Get Your Premium Membership

Best Famous Virile Poems

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

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

See Also:
Written by Elizabeth Bishop | Create an image from this poem

Roosters

 At four o'clock
in the gun-metal blue dark
we hear the first crow of the first cock

just below
the gun-metal blue window
and immediately there is an echo

off in the distance,
then one from the backyard fence,
then one, with horrible insistence,

grates like a wet match 
from the broccoli patch,
flares,and all over town begins to catch.

Cries galore
come from the water-closet door,
from the dropping-plastered henhouse floor,

where in the blue blur 
their rusting wives admire,
the roosters brace their cruel feet and glare

with stupid eyes
while from their beaks there rise
the uncontrolled, traditional cries.

Deep from protruding chests
in green-gold medals dressed,
planned to command and terrorize the rest,

the many wives 
who lead hens' lives
of being courted and despised;

deep from raw throats
a senseless order floats
all over town. A rooster gloats

over our beds
from rusty irons sheds
and fences made from old bedsteads,

over our churches 
where the tin rooster perches,
over our little wooden northern houses,

making sallies 
from all the muddy alleys,
marking out maps like Rand McNally's:

glass-headed pins,
oil-golds and copper greens,
anthracite blues, alizarins,

each one an active 
displacement in perspective;
each screaming, "This is where I live!"

Each screaming
"Get up! Stop dreaming!"
Roosters, what are you projecting?

You, whom the Greeks elected
to shoot at on a post, who struggled
when sacrificed, you whom they labeled

"Very combative..."
what right have you to give 
commands and tell us how to live,

cry "Here!" and "Here!"
and wake us here where are
unwanted love, conceit and war?

The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood

Yes, that excrescence
makes a most virile presence,
plus all that vulgar beauty of iridescence

Now in mid-air
by two they fight each other.
Down comes a first flame-feather,

and one is flying,
with raging heroism defying
even the sensation of dying.

And one has fallen
but still above the town
his torn-out, bloodied feathers drift down;

and what he sung
no matter. He is flung
on the gray ash-heap, lies in dung

with his dead wives
with open, bloody eyes,
while those metallic feathers oxidize.


St. Peter's sin
was worse than that of Magdalen
whose sin was of the flesh alone;

of spirit, Peter's,
falling, beneath the flares,
among the "servants and officers."

Old holy sculpture
could set it all together
in one small scene, past and future:

Christ stands amazed,
Peter, two fingers raised
to surprised lips, both as if dazed.

But in between
a little cock is seen
carved on a dim column in the travertine,

explained by gallus canit;
flet Petrus underneath it,
There is inescapable hope, the pivot;

yes, and there Peter's tears
run down our chanticleer's
sides and gem his spurs.

Tear-encrusted thick
as a medieval relic
he waits. Poor Peter, heart-sick,

still cannot guess
those cock-a-doodles yet might bless,
his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness,

a new weathervane
on basilica and barn,
and that outside the Lateran

there would always be
a bronze cock on a porphyry
pillar so the people and the Pope might see

that event the Prince
of the Apostles long since
had been forgiven, and to convince

all the assembly
that "Deny deny deny"
is not all the roosters cry.

In the morning
a low light is floating
in the backyard, and gilding

from underneath
the broccoli, leaf by leaf;
how could the night have come to grief?

gilding the tiny
floating swallow's belly
and lines of pink cloud in the sky,

the day's preamble
like wandering lines in marble,
The cocks are now almost inaudible.

The sun climbs in,
following "to see the end,"
faithful as enemy, or friend.


Written by Federico García Lorca | Create an image from this poem

The Gypsy and the Wind

 Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathing and burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Blue

 The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover 
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide. 

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped. 

Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly 
Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;
And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, though the clouds 
Shine in conceit of substance upon me, who am less than the rain.
Do I know the darkness within them? What are they but shrouds?

The clouds go down the sky with a wealthy ease 
Casting a shadow of scorn upon me for my share in death; but I
Hold my own in the midst of them, darkling, defy 
The whole of the day to extinguish the shadow I lift on the breeze.

Yea, though the very clouds have vantage over me, 
Enjoying their glancing flight, though my love is dead, 
I still am not homeless here, I’ve a tent by day 
Of darkness where she sleeps on her perfect bed. 

And I know the host, the minute sparkling of darkness
Which vibrates untouched and virile through the grandeur of night,
But which, when dawn crows challenge, assaulting the vivid motes
Of living darkness, bursts fretfully, and is bright: 

Runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light, 
Stirred by conflict to shining, which else
Were dark and whole with the night. 

Runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel, 
Which else were aslumber along with the whole 
Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel. 

Is chafed to anger, bursts into rage like thunder;
Which else were a silent grasp that held the heavens
Arrested, beating thick with wonder. 

Leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping 
In a jet from out of obscurity, 
Which erst was darkness sleeping.

