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Best Famous Shatters Poems

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

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Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Tale Of A Tub

 The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl
maintains it has no more holy calling
than physical ablution, and the towel
dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk
in its explicit folds? or when the window,
blind with steam, will not admit the dark
which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow?

Twenty years ago, the familiar tub
bred an ample batch of omens; but now
water faucets spawn no danger; each crab
and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view,
waiting for some accidental break
in ritual, to strike -- is definitely gone;
the authentic sea denies them and will pluck
fantastic flesh down to the honest bone.

We take the plunge; under water our limbs
waver, faintly green, shuddering away
from the genuine color of skin; can our dreams
ever blur the intransigent lines which draw
the shape that shuts us in? absolute fact
intrudes even when the revolted eye
is closed; the tub exists behind our back;
its glittering surfaces are blank and true.

Yet always the ridiculous nude flanks urge
the fabrication of some cloth to cover
such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large:
each day demands we create our whole world over,
disguising the constant horror in a coat
of many-colored fictions; we mask our past
in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit
can sprout from the navel of this present waste.
In this particular tub, two knees jut up
like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise
on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap
navigates the tidal slosh of seas
breaking on legendary beaches; in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death
shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.


Written by Francois Villon | Create an image from this poem

The Ballad Of The Proverbs

 So rough the goat will scratch, it cannot sleep.
So often goes the pot to the well that it breaks.
So long you heat iron, it will glow;
so heavily you hammer it, it shatters.
So good is the man as his praise;
so far he will go, and he's forgotten;
so bad he behaves, and he's despised.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So glib you talk, you end up in contradictions.
So good is your credit as the favors you got.
So much you promise that you will back out.
So doggedly you beg that your wish is granted;
so high climbs the price when you want a thing;
so much you want it that you pay the price;
so familiar it gets to you, you want it no more.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So, you love a dog. Then feed it!
So long a song will run that people learn it.
So long you keep the fruit, it will rot.
So hot the struggle for a spot that it is won;
so cool you keep your act that your spirit freezes;
so hurriedly you act that you run into bad luck;
so tight you embrace that your catch slips away.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

So you scoff and laugh, and the fun is gone.
So you crave and spend, and lose your shirt.
So candid you are, no blow can be too low.
So good as a gift should a promise be.
So, if you love God, you obey the Church.
So, when you give much, you borrow much.
So, shifting winds turn to storm.
So loud you cry Christmas, it comes.

Prince, so long as a fool persists, he grows wiser;
so, round the world he goes, but return he will,
so humbled and beaten back into servility.
So loud you cry Christmas, it is here.
Written by Conrad Aiken | Create an image from this poem

Senlin: His Cloudy Destiny

 1

Senlin sat before us and we heard him. 
He smoked his pipe before us and we saw him. 
Was he small, with reddish hair, 
Did he light his pipe with a meditative stare 
And a twinkling flame reflected in blue eyes? 
'I am alone': said Senlin; 'in a forest of leaves 
The single leaf that creeps and falls. 
The single blade of grass in a desert of grass 
That none foresaw and none recalls. 
The single shell that a green wave shatters 
In tiny specks of whiteness on brown sands . . . 
How shall you understand me with your hearts, 
Who cannot reach me with your hands? . . .'

The city dissolves about us, and its walls 
Are the sands beside a sea. 
We plunge in a chaos of dunes, white waves before us 
Crash on kelp tumultuously, 
Gulls wheel over foam, the clouds blow tattered, 
The sun is swallowed . . . Has Senlin become a shore? 
Is Senlin a grain of sand beneath our footsteps, 
A speck of shell upon which waves will roar? . . . 
Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . no answer, 
Only the crash of sea on a shell-white shore.

Yet, we would say, this is no shore at all, 
But a small bright room with lamplight on the wall; 
And the familiar chair 
Where Senlin sat, with lamplight on his hair.

2

Senlin, alone before us, played a music. 
Was it himself he played? . . . We sat and listened, 
Perplexed and pleased and tired. 
'Listen!' he said, 'and you will learn a secret-- 
Though it is not the secret you desired. 
I have not found a meaning that will praise you! 
Out of the heart of silence comes this music, 
Quietly speaks and dies. 
Look! there is one white star above black houses! 
And a tiny man who climbs toward the skies! 
Where does he walk to? What does he leave behind him? 
What was his foolish name? 
What did he stop to say, before he left you 
As simply as he came? 
"Death?" did it sound like, "love and god, and laughter, 
Sunlight, and work, and pain . . .?" 
No--it appears to me that these were symbols 
Of simple truths he found no way to explain. 
He spoke, but found you could not understand him-- 
You were alone, and he was alone.

