Best Famous Secrecy Poems

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

Search and read the best famous Secrecy poems, articles about Secrecy poems, poetry blogs, or anything else Secrecy poem related using the PoetrySoup search engine at the top of the page.

• All Famous Secrecy Poems

Written by Stanley Kunitz | The Science Of The Night I touch you in the night, whose gift was you, My careless sprawler, And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused, That have become the land of your self-strangeness. What long seduction of the bone has led you Down the imploring roads I cannot take Into the arms of ghosts I never knew, Leaving my manhood on a rumpled field To guard you where you lie so deep In absent-mindedness, Caught in the calcium snows of sleep? And even should I track you to your birth Through all the cities of your mortal trial, As in my jealous thought I try to do, You would escape me--from the brink of earth Take off to where the lawless auroras run, You with your wild and metaphysic heart. My touch is on you, who are light-years gone. We are not souls but systems, and we move In clouds of our unknowing like great nebulae. Our very motives swirl and have their start With father lion and with mother crab. Dreamer, my own lost rib, Whose planetary dust is blowing Past archipelagoes of myth and light What far Magellans are you mistress of To whom you speed the pleasure of your art? As through a glass that magnifies my loss I see the lines of your spectrum shifting red, The universe expanding, thinning out, Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast apart. From hooded powers and from abstract flight I summon you, your person and your pride. Fall to me now from outer space, Still fastened desperately to my side; Through gulfs of streaming air Bring me the mornings of the milky ways Down to my threshold in your drowsy eyes; And by the virtue of your honeyed word Restore the liquid language of the moon, That in gold mines of secrecy you delve. Awake! My whirling hands stay at the noon, Each cell within my body holds a heart And all my hearts in unison strike twelve.

Written by Pablo Neruda | Ode To The Onion Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the earth make you, onion clear as a planet and destined to shine, constant constellation, round rose of water, upon the table of the poor. You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet, unmoving dance of the snowy anemone and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature.

Written by Stanley Kunitz | Passing Through Nobody in the widow's household ever celebrated anniversaries. In the secrecy of my room I would not admit I cared that my friends were given parties. Before I left town for school my birthday went up in smoke in a fire at City Hall that gutted the Department of Vital Statistics. If it weren't for a census report of a five-year-old White Male sharing my mother's address at the Green Street tenement in Worcester I'd have no documentary proof that I exist. You are the first, my dear, to bully me into these festive occasions. Sometimes, you say, I wear an abstracted look that drives you up the wall, as though it signified distress or disaffection. Don't take it so to heart. Maybe I enjoy not-being as much as being who I am. Maybe it's time for me to practice growing old. The way I look at it, I'm passing through a phase: gradually I'm changing to a word. Whatever you choose to claim of me is always yours: nothing is truly mine except my name. I only borrowed this dust.

Written by John Keats | Answer To A Sonnet By J.H.Reynolds "Dark eyes are dearer far Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell. " Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,—the domain Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,— The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,— The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters:—Ocean And all its vassal streams, pools numberless, May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can Subside, if not to dark-blue nativeness. Blue! gentle cousin of the forest-green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers— Forget-me-not,—the blue-bell,—and, that queen Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great, When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!

Written by Anne Sexton | The Exorcists And I solemnly swear on the chill of secrecy that I know you not, this room never, the swollen dress I wear, nor the anonymous spoons that free me, nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover. For all these present, before that wandering ghost, that yellow moth of my summer bed, I say: this small event is not. So I prepare, am dosed in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid. I was brown with August, the clapping waves at my thighs and a storm riding into the cove. We swam while the others beached and burst for their boarded huts, their hale cries shouting back to us and the hollow slam of the dory against the float. Black arms of thunder strapped upon us, squalled out, we breathed in rain and stroked past the boat. We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped in green and that suddenly inadequate stain of lightning belling around our skin. Bodies in air we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack. It was yellow inside, the sound of the underwing of the sun. I swear, I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac of summer loves, I know you not.

Written by Edgar Allan Poe | Spirits Of The Dead Thy soul shall find itself alone 'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone; Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness- for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee, and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still. The night, though clear, shall frown, And the stars shall not look down From their high thrones in the Heaven With light like hope to mortals given, But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever. Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, Now are visions ne'er to vanish; From thy spirit shall they pass No more, like dew-drop from the grass. The breeze, the breath of God, is still, And the mist upon the hill Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token. How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!

Written by Delmore Schwartz | A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore Or near the bank of a woodland lake Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's Foolish Follies. They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness Of their youth and beauty In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of awareness Heightened, intensified and softened By the soft and the silk of the waters Blooded made ready by the energy set afire by the nakedness of the body, Electrified: deified: undenied. A young man of thirty years beholds them from a distance. He lives in the dungeon of ten million dollars. He is rich, handsome and empty standing behind the linen curtains Beholding them. Which girl does he think most desirable, most beautiful? They are all equally beautiful and desirable from the gold distance. For if poverty darkens discrimination and makes perception too vivid, The gold of wealth is also a form of blindness. For has not a Frenchman said, Although this is America. . . What he has said is not entirely relevant, That a naked woman is a proof of the existence of God. Where is he going? Is he going to be among them to splash and to laugh with them? They did not see him although he saw them and was there among them. He saw them as he would not have seen them had they been conscious Of him or conscious of men in complete depravation: This is his enchantment and impoverishment As he possesses them in gaze only. . . . He felt the wood secrecy, he knew the June softness The warmth surrounding him crackled Held in by the mansard roof mansion He glimpsed the shadowy light on last year's brittle leaves fallen, Looked over and overlooked, glimpsed by the fall of death, Winter's mourning and the May's renewal.

Written by Algernon Charles Swinburne | Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire) SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat And full of bitter summer, but more sweet To thee than gleanings of a northern shore Trod by no tropic feet? For always thee the fervid languid glories Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies; Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave That knows not where is that Leucadian grave Which hides too deep the supreme head of song. Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were, The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, Blind gods that cannot spare. Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime; The hidden harvest of luxurious time, Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech; And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, Seeing as men sow men reap. O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, That were athirst for sleep and no more life And no more love, for peace and no more strife! Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping Spirit and body and all the springs of song, Is it well now where love can do no wrong, Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang Behind the unopening closure of her lips? Is it not well where soul from body slips And flesh from bone divides without a pang As dew from flower-bell drips? It is enough; the end and the beginning Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. O hand unclasp'd of unbeholden friend, For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, No triumph and no labour and no lust, Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught, Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night With obscure finger silences your sight, Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, Sleep, and have sleep for light. Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, Such as thy vision here solicited, Under the shadow of her fair vast head, The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, The weight of awful tresses that still keep The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests Where the wet hill-winds weep? Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, Hast thou found sown, what gather'd in the gloom? What of despair, of rapture, of derision, What of life is there, what of ill or good? Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood? Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene root, In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers At all, or any fruit? Alas, but though my flying song flies after, O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, Some dim derision of mysterious laughter From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veil'd head, Some little sound of unregarded tears Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs-- These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, Sees only such things rise. Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, Far too far off for thought or any prayer. What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, The low light fails us in elusive skies, Still the foil'd earnest ear is deaf, and blind Are still the eluded eyes. Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes, Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll I lay my hand on, and not death estranges My spirit from communion of thy song-- These memories and these melodies that throng Veil'd porches of a Muse funereal-- These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold As though a hand were in my hand to hold, Or through mine ears a mourning musical Of many mourners roll'd. I among these, I also, in such station As when the pyre was charr'd, and piled the sods. And offering to the dead made, and their gods, The old mourners had, standing to make libation, I stand, and to the Gods and to the dead Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, And what of honey and spice my seed-lands bear, And what I may of fruits in this chill'd air, And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb A curl of sever'd hair. But by no hand nor any treason stricken, Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken. There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages. Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; But bending us-ward with memorial urns The most high Muses that fulfil all ages Weep, and our God's heart yearns. For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often Among us darkling here the lord of light Makes manifest his music and his might In hearts that open and in lips that soften With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. Thy lips indeed he touch'd with bitter wine, And nourish'd them indeed with bitter bread; Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, The fire that scarr'd thy spirit at his flame Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed Who feeds our hearts with fame. Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, God of all suns and songs, he too bends down To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, And hollows with strange tears and alien sighs Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, And over thine irrevocable head Sheds light from the under skies. And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, That thing transform'd which was the Cytherean, With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine Long since, and face no more call'd Erycine-- A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell Did she, a sad and second prey, compel Into the footless places once more trod, And shadows hot from hell. And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, No choral salutation lure to light A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. There is no help for these things; none to mend, And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, Will make death clear or make life durable. Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine And with wild notes about this dust of thine At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell And wreathe an unseen shrine. Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, Shall death not bring us all as thee one day Among the days departed? For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, With sadder than the Niobean womb, And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done; There lies not any troublous thing before, Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, All waters as the shore.

Written by John Donne | Elegy VII Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love, And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand The mystic language of the eye nor hand: Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair: Nor by th' eyes water call a malady Desperately hot, or changing feverously. I had not taught thee, then, the Alphabet Of flowers, how they devisefully being set And bound up might with speechless secrecy Deliver errands mutely, and mutually. Remember since all thy words used to be To every suitor, Ay, if my friends agree; Since, household charms, thy husband's name to teach, Were all the love tricks that thy wit could reach; And since, an hour's discourse could scarce have made One answer in thee, and that ill arrayed In broken proverbs and torn sentences. Thou art not by so many duties his, That from the world's Common having severed thee, Inlaid thee, neither to be seen, nor see, As mine: who have with amorous delicacies Refined thee into a blisful Paradise. Thy graces and good words my creatures be; I planted knowledge and life's tree in thee, Which Oh, shall strangers taste? Must I alas Frame and enamel plate, and drink in glass? Chaf wax for others' seals? break a colt's force And leave him then, being made a ready horse?

Written by Edwin Markham | LINCOLN THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need. She took the tried clay of the common road-- Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth, Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. Into the shape she breathed a flame to light That tender, tragic, ever-changing face. Here was a man to hold against the world, A man to match the mountains and the sea. The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; The smack and tang of elemental things: The rectitude and patience of the cliff; The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The secrecy of streams that make their way Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock; The tolerance and equity of light That gives as freely to the shrinking flower As to the great oak flaring to the wind-- To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West, The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. Up from log cabin to the Capitol, One fire was on his spirit, one resolve:-- To send the keen axe to the root of wrong, Clearing a free way for the feet of God. And evermore he burned to do his deed With the fine stroke and gesture of a king: He built the rail-pile as he built the State, Pouring his splendid strength through every blow; The conscience of him testing every stroke, To make his deed the measure of a man. So came the Captain with the mighty heart; And when the judgment thunders split the house, Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again The rafters of the Home. He held his place-- Held the long purpose like a growing tree-- Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.