it with a sly, soundless discretion, Open it inch by inch, testing each fraction Of torque on the spindles, on tiptoe Slip yourself through the upright slot And press the lock-stile silently Back into its frame. Or you can use your shoulder Or the hard heel of your shoe And a leg-thrust to break it open. Or you can approach the door as if accustomed To having all barriers open by themselves. You can wrench aside This unauthorized interruption of your progress And then leave it ajar For others to do with as they may see fit. Or you can stand at ease And give the impression you can see through This door or any door and have no need To take your physical self to the other side. Or you can turn the knob as if at last Nothing could please you more, your body language Filled with expectations of joy at where you're going, Holding yourself momentarily in the posture Of an awestruck pilgrim at the gate-though you know You'll only be stepping out against the scrim Or a wobbly flat daubed with a landscape, A scribble of leaves, a hint of flowers, The bare suggestion of a garden.

Written by Lewis Carroll | Melancholetta With saddest music all day long She soothed her secret sorrow: At night she sighed "I fear 'twas wrong Such cheerful words to borrow. Dearest, a sweeter, sadder song I'll sing to thee to-morrow." I thanked her, but I could not say That I was glad to hear it: I left the house at break of day, And did not venture near it Till time, I hoped, had worn away Her grief, for nought could cheer it! My dismal sister! Couldst thou know The wretched home thou keepest! Thy brother, drowned in daily woe, Is thankful when thou sleepest; For if I laugh, however low, When thou'rt awake, thou weepest! I took my sister t'other day (Excuse the slang expression) To Sadler's Wells to see the play In hopes the new impression Might in her thoughts, from grave to gay Effect some slight digression. I asked three gay young dogs from town To join us in our folly, Whose mirth, I thought, might serve to drown My sister's melancholy: The lively Jones, the sportive Brown, And Robinson the jolly. The maid announced the meal in tones That I myself had taught her, Meant to allay my sister's moans Like oil on troubled water: I rushed to Jones, the lively Jones, And begged him to escort her. Vainly he strove, with ready wit, To joke about the weather - To ventilate the last 'ON DIT' - To quote the price of leather - She groaned "Here I and Sorrow sit: Let us lament together!" I urged "You're wasting time, you know: Delay will spoil the venison." "My heart is wasted with my woe! There is no rest - in Venice, on The Bridge of Sighs!" she quoted low From Byron and from Tennyson. I need not tell of soup and fish In solemn silence swallowed, The sobs that ushered in each dish, And its departure followed, Nor yet my suicidal wish To BE the cheese I hollowed. Some desperate attempts were made To start a conversation; "Madam," the sportive Brown essayed, "Which kind of recreation, Hunting or fishing, have you made Your special occupation?" Her lips curved downwards instantly, As if of india-rubber. "Hounds IN FULL CRY I like," said she: (Oh how I longed to snub her!) "Of fish, a whale's the one for me, IT IS SO FULL OF BLUBBER!" The night's performance was "King John." "It's dull," she wept, "and so-so!" Awhile I let her tears flow on, She said they soothed her woe so! At length the curtain rose upon 'Bombastes Furioso.' In vain we roared; in vain we tried To rouse her into laughter: Her pensive glances wandered wide From orchestra to rafter - "TIER UPON TIER!" she said, and sighed; And silence followed after.

Written by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings | a clowns smirk in the skull of a baboon a clown's smirk in the skull of a baboon (where once good lips stalked or eyes firmly stir red) my mirror gives me on this afternoon; i am a shape that can but eat and turd ere with the dirt death shall him vastly gird a coward waiting clumsily to cease whom every perfect thing meanwhile doth miss; a hand's impression in an empty glove a soon forgotten tune a house for lease. I have never loved you dear as now i love behold this fool who in the month of June having certain stars and planets heard rose very slowly in a tight balloon until the smallening world became absurd; him did an archer spy(whose aim had erred never)and by that little trick or this he shot the aeronaut down into the abyss -and wonderfully i fell through the green groove of twilight striking into many a piece. I have never loved you dear as now i love god's terrible face brighter than a spoon collects the image of one fatal word; so that my life(which liked the sun and the moon) resembles something that has not occurred: i am a birdcage without any bird a collar looking for a dog a kiss without lips;a prayer lacking any knees but something beats within my shirt to prove he is undead who living noone is. I have never loved you dear as now i love. Hell(by most humble me which shall increase) open thy fire!for i have had some bliss of one small lady upon earth above; to whom i cry remembering her face i have never loved you dear as now i love

Written by Oscar Wilde | Impression - Le Reveillon The sky is laced with fitful red, The circling mists and shadows flee, The dawn is rising from the sea, Like a white lady from her bed. And jagged brazen arrows fall Athwart the feathers of the night, And a long wave of yellow light Breaks silently on tower and hall, And spreading wide across the wold Wakes into flight some fluttering bird, And all the chestnut tops are stirred, And all the branches streaked with gold.

Written by Robert Frost | Our Singing Strength It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm The flakes could find no landing place to form. Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold, And still they failed of any lasting hold. They made no white impression on the black. They disappeared as if earth sent them back. Not till from separate flakes they changed at night To almost strips and tapes of ragged white Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed, And all go back to winter but the road. Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead. The grass lay flattened under one great tread. Borne down until the end almost took root, The rangey bough anticipated fruit With snowball cupped in every opening bud. The road alone maintained itself in mud, Whatever its secret was of greater heat From inward fires or brush of passing feet. In spring more mortal singers than belong To any one place cover us with song. Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng; Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay, Some that have come too far north back away, Really a very few to build and stay. Now was seen how these liked belated snow. the field had nowhere left for them to go; They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying; The trees they'd had enough of with once trying And setting off their heavy powder load. They could find nothing open but the road. Sot there they let their lives be narrowed in By thousands the bad weather made akin. The road became a channel running flocks Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks. I drove them under foot in bits of flight That kept the ground. almost disputing right Of way with me from apathy of wing, A talking twitter all they had to sing. A few I must have driven to despair Made quick asides, but having done in air A whir among white branches great and small As in some too much carven marble hall Where one false wing beat would have brought down all, Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover, To suffer the same driven nightmare over. One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them; None flew behind me to be left alone. Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown The country's singing strength thus brought together, the thought repressed and moody with the weather Was none the less there ready to be freed And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.

