Famous Brazen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Book of Urizen: Chapter VII

by William Blake
 1. They named the child Orc, he grew
Fed with milk of Enitharmon

2. Los awoke her; O sorrow & pain!
A tight'ning girdle grew,
Around his bosom. In sobbings 
He burst the girdle in twain,
But still another girdle
Opressd his bosom, In sobbings
Again he burst it. Again
Another girdle succeeds 
The girdle was form'd by day;
By night was burst in twain.

3. These falling down...Read more of this...

Winter Journey Over The Hartz Mountains

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [The following explanation is necessary, in order 
to make this ode in any way intelligible. The Poet is supposed to 
leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition 
in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal 
friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode 
alternately describes, in a...Read more of this...

My prayers must meet a brazen heaven

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above; 
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love, 
But feel the long success of sin.

My heaven is brass and iron my earth: 
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay, 
So harden'd is...Read more of this...

St. Winefreds Well

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W....Read more of this...

Music

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 My friend went to the piano; spun the stool 
A little higher; left his pipe to cool; 
Picked up a fat green volume from the chest; 
And propped it open. 
Whitely without rest, 
His fingers swept the keys that flashed like swords, 
. . . And to the brute drums of barbarian hordes, 
Roaring and thunderous and weapon-bare, 
An...Read more of this...

Respondez!

by Walt Whitman
 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind!...Read more of this...

The Lady of Shalott

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
ON either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky; 
And thro' the field the road runs by 
To many-tower'd Camelot; 5 
And up and down the people go, 
Gazing where the lilies blow 
Round an island there below, 
The island of Shalott. 

Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 10 
Little breezes...Read more of this...

Hear ye Ladies

by John Gould Fletcher
 HEAR, ye ladies that despise
 What the mighty Love has done;
Fear examples and be wise:
 Fair Callisto was a nun;
Leda, sailing on the stream
 To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
 Doted on a silver swan;
 Danae, in a brazen tower,
 Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear, ye ladies that are coy,
 What the mighty...Read more of this...

The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time

by Richard Aldington
 Zeus, 
Brazen-thunder-hurler, 
Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos, 
Send vengeance on these Oreads 
Who strew 
White frozen flecks of mist and cloud 
Over the brown trees and the tufted grass 
Of the meadows, where the stream 
Runs black through shining banks 
Of bluish white. 

Zeus, 
Are the halls of heaven broken up 
That you flake down upon me 
Feather-strips of marble? 

Dis and...Read more of this...

Marriage And Feasts

by Victor Hugo
 ("La salle est magnifique.") 
 
 {IV. Aug. 23, 1839.} 


 The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright— 
 The feast to pampered palate gives delight— 
 The sated guests pick at the spicy food, 
 And drink profusely, for the cheer is good; 
 And at that table—where the wise are few— 
 Both sexes and all...Read more of this...

Destiny

by Gregory Corso
 1856 

Paris, from throats of iron, silver, brass, 
Joy-thundering cannon, blent with chiming bells, 
And martial strains, the full-voiced pæan swells. 
The air is starred with flags, the chanted mass 
Throngs all the churches, yet the broad streets swarm 
With glad-eyed groups who chatter, laugh, and pass, 
In holiday confusion, class with class. 
And over all the spring, the...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVIII: You That With Allegorys Curious Frame

by Sir Philip Sidney
 You that with allegory's curious frame, 
Of others' children changelings use to make, 
With me those pains for God's sake do not take: 
I list not dig so deep for brazen fame. 

When I say "Stella," I do mean the same 
Princess of Beauty, for whose only sake 
The reins of Love I love, though never slake, 
And joy...Read more of this...

The Arsenal at Springfield

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling  
Like a huge organ rise the burnished arms; 
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise how wild and dreary 5 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful...Read more of this...

The Broken Balance

by Robinson Jeffers
 I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...

Cuchulans Fight With The Sea

by William Butler Yeats
 A man came slowly from the setting sun,
To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun,
And said, 'I am that swineherd whom you bid
Go watch the road between the wood and tide,
But now I have no need to watch it more.'

Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,
And raising arms all raddled with the dye,
Parted her lips with a loud sudden...Read more of this...

Love Among The Ruins

by Robert Browning
 I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
 Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
 Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
 As they crop— 
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
 (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
 Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
 Peace or war.

II

Now—the country...Read more of this...

Rome Unvisited

by Oscar Wilde
 I.


The corn has turned from grey to red,
Since first my spirit wandered forth
From the drear cities of the north,
And to Italia's mountains fled.

And here I set my face towards home,
For all my pilgrimage is done,
Although, methinks, yon blood-red sun
Marshals the way to Holy Rome.

O Blessed Lady, who dost hold
Upon the seven hills thy reign!
O Mother without blot or stain,
Crowned...Read more of this...

Panthea

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight, -
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse...Read more of this...

Hymn 112

by Isaac Watts
 The brazen serpent; or, Looking to Jesus.

John 3:14-16. 

So did the Hebrew prophet raise
The brazen serpent high,
The wounded felt immediate ease,
The camp forbore to die.

"Look upward in the dying hour,
And live," the prophet cries;
But Christ performs a nobler cure,
When Faith lifts up her eyes.

High on the cross the Savior hung,
High in the heav'ns he reigns:
Here sinners by th' old...Read more of this...

Genius

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to...Read more of this...

Julot The Apache

by Robert William Service
 You've heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his mome. . . .
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, --
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.
From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,
With every trick of twist and kick, a...Read more of this...

Baile And Aillinn

by William Butler Yeats
 ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.

 I hardly hear the curlew cry,
 Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
 Before my thoughts begin to run
...Read more of this...

The Godlike

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 NOBLE be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguisheth him
From all the beings
Unto us known.

Hail to the beings,
Unknown and glorious,
Whom we forebode!
From his example
Learn we to know them!

For unfeeling
Nature is ever:
On bad and on good
The sun alike shineth;
And on the wicked,
As on the best,
The moon and stars gleam.

Tempest and torrent,
Thunder and hail,
Roar on their path,
Seizing the while,
As they haste onward,
One after...Read more of this...

Incendiary

by Vernon Scannell
 That one small boy with a face like pallid cheese 
And burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze 
As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold 
And zany yellow as the one that spoiled 
Three thousand guineas' worth of property 
And crops at Godwin's Farm on Saturday 
Is frightening---as fact and metaphor: 
An ordinary match intended for 
The...Read more of this...

Gloucester Moods

by William Vaughn Moody
 A mile behind is Gloucester town 
Where the flishing fleets put in, 
A mile ahead the land dips down 
And the woods and farms begin. 
Here, where the moors stretch free 
In the high blue afternoon, 
Are the marching sun and talking sea, 
And the racing winds that wheel and flee 
On the flying heels of June. 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is...Read more of this...

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