Famous Cameo Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Charity

by Robert William Service
 The Princess was of ancient line,
 Of royal race was she;
Like cameo her face was fine,
 With sad serentiy:
Yet bent she toiled with dimming eye,
 Her rice and milk to buy.

With lacework that for pity plead,
 So out of date it seemed,
She sought to make her daily bread,
 As of her past she dreamed:
And though sometimes I heard her...Read more of this...

The Dame of Athelhall

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said, 
 "In one brief hour? 
And away with thee from a loveless bed 
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower, 
And be thine own unseparated, 
 And challenge the world's white glower? 

II 

She quickened her feet, and met him where 
 They had predesigned: 
And they clasped, and...Read more of this...

Dream Song 7: The Prisoner of Shark Island with Paul Muni

by John Berryman
 Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers
Mr Deeds' tuba, & the Cameo,
& the race in Ben Hur,-”The Lost World, with sound,
& The Man from Blankey's, which he did not dig,
nor did he understand one caption of,
bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed.

Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One.
Fúnnee; he don't féel so.
He just stuck around.
The German & the Russian...Read more of this...

Lady On A Balcony

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Suddenly she steps, wrapped into the wind,
brightly into brightness, as if singled out,
while now the room as though cut to fit
behind her fills the door

darkly like the ground of cameo,
that lets a glimmer through at the edges;
and you think the evening wasn't there
before she stepped out, and on the railing

set forth just a little of herself,
just her hands, --to...Read more of this...

Convalescence

by Amy Lowell
 From out the dragging vastness of the sea,
Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands,
He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands
One moment, white and dripping, silently,
Cut like a cameo in lazuli,
Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands
Prone in the jeering water, and his hands
Clutch for support where no support can be.
So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,
He...Read more of this...

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