Famous Blinded Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Blinded poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous blinded poems. These examples illustrate what a famous blinded poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Dedication

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 The morn arrived; his footstep quickly scared

The gentle sleep that round my senses clung,
And I, awak'ning, from my cottage fared,

And up the mountain side with light heart sprung;
At every step I felt my gaze ensnared

By new-born flow'rs that full of dew-drops hung;
The youthful day awoke with ecstacy,
And all things quicken'd were, to quicken me.

And as I mounted, from the...Read more of this...

The Ivy Crown

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 The whole process is a lie,
 unless,
 crowned by excess,
It break forcefully,
 one way or another,
 from its confinement—
or find a deeper well.
 Antony and Cleopatra
 were right;
they have shown
 the way. I love you
 or I do not live
at all.

Daffodil time
 is past. This is
 summer, summer!
the heart says,
 and not even the full of it.
 No doubts
are...Read more of this...

110. Epistle to a Young Friend

by Robert Burns
 May—, 1786.I LANG hae thought, my youthfu’ friend,
 A something to have sent you,
Tho’ it should serve nae ither end
 Than just a kind memento:
But how the subject-theme may gang,
 Let time and chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang:
 Perhaps turn out a sermon.


Ye’ll try the world soon, my lad;
 And, Andrew dear, believe me,
Ye’ll find mankind...Read more of this...

Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom

by Dorothy Parker
 Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend-
Bed awaits me at the end.

Though I go in pride and...Read more of this...

Blindness

by George William Russell
 OUR true hearts are forever lonely:
A wistfulness is in our thought:
Our lights are like the dawns which only
Seem bright to us and yet are not.


Something you see in me I wis not:
Another heart in you I guess:
A stranger’s lips—but thine I kiss not,
Erring in all my tenderness.


I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are...Read more of this...

Devils

by Alexander Pushkin
 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.

-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

Queen Hilda of Virland

by Henry Lawson
 PART I 
Queen Hilda rode along the lines, 
And she was young and fair; 
And forward on her shoulders fell 
The heavy braids of hair: 
No gold was ever dug from earth 
Like that burnished there – 
No sky so blue as were her eyes 
Had man seen anywhere. 

'Twas so her gay court poets sang, 
And we believed...Read more of this...

J--K. Huysmans

by Amy Lowell
 A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,
A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,
Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet
Across uneven pavements sunk in slime
To scatter and then quench itself in mist.
And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled
Against the jutting angle of a wall,
And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside
By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past,
A man was groping...Read more of this...

Ardour of senses, ardour of hearts

by Emile Verhaeren
Ardour of senses, ardour of hearts, ardour of souls, vain words created by those who diminish love; sun, you do not distinguish among your flames those of evening, of dawn, or of noon!
You walk blinded by your own light in the torrid azure under the great arched skies, knowing nothing, unless it be that your strength is all-powerful and that...Read more of this...

The Blinded Bourbons

by Victor Hugo
 ("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?") 
 
 {II. v., November, 1836.} 


 Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story? 
 Or said that France, low bowed before their glory, 
 One day would mindful be 
 Of them and of their mournful fate no more, 
 Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er 
...Read more of this...

Sonnet LVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LVII. L' ultimo, lasso! de' miei giorni allegri. HE REVERTS TO THEIR LAST MEETING.  The last, alas! of my bright days and glad—Few have been mine in this brief life below—[Pg 285]Had come; I felt my heart as tepid snow,Presage, perchance, of days both dark and sad.As...Read more of this...

The Old Poet

by Amy Levy
 I will be glad because it is the Spring;
I will forget the winter in my heart--
Dead hopes and withered promise; and will wring
A little joy from life ere life depart.

For spendthrift youth with passion-blinded eyes,
Stays not to see how woods and fields are bright;
He hears the phantom voices call, he flies
Upon the track of some unknown delight.

To him the...Read more of this...

Greater Love

by Wilfred Owen
 Red lips are not so red
 As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
 When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
 Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
 Cramps...Read more of this...

The Holy War

by Rudyard Kipling
 "For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, thatthe
walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."--Bunyan's Holy War.)


A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A privet under Fairfax,
A minister of God--


Two hundred years and thirty
 Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
 And Bunyan...Read more of this...

The Sun Rising

by John Donne
 Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...

Irkallas White Caves

by Kenneth Patchen
 I believe that a young woman
Is standing in a circle of lions
In the other side of the sky.

In a little while I must carry her the flowers
Which only fade here; and she will not cry
If my hands are not very full.

±

Fiery antlers toss within the forests of heaven
And ocean’s plaintive towns
Echo the tread of celestial feet.
O the beautiful eyes...Read more of this...

Blind

by Charles Webb
 It's okay if the world goes with Venetian;
Who cares what Italians don't see?--
Or with Man's Bluff (a temporary problem
Healed by shrieks and cheating)--or with date:
Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years.

But when an old woman, already deaf,
Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark
Won't disappear--when doctors call like tedious
Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital halls--
When,...Read more of this...

An American

by Rudyard Kipling
 If the Led Striker call it a strike,
 Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
 Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
 He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
 And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
 The...Read more of this...

Fatima

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O Love, Love, Love! O withering might!
O sun, that from thy noonday height
Shudderest when I strain my sight,
Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,
 Lo, falling from my constant mind,
 Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind,
 I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.

Last night I wasted hateful hours
Below the city's eastern towers:
I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:
I...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXII. Come va 'l mondo! or mi diletta e piace. HE BLESSES LAURA FOR HER VIRTUE.  How goes the world! now please me and delightWhat most displeased me: now I see and feelMy trials were vouchsafed me for my weal,That peace eternal should brief war requite.O hopes and wishes, ever...Read more of this...

The Derelict

by Rudyard Kipling
 And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea.
 SHIPPING NEWS.


 I was the staunchest of our fleet
 Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
 Into his pits he stamped my crew,
 Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

 Man made me, and my will
 Is to my maker still,
Whom...Read more of this...

Abuse of the Gospel

by William Cowper
 Too many, Lord, abuse Thy grace
In this licentious day,
And while they boast they see Thy face,
They turn their own away.

Thy book displays a gracious light
That can the blind restore;
But these are dazzled by the sight,
And blinded still the more.

The pardon such presume upon,
They do not beg but steal;
And when they plead it at Thy throne,
Oh! where's the Spirit's seal?

Was...Read more of this...

To Stella Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems

by Jonathan Swift
 As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of...Read more of this...

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