Runs into streams of bright blue drops, 
Water and stones and stars, and myriads 
Of twin-blue eyes, and crops 

Of floury grain, and all the hosts of day, 
All lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting
The Darkness into play.
Written by Pam Ayres | Create an image from this poem

Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear

Yes, I’ll marry you, my dear.
And here’s the reason why.
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry.
And if we hear a knocking
And it’s creepy and it’s late,
I hand you the torch you see,
And you investigate.

Yes I’ll marry you, my dear,
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes
It’s you that has to mend it.
You have to face the neighbour
Should our labrador attack him,
And if a drunkard fondles me
It’s you that has to whack him.

Yes, I’ll marry you,
You’re virile and you’re lean,
My house is like a pigsty
You can help to keep it clean.
That sexy little dinner
Which you served by candlelight,
As I do chipolatas,
You can cook it every night!!!

It’s you who has to work the drill
And put up curtain track,
And when I’ve got PMT it’s you who gets the flak,
I do see great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so before you see the light,
I DO, I DO, I DO!!

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

A Message to America

 You have the grit and the guts, I know; 
You are ready to answer blow for blow 
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard, 
But your honor ends with your own back-yard; 
Each man intent on his private goal, 
You have no feeling for the whole; 
What singly none would tolerate 
You let unpunished hit the state, 
Unmindful that each man must share 
The stain he lets his country wear, 
And (what no traveller ignores) 
That her good name is often yours. 


You are proud in the pride that feels its might; 
From your imaginary height 
Men of another race or hue 
Are men of a lesser breed to you: 
The neighbor at your southern gate 
You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate. 
To lend a spice to your disrespect 
You call him the "greaser". But reflect! 
The greaser has spat on you more than once; 
He has handed you multiple affronts; 
He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; 
He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; 
He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag 
The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; 
And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- 
What did you do, what did you care? 
Did you find the season too cold and damp 
To change the counter for the camp? 
Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico? 
I can't imagine, but this I know -- 
You are impassioned vastly more 
By the news of the daily baseball score 
Than to hear that a dozen countrymen 
Have perished somewhere in Darien, 
That greasers have taken their innocent lives 
And robbed their holdings and raped their wives. 


Not by rough tongues and ready fists 
Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists. 
The armies of a littler folk 
Shall pass you under the victor's yoke, 
Sobeit a nation that trains her sons 
To ride their horses and point their guns -- 
Sobeit a people that comprehends 
The limit where private pleasure ends 
And where their public dues begin, 
A people made strong by discipline 
Who are willing to give -- what you've no mind to -- 
And understand -- what you are blind to -- 
The things that the individual 
Must sacrifice for the good of all. 


You have a leader who knows -- the man 
Most fit to be called American, 
A prophet that once in generations 
Is given to point to erring nations 
Brighter ideals toward which to press 
And lead them out of the wilderness. 
Will you turn your back on him once again? 
Will you give the tiller once more to men 
Who have made your country the laughing-stock 
For the older peoples to scorn and mock, 
Who would make you servile, despised, and weak, 
A country that turns the other cheek, 
Who care not how bravely your flag may float, 
Who answer an insult with a note, 
Whose way is the easy way in all, 
And, seeing that polished arms appal 
Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist, 
Would tell you menace does not exist? 
Are these, in the world's great parliament, 
The men you would choose to represent 
Your honor, your manhood, and your pride, 
And the virtues your fathers dignified? 
Oh, bury them deeper than the sea 
In universal obloquy; 
Forget the ground where they lie, or write 
For epitaph: "Too proud to fight." 


I have been too long from my country's shores 
To reckon what state of mind is yours, 
But as for myself I know right well 
I would go through fire and shot and shell 
And face new perils and make my bed 
In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led; 
But I have given my heart and hand 
To serve, in serving another land, 
Ideals kept bright that with you are dim; 
Here men can thrill to their country's hymn, 
For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise 
Is the same that fires the French these days, 
And, when the flag that they love goes by, 
With swelling bosom and moistened eye 
They can look, for they know that it floats there still 
By the might of their hands and the strength of their will, 
And through perils countless and trials unknown 
Its honor each man has made his own. 
They wanted the war no more than you, 
But they saw how the certain menace grew, 
And they gave two years of their youth or three 
The more to insure their liberty 
When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears 
Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers. 
They wanted the war no more than you, 
But when the dreadful summons blew 
And the time to settle the quarrel came 
They sprang to their guns, each man was game; 
And mark if they fight not to the last 
For their hearths, their altars, and their past: 
Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry 
For love of the country that WILL not die. 


O friends, in your fortunate present ease 
(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these), 
If you would see how a race can soar 
That has no love, but no fear, of war, 
How each can turn from his private role 
That all may act as a perfect whole, 
How men can live up to the place they claim 
And a nation, jealous of its good name, 
Be true to its proud inheritance, 
Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!