Written by Phillis Wheatley | Niobe in Distress Apollo's wrath to man the dreadful spring Of ills innum'rous, tuneful goddess, sing! Thou who did'st first th' ideal pencil give, And taught'st the painter in his works to live, Inspire with glowing energy of thought, What Wilson painted, and what Ovid wrote. Muse! lend thy aid, nor let me sue in vain, Tho' last and meanest of the rhyming train! O guide my pen in lofty strains to show The Phrygian queen, all beautiful in woe. 'Twas where Maeonia spreads her wide domain Niobe dwelt, and held her potent reign: See in her hand the regal sceptre shine, The wealthy heir of Tantalus divine, He most distinguish'd by Dodonean Jove, To approach the tables of the gods above: Her grandsire Atlas, who with mighty pains Th' ethereal axis on his neck sustains: Her other grandsire on the throne on high Rolls the loud-pealing thunder thro' the sky. Her spouse, Amphion, who from Jove too springs, Divinely taught to sweep the sounding strings. Seven sprightly sons the royal bed adorn, Seven daughters beauteous as the op'ning morn, As when Aurora fills the ravish'd sight, And decks the orient realms with rosy light From their bright eyes the living splendors play, Nor can beholders bear the flashing ray. Wherever, Niobe, thou turn'st thine eyes, New beauties kindle, and new joys arise! But thou had'st far the happier mother prov'd, If this fair offspring had been less belov'd: What if their charms exceed Aurora's teint. No words could tell them, and no pencil paint, Thy love too vehement hastens to destroy Each blooming maid, and each celestial boy. Now Manto comes, endu'd with mighty skill, The past to explore, the future to reveal. Thro' Thebes' wide streets Tiresia's daughter came, Divine Latona's mandate to proclaim: The Theban maids to hear the orders ran, When thus Maeonia's prophetess began: "Go, Thebans! great Latona's will obey, "And pious tribute at her altars pay: "With rights divine, the goddess be implor'd, "Nor be her sacred offspring unador'd." Thus Manto spoke. The Theban maids obey, And pious tribute to the goddess pay. The rich perfumes ascend in waving spires, And altars blaze with consecrated fires; The fair assembly moves with graceful air, And leaves of laurel bind the flowing hair. Niobe comes with all her royal race, With charms unnumber'd, and superior grace: Her Phrygian garments of delightful hue, Inwove with gold, refulgent to the view, Beyond description beautiful she moves Like heav'nly Venus, 'midst her smiles and loves: She views around the supplicating train, And shakes her graceful head with stern disdain, Proudly she turns around her lofty eyes, And thus reviles celestial deities: "What madness drives the Theban ladies fair "To give their incense to surrounding air? "Say why this new sprung deity preferr'd? "Why vainly fancy your petitions heard? "Or say why Cæus offspring is obey'd, "While to my goddesship no tribute's paid? "For me no altars blaze with living fires, "No bullock bleeds, no frankincense transpires, "Tho' Cadmus' palace, not unknown to fame, "And Phrygian nations all revere my name. "Where'er I turn my eyes vast wealth I find, "Lo! here an empress with a goddess join'd. "What, shall a Titaness be deify'd, "To whom the spacious earth a couch deny'd! "Nor heav'n, nor earth, nor sea receiv'd your queen, "Till pitying Delos took the wand'rer in. "Round me what a large progeny is spread! "No frowns of fortune has my soul to dread. "What if indignant she decrease my train "More than Latona's number will remain; "Then hence, ye Theban dames, hence haste away, "Nor longer off'rings to Latona pay; "Regard the orders of Amphion's spouse, "And take the leaves of laurel from your brows." Niobe spoke. The Theban maids obey'd, Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid. The angry goddess heard, then silence broke On Cynthus' summit, and indignant spoke; "Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace, "Who to no goddess yields the prior place "Except to Juno's self, who reigns above, "The spouse and sister of the thund'ring Jove. "Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires "Each Theban bosom with rebellious fires; "No reason her imperious temper quells, "But all her father in her tongue rebels; "Wrap her own sons for her blaspheming breath, "Apollo! wrap them in the shades of death." Latona ceas'd, and ardent thus replies The God, whose glory decks th' expanded skies. "Cease thy complaints, mine be the task assign'd "To punish pride, and scourge the rebel mind." This Phoebe join'd.--They wing their instant flight; Thebes trembled as th' immortal pow'rs alight. With clouds incompass'd glorious Phoebus stands; The feather'd vengeance quiv'ring in his hands. Near Cadmus' walls a plain extended lay, Where Thebes' young princes pass'd in sport the day: There the bold coursers bounded o'er the plains, While their great masters held the golden reins. Ismenus first the racing pastime led, And rul'd the fury of his flying steed. "Ah me," he sudden cries, with shrieking breath, While in his breast he feels the shaft of death; He drops the bridle on his courser's mane, Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain, He, the first-born of great Amphion's bed, Was struck the first, first mingled with the dead. Then didst thou, Sipylus, the language hear Of fate portentous whistling in the air: As when th' impending storm the sailor sees He spreads his canvas to the fav'ring breeze, So to thine horse thou gav'st the golden reins, Gav'st him to rush impetuous o'er the plains: But ah! a fatal shaft from Phoebus' hand Smites thro' thy neck, and sinks thee on the sand. Two other brothers were at wrestling found, And in their pastime claspt each other round: A shaft that instant from Apollo's hand Transfixt them both, and stretcht them on the sand: Together they their cruel fate bemoan'd, Together languish'd, and together groan'd: Together too th' unbodied spirits fled, And sought the gloomy mansions of the dead. Alphenor saw, and trembling at the view, Beat his torn breast, that chang'd its snowy hue. He flies to raise them in a kind embrace; A brother's fondness triumphs in his face: Alphenor fails in this fraternal deed, A dart dispatch'd him (so the fates decreed Soon as the arrow left the deadly wound, His issuing entrails smoak'd upon the ground. What woes on blooming Damasichon wait! His sighs portend his near impending fate. Just where the well-made leg begins to be, And the soft sinews form the supple knee, The youth sore wounded by the Delian god Attempts t' extract the crime-avenging rod, But, whilst he strives the will of fate t' avert, Divine Apollo sends a second dart; Swift thro' his throat the feather'd mischief flies, Bereft of sense, he drops his head, and dies. Young Ilioneus, the last, directs his pray'r, And cries, "My life, ye gods celestial! spare." Apollo heard, and pity touch'd his heart, But ah! too late, for he had sent the dart: Thou too, O Ilioneus, art doom'd to fall, The fates refuse that arrow to recal. On the swift wings of ever flying Fame To Cadmus' palace soon the tidings came: Niobe heard, and with indignant eyes She thus express'd her anger and surprise: "Why is such privilege to them allow'd? "Why thus insulted by the Delian god? "Dwells there such mischief in the pow'rs above? "Why sleeps the vengeance of immortal Jove?" For now Amphion too, with grief oppress'd, Had plung'd the deadly dagger in his breast. Niobe now, less haughty than before, With lofty head directs her steps no more She, who late told her pedigree divine, And drove the Thebans from Latona's shrine, How strangely chang'd!--yet beautiful in woe, She weeps, nor weeps unpity'd by the foe. On each pale corse the wretched mother spread Lay overwhelm'd with grief, and kiss'd her dead, Then rais'd her arms, and thus, in accents slow, "Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe; "If I've offended, let these streaming eyes, "And let this sev'nfold funeral suffice: "Ah! take this wretched life you deign'd to save, "With them I too am carried to the grave. "Rejoice triumphant, my victorious foe, "But show the cause from whence your triumphs flow? "Tho' I unhappy mourn these children slain, "Yet greater numbers to my lot remain." She ceas'd, the bow string twang'd with awful sound, Which struck with terror all th' assembly round, Except the queen, who stood unmov'd alone, By her distresses more presumptuous grown. Near the pale corses stood their sisters fair In sable vestures and dishevell'd hair; One, while she draws the fatal shaft away, Faints, falls, and sickens at the light of day. To sooth her mother, lo! another flies, And blames the fury of inclement skies, And, while her words a filial pity show, Struck dumb--indignant seeks the shades below. Now from the fatal place another flies, Falls in her flight, and languishes, and dies. Another on her sister drops in death; A fifth in trembling terrors yields her breath; While the sixth seeks some gloomy cave in vain, Struck with the rest, and mingled with the slain. One only daughter lives, and she the least; The queen close clasp'd the daughter to her breast: "Ye heav'nly pow'rs, ah spare me one," she cry'd, "Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills reply'd: In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny, In her embrace she sees her daughter die. *"The queen of all her family bereft, "Without or husband, son, or daughter left, "Grew stupid at the shock. The passing air "Made no impression on her stiff'ning hair. "The blood forsook her face: amidst the flood "Pour'd from her cheeks, quite fix'd her eye-balls stood. "Her tongue, her palate both obdurate grew, "Her curdled veins no longer motion knew; "The use of neck, and arms, and feet was gone, "And ev'n her bowels hard'ned into stone: "A marble statue now the queen appears, "But from the marble steal the silent tears."