"He sought to touch you, and found he could not reach you,-- 
He sought to understand you, and could not hear you. 
And so this music, which I play before you,-- 
Does it mean only what it seems to mean? 
Or is it a dance of foolish waves in sunlight 
Above a desperate depth of things unseen? 
Listen! Do you not hear the singing voices 
Out of the darkness of this sea? 
But no: you cannot hear them; for if you heard them 
You would have heard and captured me. 
Yet I am here, talking of laughter. 
Laughter and love and work and god; 
As I shall talk of these same things hereafter 
In wave and sod. 
Walk on a hill and call me: "Senlin! . . . Senlin! . . ." 
Will I not answer you as clearly as now? 
Listen to rain, and you will hear me speaking. 
Look for my heart in the breaking of a bough . . .'

3

Senlin stood before us in the sunlight, 
And laughed, and walked away. 
Did no one see him leaving the doors of the city, 
Looking behind him, as if he wished to stay? 
Has no one, in the forests of the evening, 
Heard the sad horn of Senlin slowly blown? 
For somewhere, in the worlds-in-worlds about us, 
He changes still, unfriended and alone. 
Is he the star on which we walk at daybreak, 
The light that blinds our eyes? 
'Senlin!' we cry. 'Senlin!' again . . . no answer: 
Only the soulless brilliance of blue skies.

Yet we would say, this was no man at all, 
But a dream we dreamed, and vividly recall; 
And we are mad to walk in wind and rain 
Hoping to find, somewhere, that dream again.
Written by Friedrich von Schiller | Create an image from this poem

Melancholy -- To Laura

 Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into bloom sad Autumn by thee;
Night and desert, if they spy thee,
To gardens laugh--with daylight shine,
Lit by those happy smiles of thine!
Dark with cloud the future far
Goldens itself beneath thy star.
Smilest thou to see the harmony
Of charm the laws of Nature keep?
Alas! to me the harmony
Brings only cause to weep!

Holds not Hades its domain
Underneath this earth of ours?
Under palace, under fame,
Underneath the cloud-capped towers?
Stately cities soar and spread
O'er your mouldering bones, ye dead!
From corruption, from decay,
Springs yon clove-pink's fragrant bloom;
Yon gay waters wind their way
From the hollows of a tomb.

From the planets thou mayest know
All the change that shifts below,
Fled--beneath that zone of rays,
Fled to night a thousand Mays;
Thrones a thousand--rising--sinking,
Earth from thousand slaughters drinking
Blood profusely poured as water;--
Of the sceptre--of the slaughter--
Wouldst thou know what trace remaineth?
Seek them where the dark king reigneth!

Scarce thine eye can ope and close
Ere life's dying sunset glows;
Sinking sudden from its pride
Into death--the Lethe tide.
Ask'st thou whence thy beauties rise?
Boastest thou those radiant eyes?--
Or that cheek in roses dyed?
All their beauty (thought of sorrow!)
From the brittle mould they borrow.
Heavy interest in the tomb
For the brief loan of the bloom,
For the beauty of the day,
Death the usurer, thou must pay,
In the long to-morrow!

Maiden!--Death's too strong for scorn;
In the cheek the fairest, He
But the fairest throne doth see
Though the roses of the morn
Weave the veil by beauty worn--
Aye, beneath that broidered curtain,
Stands the Archer stern and certain!
Maid--thy Visionary hear--
Trust the wild one as the sear,
When he tells thee that thine eye,
While it beckons to the wooer,
Only lureth yet more nigh
Death, the dark undoer!

Every ray shed from thy beauty
Wastes the life-lamp while it beams,
And the pulse's playful duty,
And the blue veins' merry streams,
Sport and run into the pall--
Creatures of the Tyrant, all!
As the wind the rainbow shatters,
Death thy bright smiles rends and scatters,
Smile and rainbow leave no traces;--
From the spring-time's laughing graces,
From all life, as from its germ,
Grows the revel of the worm!

Woe, I see the wild wind wreak
Its wrath upon thy rosy bloom,
Winter plough thy rounded cheek,
Cloud and darkness close in gloom;
Blackening over, and forever,
Youth's serene and silver river!
Love alike and beauty o'er,
Lovely and beloved no more!

Maiden, an oak that soars on high,
And scorns the whirlwind's breath
Behold thy Poet's youth defy
The blunted dart of Death!
His gaze as ardent as the light
That shoots athwart the heaven,
His soul yet fiercer than the light
In the eternal heaven,
Of Him, in whom as in an ocean-surge
Creation ebbs and flows--and worlds arise and merge!
Through Nature steers the poet's thought to find
No fear but this--one barrier to the mind?