Written by Julia de Burgos | Create an image from this poem

To Julia De Burgos

Already the people murmur that I am your enemy
because they say that in verse I give the world your me.

They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.
Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice
because you are the dressing and the essence is me;
and the most profound abyss is spread between us.

You are the cold doll of social lies,
and me, the virile starburst of the human truth.

You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me;
in all my poems I undress my heart.

You are like your world, selfish; not me
who gambles everything betting on what I am.

You are only the ponderous lady very lady;
not me; I am life, strength, woman.

You belong to your husband, your master; not me;
I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all
I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought.

You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;
the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.

You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not me;
unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante
snorting horizons of God's justice.

You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say."

Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.

You nailed to the static ancestral dividend,
and me, a one in the numerical social divider,
we are the duel to death who fatally approaches.

When the multitudes run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices,
and with the torch of the seven virtues,
the multitudes run after the seven sins, 
against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,
I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.

Copyright (c) 2005, Julia de Burgos. All rights reserved.
Translation (c) 2005, Jack Agüeros.
Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Planetarium

 Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), 
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman 'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled


in those spaces of the mind

An eye,
'virile, precise and absolutely certain'
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last
'Let me not seem to have lived in vain'

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
Written by Stevie Smith | Create an image from this poem

Deeply Morbid

 Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters
Always out of office hours running with her social betters
But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her
Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her
It was that look within her eye
Why did it always seem to say goodbye?

Joan her name was and at lunchtime
Solitary solitary
She would go and watch the pictures In the National Gallery
All alone all alone
This time with no friend beside her
She would go and watch the pictures
All alone.

Will she leave her office colleagues
Will she leave her evening pleasures
Toil within a friendly bureau
Running later in her leisure?
All alone all alone
Before the pictures she seemed turned to stone.

Close upon the Turner pictures
Closer than a thought may go
Hangs her eye and all the colours
Leap into a special glow
All for her, all alone
All for her, all for Joan.

First the canvas where the ocean
Like a mighty animal
With a wicked motion
Leaps for sailors' funeral

Holds her painting. Oh the creature
Oh the wicked virile thing
With its skin of fleck and shadow
Stretching tightening over him.
Wild yet caputured wild yet caputured
By the painter, Joan is quite enraptured.

Now she edges from the canvas
To another loved more dearly
Where the awful light of purest
Sunshine falls across the spray,
There the burning coasts of fancy
Open to her pleasure lay.
All alone all alone
Come away come away
All alone.

Lady Mary, Lady Kitty
The Honourable Featherstonehaugh
Polly Tommy from the office
Which of these shall hold her now?
Come away come away
All alone.

The spray reached out and sucked her in
It was hardly a noticed thing
That Joan was there and is not now
(Oh go and tell young Featherstonehaugh)
Gone away, gone away
All alone.

She stood up straight
The sun fell down
There was no more of London Town
She went upon the painted shore
And there she walks for ever more
Happy quite
Beaming bright
In a happy happy light
All alone.

They say she was a morbid girl, no doubt of it
And what befell her clearly grew out of it
But I say she's a lucky one
To walk for ever in that sun
And as I bless sweet Turner's name
I wish that I could do the same.
Written by Sylvia Plath | Create an image from this poem

Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss

 Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

Our noble doctor claims the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Each virile bachelor dreads paralysis,
The old maid in the gable cries all day:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

The suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | Create an image from this poem

from The Tenth Elegy

 Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are:
the false silence of sound drowning sound,
and there--proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness--
the gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.
How an Angel would stamp out their market of solaces,
set up alongside their church bought to order:
clean and closed and woeful as a post office on Sunday.
Outside, though, there's always the billowing edge of the fair.
Swings of Freedom! High-divers and Jugglers of Zeal!
And the shooting gallery with its figures of idiot Happiness
which jump, quiver, and fall with a tinny ring
whenever some better marksman scores. Onward he lurches from cheers
to chance; for booths courting each curious taste
are drumming and barking. And then--for adults only--
a special show: how money breeds, its anatomy, not some charade:
money's genitals, everything, the whole act
from beginning to end--educational and guaranteed to make you
virile . . . . . . . . .
. . . . Oh, but just beyond that,
behind the last of the billboards, plastered with signs for "Deathless,"
that bitter beer which tastes sweet to those drinking it
as long as they have fresh distractions to chew . . . ,
just beyond those boards, just on the other side: things are real.
Children play, lovers hold each other, off in the shadows,
pensive, on the meager grass, while dogs obey nature.
The youth is drawn farther on; perhaps he's fallen in love
with a young Lament . . . . . He pursues her, enters meadowland.
She says:
"It's a long way. We live out there . . ."
 Where? And the youth follows.
Something in her bearing stirs him. Her shoulders, neck--,
perhaps she's of noble descent. Still, he leaves her, turns around,
glances back, waves . . . What's the use? She's a Lament.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry