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Best Famous Variation Poems

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

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Written by C S Lewis | Create an image from this poem

Evolutionary Hymn

 Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair: Groping, guessing, yet progressing, Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow, In the present what are they while there's always jam-tomorrow, While we tread the onward way? Never knowing where we're going, We can never go astray.
To whatever variation Our posterity may turn Hairy, squashy, or crustacean, Bulbous-eyed or square of stern, Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless, Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it's god or devil, Brethren, lest your words imply Static norms of good and evil (As in Plato) throned on high; Such scholastic, inelastic, Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly Glossed great Nature's simple text; He who runs can read it plainly, 'Goodness = what comes next.
' By evolving, Life is solving All the questions we perplexed.
Oh then! Value means survival- Value.
If our progeny Spreads and spawns and licks each rival, That will prove its deity (Far from pleasant, by our present, Standards, though it may well be).


Written by Billy Collins | Create an image from this poem

Nightclub

 You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.
For no particular reason this afternoon I am listening to Johnny Hartman whose dark voice can curl around the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette someone left burning on a baby grand piano around three o'clock in the morning; smoke that billows up into the bright lights while out there in the darkness some of the beautiful fools have gathered around little tables to listen, some with their eyes closed, others leaning forward into the music as if it were holding them up, or twirling the loose ice in a glass, slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.
Yes, there is all this foolish beauty, borne beyond midnight, that has no desire to go home, especially now when everyone in the room is watching the large man with the tenor sax that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage and hands the instrument down to me and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish, my long bebop solo begins by saying, so damn foolish we have become beautiful without even knowing it.
Written by Rg Gregory | Create an image from this poem

eight roundels

 (roundel: variation of the rondeau
consisting of three stanzas of three
lines each, linked together with but
two rhymes and a refrain at the end
of the first and third group)



1.
the blind rose today's fullness is tomorrow's gone (the next day after no one knows) last year's dream now feeds upon what blindly grows imagine if you like a rose on which no likely sun has shone a darkness chokes it (just suppose) the die though's cast - a marathon of hopes endeavours then bestows dawn's right to spill its colours on what blindly grows 2.
squeaking there are so few words left now to grow green on - my vocabulary's stumped for a hard-edged phrase to let you know my truth's not been gazumped love itself of course is blandly thumped each time it suits you to imagine no fruits are guilty for their being scrumped if you can't be honest with me - better go if dumped is what you wish then i'll be dumped excuse me if i go on squeaking though my truth's not been gazumped 3.
ease of mind the world spins - today i have migraine the peace i seek is never less than ill striving's no answer to the bumptious pain that is love's overspill wanting warmth encourages the chill relaxation breeds its bitter strain the worst of all crimes is - i love you still hope itself by nature is inane i squat in a box dismembered from such will to let me find the ease of mind again that is love's overspill 4.
a roundel for ptolemy the earth is not the system's centre- so ok heliocentric - well our sun's a midget spawning galaxies blow our minds away space then equal to a digit the mightiest telescope's a widget science at best hard guessing gone astray no genius stretch beyond a second's fidget ptolemy discarded yet may have his say infinity takes a hologram to bridge it each shard of us contains the cosmos - space then equal to a digit 5.
reflection everything you do is my reflection the hurts you cause are my pain inside out blame's no matter for a close inspection your guilt turns mine about love itself is many hands of doubt it cannot be without it breeds rejection its silences result in one big shout i am left with nothing but dejection what's gold in me has nowhere to get out love's pride is fatal to correction my guilt turns yours about 6.
the round the round understands the fluidity of order how the thing lit up and the shadow can't compete how the centre is that version of the border the moment makes complete notice each face around a space at times replete with insights given to no one else as warder but not condemned when those insights retreat impermanence is eternity's recorder - with an intricate sense of pattern power can't delete the round honours those cracks in the divine disorder the moment makes complete 7.
the actor acting is not the true self's dissipation but not its preening either - outside the role it honours it best fights shy of reputation - being what prometheus stole it is a distant spark of that first live coal a conscious glimpse of human desperation rekindled as a longing to console the waning spirit or the shattered dedication actors are allies of the delphic hole for good or ill they echo human expectation being what prometheus stole 8.
roundels in honour of the round (i) when energy was born it asked this question which way dear parents do i go from here mum fluttered indifferently (i blame exhaustion) dad pointed with his sexual gear so energy thrust straight ahead and fostered fear at once its dreaded source became a bastion too holy to be doubted - mum flipped a gear she sought revenge on dad for his lewd suggestion taking too long of course - things went nuclear the scale of the damage was too much to ingest when dad pointed with his sexual gear (ii) she sat with her flowing skirt spread out on the earth and tore the garment into strips from toe to waist laying them to point around the wide world's girth my way the truth flows best dad laughed his head off at the pointless waste and energy itself was seized by powerful mirth perhaps mum's petalled skirt was not well placed in time mishandled plenty breeds its dearth dad's roisterous one-way-ism was disgraced energy began to sense what mum was worth her way the truth flows best
Written by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope | Create an image from this poem

Parabola

 Year after year the princess lies asleep 
Until the hundred years foretold are done, 
Easily drawing her enchanted breath.
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep, Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.
But when the Destined Lover at last shall come, For whom alone Fortune reserves the prize The thorns give way; he mounts the cobwebbed stair Unerring he finds the tower, the door, the room, The bed where, waking at his kiss she lies Smiling in the loose fragrance of her hair.
That night, embracing on the bed of state, He ravishes her century of sleep And she repays the debt of that long dream; Future and Past compose their vast debate; His seed now sown, her harvest ripe to reap Enact a variation on the theme.
For in her womb another princess waits, A sleeping cell, a globule of bright dew.
Jostling their way up that mysterious stair, A horde of lovers bursts between the gates, All doomed but one, the destined suitor, who By luck first reaches her and takes her there.
A parable of all we are or do! The life of Nature is a formal dance In which each step is ruled by what has been And yet the pattern emerges always new The marriage of linked cause and random chance Gives birth perpetually to the unforeseen.
One parable for the body and the mind: With science and heredity to thank The heart is quite predictable as a pump, But, let love change its beat, the choice is blind.
'Now' is a cross-roads where all maps prove blank, And no one knows which way the cat will jump.
So here stand I, by birth a cross between Determined pattern and incredible chance, Each with an equal share in what I am.
Though I should read the code stored in the gene, Yet the blind lottery of circumstance Mocks all solutions to its cryptogram.
As in my flesh, so in my spirit stand I When does this hundred years draw to its close? The hedge of thorns before me gives no clue.
My predecessor's carcass, shrunk and dry, Stares at me through the spikes.
Oh well, here goes! I have this thing, and only this, to do.
Written by Margaret Atwood | Create an image from this poem

Variation On The Word Sleep

 I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you, sleeping.
I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and as you enter it as easily as breathing in I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only.
I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.


Written by Denise Levertov | Create an image from this poem

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

 A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being.
And before it started to descend from the height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword, granting me honor and a task.
The day's blow rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened, and what I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can.
Written by William Shakespeare | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet LXXVI

 Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
Written by William Shakespeare | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

 Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent.
For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things