And dost thou glory so to think?
And heaves thy bosom?--Woe!
This cup, which lures him to the brink,
As if divinity to drink--
Has poison in its flow!
Wretched, oh, wretched, they who trust
To strike the God-spark from the dust!
The mightiest tone the music knows,
But breaks the harp-string with the sound;
And genius, still the more it glows,
But wastes the lamp whose life bestows
The light it sheds around.
Soon from existence dragged away,
The watchful jailer grasps his prey:
Vowed on the altar of the abused fire,
The spirits I raised against myself conspire!
Let--yes, I feel it two short springs away
Pass on their rapid flight;
And life's faint spark shall, fleeting from the clay,
Merge in the Fount of Light!

And weep'st thou, Laura?--be thy tears forbid;
Would'st thou my lot, life's dreariest years amid,
Protract and doom?--No: sinner, dry thy tears:
Would'st thou, whose eyes beheld the eagle wing
Of my bold youth through air's dominion spring,
Mark my sad age (life's tale of glory done)--
Crawl on the sod and tremble in the sun?
Hear the dull frozen heart condemn the flame
That as from heaven to youth's blithe bosom came;
And see the blind eyes loathing turn from all
The lovely sins age curses to recall?
Let me die young!--sweet sinner, dry thy tears!
Yes, let the flower be gathered in its bloom!
And thou, young genius, with the brows of gloom,
Quench thou life's torch, while yet the flame is strong!
Even as the curtain falls; while still the scene
Most thrills the hearts which have its audience been;
As fleet the shadows from the stage--and long
When all is o'er, lingers the breathless throng!
Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

The Bombardment

 Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the 
city. It stops a moment
on the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping 
and trickling
over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit 
of a gargoyle,
and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral square.
Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about 
in the sky?
Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, 
again! After it, only water
rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of the gargoyle.
Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about 
from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies
leap in the bohemian glasses on the `etagere'. Her hands 
are restless,
but the white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will 
it never cease
to torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration 
shatters a glass
on the `etagere'. It lies there, formless and glowing,
with all its crimson gleams shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing 
red,
blood-red. A thin bell-note pricks through the silence. A 
door creaks.
The old lady speaks: "Victor, clear away that broken 
glass." "Alas!
Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes, Victor, one hundred 
years ago
my father brought it --" Boom! The room shakes, 
the servitor quakes.
Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he 
is shut
within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his 
table, his ink,
his pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls 
are pierced with
beams of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain 
tosses itself
up at the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin 
he can see
copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp 
in a cedar-tree
grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled, iridescent,
shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom!
The flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain 
rears up
in long broken spears of dishevelled water and flattens into the 
earth. Boom!
And there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding 
rain.
Again, Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom! He stuffs his fingers 
into his ears.
He sees corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It 
is night,
and they are shelling the city! Boom! Boom!

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What 
has made
the bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am 
awake." "Hush, my Darling,
I am here." "But, Mother, something so ***** happened, 
the room shook."
Boom! "Oh! What is it? What is 
the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father?
I am so afraid." Boom! The child sobs and 
shrieks. The house
trembles and creaks. Boom!

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All 
his trials
oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, 
lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory,
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, 
and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of 
slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, 
he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead 
of the roof,
and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire,
behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved 
tracings,
squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the 
gargoyles, coils round
the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It 
leaps into the night
and hisses against the rain. The Cathedral is a burning 
stain on the white,
wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to 
it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the `etagere' is no longer 
there.
Boom! A stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains.
The old lady cannot walk. She watches the creeping stalk 
and counts.
Boom! -- Boom! -- Boom!

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet 
of silver.
But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The 
city burns.
Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the flames.
Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing 
its gold on the sky,
the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and 
chuckles
along the floors.

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower
flickering at the window. The little red lips of flame 
creep along
the ceiling beams.

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at
the burning Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with 
people.
They seek shelter and crowd into the cellars. They shout 
and call,
and over all, slowly and without force, the rain drops into the 
city.
Boom! And the steeple crashes down among the people. Boom! Boom, 
again!
The water rushes along the gutters. The fire roars and 
mutters. Boom!


Written by A E Housman | Create an image from this poem

Reveille

 Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
"Who'll beyond the hills away?"

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

  (i) introduction

  his home in ruins
  his parents gone
  frederick seeks
  to reclaim his throne

   to the golden mountain
   he sets his path
   the enchantress listening
   schemes with wrath

  four desperate trials
  which she takes from store
  to silence frederick
  for ever more

 (ii) the mist

  softly mist suppress all sight
  swirling stealthily as night
  slur the sureness of his steps
  suffocate his sweetest hopes
  swirling curling slip and slide
  persuasively seduce his stride

  from following its essential course
  seal his senses at its source
  bemuse the soil he stands upon
  till power of choice has wholly gone
  seething surreptitious veil
  across the face of light prevail
  against this taciturn and proud
  insurgent - o smother him swift cloud

  yet if you cannot steal his breath
  thus snuffing him to hasty death
  at least in your umbrageous mask
  stifle his ambitious task
  mystify his restless brain
  sweep him swirl him home again


 (iii) the bog

  once more the muffling mists enclose
  frederick in their vaporous throes
  forcing him with unseeing sway
  to veer from his intended way

  back they push and back
  make him fall
  stumble catch
  his foot become
  emmired snatch
  hopelessly at fog
  no grip slip further back
  into the sucking fingers of the bog
  into the slush

  squelching and splotch-
  ing the marsh
  gushes and gurgles
  engulfing foot leg
  chuckling suckles
  the heaving thigh
  the plush slugged waist
  sucking still and still flushing
  with suggestive slurp
  plop slap
  sluggishly upwards
  unctuous lugubrious
  soaking and enjoying
  with spongy gestures
  the swallowed wallowing
  body - the succulence
  of soft shoulder
  squirming
  elbow
  wrist
  then
  all.......

  but no
  his desperate palm
  struggling to forsake
  the clutches of the swamp
  finds one stark branch overhanging
  to fix glad fingers to and out of the maw
  of the murderous mud safely delivers him



 (iv) the magic forest

  safely - distorted joke
  from bog to twisted forest
  gnarled trees writhe and fork
  asphixiated trunks - angular branches
  hook claw throttle frederick in their creaking
  joints
   jagged weird
  knotted and misshapen
  petrified maniacal
  figures frantically contorted
  grotesque eccentric in the moon-toothed
  half-light
  tug clutch struggle
  with the haggard form
  zigzag he staggers
  awe-plagued giddy
  near-garrotted mind-deranged
  forcing his sagging limbs through the mangled danger

  till almost beyond redemption beyond self-care
  he once again survives to breathe free air


 (v) the barrier of thorns

  immediately a barrier of thorns
  springs up to choke his track
  thick brier evil bramble twitch
  stick sharp needles in his skin
  hag's spite inflicts its bitter sting
  frederick (provoked to attack
  stung stabbed by jabbing spines
  wincing with agony and grief) seeks to hack
  a clear way through
     picking swinging at
  the spiky barricade inch by prickly inch
  smarting with anger bristling with a thin
  itch and tingling of success - acute
  with aching glory the afflicted victim
  of a witch's pique frederick
  frederick the king snips hews chops
  rips slashes cracks cleaves rends pierces
  pierces and shatters into pointless pieces
  this mighty barrier of barbs - comes through at last
  (belzivetta's malignant magic smashed)
  to freedom peace of mind and dreamless sleep
Written by Dorothy Parker | Create an image from this poem

Renunciation

 It’s a jade branch on the floor, broken in two, love,
or a stain raised on the lapped grains of a suede glove.

It’s the lace, blown by a strong breeze, of an old gown
with the cranes crying at night, lost in their long sound.

It’s a vase made from the noon light in a closed place,
and it falls, shatters the sharp edge of a jewel case.

It’s the Muse, mute with a shell clenched in her left hand,
a refrain deep in its coils, joined to the dead sand.
Written by Francesco Petrarch | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet VI

SONNET VI.

Datemi pace, o duri miei pensieri.

HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO A BESIEGED CITY, AND ACCUSES HIS OWN HEART OF TREASON.

O tyrant thoughts, vouchsafe me some repose!Sufficeth not that Love, and Death, and Fate,Make war all round me to my very gate,But I must in me armèd hosts enclose?[Pg 241]And thou, my heart, to me alone that showsDisloyal still, what cruel guides of lateIn thee find shelter, now the chosen mateOf my most mischievous and bitter foes?Love his most secret embassies in thee,In thee her worst results hard Fate explains,And Death the memory of that blow, to meWhich shatters all that yet of hope remains;In thee vague thoughts themselves with error arm,And thee alone I blame for all my harm.
Macgregor.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Horace to Leuconoë

 I pray you not, Leuconoë, to pore 
With unpermitted eyes on what may be 
Appointed by the gods for you and me, 
Nor on Chaldean figures any more. 
’T were infinitely better to implore
The present only:—whether Jove decree 
More winters yet to come, or whether he 
Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore 

Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last— 
Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill
Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing, 
The envious close of time is narrowing;— 
So seize the day, or ever it be past, 
And let the morrow come for what it will.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry