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Famous Castle Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before 

The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.

The Persons

 The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of THYRSIS.
COMUS, with his Crew.
The LADY.
FIRST BROTHER.
SECOND BROTHER.
SABRINA, the Nymph.

The Chief Persons which presented were:—

The Lord Brackley;
Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother;
The ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...ew; in that deserted place 
 A lone, abandoned hall with light aglow 
 The long neglect of centuries did show. 
 The castle-towers of Corbus in decay 
 Were girt by weeds and growths that had their way. 
 Couch-grass and ivy, and wild eglantine 
 In subtle scaling warfare all combine. 
 Subject to such attacks three hundred years, 
 The donjon yields, and ruin now appears, 
 E'en as by leprosy the wild boars die, 
 In moat the crumbled battlements now lie; 
 Around...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...a night! 
It was a moment only for the good: 
So Lara deem'd, nor longer there he stood, 
But turn'd in silence to his castle-gate; 
Such scene his soul no more could contemplate. 
Such scene reminded him of other days, 
Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze, 
Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now — 
No — no — the storm may beat upon his brow, 
Unfelt — unsparing — but a night like this, 
A night of beauty mock'd such breast as his. 

XI. 

He...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ed, 
When men and women took each other's word. 

Paint then again Her Highness to the life, 
Philosopher beyond Newcastle's wife. 
She, nak'd, can Archimedes self put down, 
For an experiment upon the crown, 
She p?rfected that engine, oft assayed, 
How after childbirth to renew a maid, 
And found how royal heirs might be matured 
In fewer months than mothers once endured. 
Hence Crowther made the rare inventress free 
Of's Higness's Royal Society-- 
Happiest of ...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...le rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
 With its horns through mist and the castle
 Brown as owls
 But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
 There could I marvel
 My birthday
 Away but the weather turned around.

 It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
 Streamed again a wonder of summer
 With apple...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan



...and tired, the games of an old man.
What we need now is this unlikely
Challenger pounding on the gates of an amazed
Castle. Your argument, Francesco,
Had begun to grow stale as no answer
Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now
Into dust, that only means its time had come
Some time ago, but look now, and listen:
It may be that another life is stocked there
In recesses no one knew of; that it,
Not we, are the change; that we are in fact it
If we could get b...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John
...iend and foe thither, 
The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty, 
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley;
The sack of an old city in its time, 
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, 
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, 
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, 
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,
The he...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...s gate, and on Mount Moriah; 
The same on the walls of your Gothic European Cathedrals, and German, French and Spanish
 Castles; 
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere—a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. 

3
Responsive to our summons, 
Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,
Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation, 

She comes! this famous Female—as was indeed to be expected; 
(For who, so-ever youthful, ’cute and handsome, would wish to stay in man...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...br> 

A sudden rush from the stairway, 
A sudden raid from the hall! 
By three doors left unguarded 
They enter my castle wall! 

They climb up into my turret 
O'er the arms and back of my chair; 
If I try to escape, they surround me; 
They seem to be everywhere. 

They almost devour me with kisses, 
Their arms about me entwine, 
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! 

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 
Because you have...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...disburthen his full soul  Of all its music! And I know a grove  Of large extent, hard by a castle huge  Which the great lord inhabits not: and so  This grove is wild with tangling underwood,  And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,  Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.  But never elsewhere in one place I knew  So many Nightingales: and far and near<...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
..., too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!

II.

Ours is a great wild country:
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the p...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...,
Unsullied by man's mortal overthrow. 

32
Thus to be humbled: 'tis that ranging pride
No refuge hath; that in his castle strong
Brave reason sits beleaguer'd, who so long
Kept field, but now must starve where he doth hide;
That industry, who once the foe defied,
Lies slaughter'd in the trenches; that the throng
Of idle fancies pipe their foolish song,
Where late the puissant captains fought and died. 
Thus to be humbled: 'tis to be undone;
A forest fell'd; a city ra...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...e was I disarmed 
By maidens each as fair as any flower: 
But when they led me into hall, behold, 
The Princess of that castle was the one, 
Brother, and that one only, who had ever 
Made my heart leap; for when I moved of old 
A slender page about her father's hall, 
And she a slender maiden, all my heart 
Went after her with longing: yet we twain 
Had never kissed a kiss, or vowed a vow. 
And now I came upon her once again, 
And one had wedded her, and he was dead, 
And...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...p; "Or him that wicked pony's carried  To the dark cave, the goblins' hall,  Or in the castle he's pursuing,  Among the ghosts, his own undoing;  Or playing with the waterfall,"   At poor old Susan then she railed,  While to the town she posts away;  "If Susan had not been so ill,  Alas! I should have had him still,  My Johnny, till my dyin...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...btle, well-arranged
And as an angel heavenly she sung.
The greate tower, that was so thick and strong,
Which of the castle was the chief dungeon
(Where as these knightes weren in prison,
Of which I tolde you, and telle shall),
Was even joinant* to the garden wall, *adjoining
There as this Emily had her playing.

Bright was the sun, and clear that morrowning,
And Palamon, this woful prisoner,
As was his wont, by leave of his gaoler,
Was ris'n, and roamed in a chamb...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...minaret,
     Wild crests as pagod ever decked,
     Or mosque of Eastern architect.
     Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
     Nor lacked they many a banner fair;
     For, from their shivered brows displayed,
     Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
     All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen,
     The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
     kind creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
     Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
     XII.

     Boon nature scatter...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...

She drived forth into our ocean
Throughout our wilde sea, till at the last
Under an hold*, that nempnen** I not can, *castle **name
Far in Northumberland, the wave her cast
And in the sand her ship sticked so fast
That thennes would it not in all a tide: 
The will of Christ was that she should abide.

The Constable of the castle down did fare* *go
To see this wreck, and all the ship he sought*, *searched
And found this weary woman full of care;
He found also the tre...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...br>

Aherne. Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,
Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall
Beside the castle door, where all is stark
Austerity, a place set out for wisdom
That he will never find; I'd play a part;
He would never know me after all these years
But take me for some drunken countryman:
I'd stand and mutter there until he caught
"Hunchback and Sant and Fool,' and that they came
Under the three last crescents of the moon.
And then I'd stagger ...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...ance,
Some for her handes and her armes smale:
Thus goes all to the devil, by thy tale;
Thou say'st, men may not keep a castle wall
That may be so assailed *over all.* *everywhere*
And if that she be foul, thou say'st that she
Coveteth every man that she may see;
For as a spaniel she will on him leap,
Till she may finde some man her to cheap;* *buy
And none so grey goose goes there in the lake,
(So say'st thou) that will be without a make.* *mate
And say'st, it is a h...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready. The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directi...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry