Famous Castles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Gypsy and the Wind

by Federico García Lorca
 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...Read more of this...

The Beauteous Flower

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 SONG OF THE IMPRISONED COUNT.

COUNT.

I KNOW a flower of beauty rare,

Ah, how I hold it dear!
To seek it I would fain repair,

Were I not prison'd here.
My sorrow sore oppresses me,
For when I was at liberty,

I had it close beside me.

Though from this castle's walls so steep

I cast mine eyes around,
And gaze oft from the lofty keep,

The flower can not...Read more of this...

While the Fates Sleep

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Come, let us to the sunways of the west,
Hasten, while crystal dews the rose-cups fill,
Let us dream dreams again in our blithe quest
O'er whispering wold and hill.
Castles of air yon wimpling valleys keep 
Where milk-white mist steals from the purpling sea,
They shall be ours in the moon's wizardry,
While the fates, wearied, sleep. 

The viewless spirit of the wind will...Read more of this...

To a Friend

by Amy Lowell
 I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at...Read more of this...

Hospital Window

by Allen Ginsberg
At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke 
ribbons past Chrysler Building's silver fins 
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's 
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks 
black and white apartmenting veil'd sky over Manhattan, 
offices new built dark glassed in blueish heaven--The East 
50's & 60's covered with castles & watertowers, seven storied 
tar-topped house-banks over York Avenue, late may-green...Read more of this...

Welsh Landscape

by R S Thomas
 To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for...Read more of this...

The Playground of Life XIX

by Kahlil Gibran
 One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty 
And Love is worth a full century of glory 
Given by the frightened weak to the strong. 


From that hour comes man's Truth; and 
During that century Truth sleeps between 
The restless arms of disturbing dreams. 


In that hour the soul sees for herself 
The Natural Law, and for that century...Read more of this...

The Only Child

by Katharine Tynan
 Lest he miss other children, lo! 
His angel is his playfellow. 
A riotous angel two years old, 
With wings of rose and curls of gold. 

There on the nursery floor together 
They play when it is rainy weather, 
Building brick castles with much pain, 
Only to knock them down again. 

Two golden heads together look 
An hour long o'er...Read more of this...

A Lesson In Vengeance

by Sylvia Plath
 In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones...Read more of this...

to the seaside

by Rg Gregory
 to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind

to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands

to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel

to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw

(to the...Read more of this...

And Yet The Books

by Czeslaw Milosz
 And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are, ” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away...Read more of this...

The Trees

by Philip Larkin
 The trees are coming into leaf 
Like something almost being said; 
The recent buds relax and spread, 
Their greenness is a kind of grief. 

Is it that they are born again 
And we grow old? No, they die too, 
Their yearly trick of looking new 
Is written down in rings of grain. 

Yet still the unresting castles thresh 
In...Read more of this...

At an Old Drawer

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Before this scarf was faded,
What hours of mirth it knew;
How gayly it paraded
From smiling eyes to view.
The days were tinged with glory,
The nights too quickly sped,
And life was like a story
Where all the people wed.

Before this rosebud wilted,
How passionately sweet
The wild waltz smelled and lilted
In time for flying feet;
How loud the bassoons muttered,
The horns grew madly shrill,
And oh! the...Read more of this...

84. Address to the Deil

by Robert Burns
 O THOU! whatever title suit thee—
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie,
Wha in yon cavern grim an’ sootie,
 Clos’d under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie,
 To scaud poor wretches!


Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee,
An’ let poor damned bodies be;
I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie,
 Ev’n to a deil,
To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me,
 An’ hear us...Read more of this...

Block City

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, 
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbor as well where my vessels...Read more of this...

Winter Flowers

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The summer queen has many flowers
  To deck her sunny hair,
And trailing grasses, pure and sweet,
  To scent the heavy air;
And upward through the misty sky
  There is a glory too,
Of floating clouds and rifts of gold
  And depths of smiling blue.
Yet winter, too, can boast a wealth
  Of flowers pure and white;
A kingly crown...Read more of this...

An American in Europe

by Henry Van Dyke
 'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, 
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, --
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. 

So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long...Read more of this...

The Dead King

by Rudyard Kipling
 (EDWARD VII.)

1910


Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?
And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run?
Let him approach. It is proven here
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done.

For to him above all was Life good, above all...Read more of this...

The Old Apple-tree

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a memory keeps a-runnin'
Through my weary head to-night,
An' I see a picture dancin'
In the fire-flames' ruddy light;
'Tis the picture of an orchard
Wrapped in autumn's purple haze,
With the tender light about it
That I loved in other days.
An' a-standin' in a corner
Once again I seem to see
The verdant leaves an' branches
Of an old apple-tree.
You perhaps would call it ugly,
An' I don't...Read more of this...

To A Sad Daughter

by Michael Ondaatje
 All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
or assaults the coach.

When I thought of daughters
I wasn't expecting this
but I like this more.
I like all your faults
even...Read more of this...

America for Me

by Henry Van Dyke
 'Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down 
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown, 
To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings 
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things. 

So it's home again, and home again, America for me! 
My heart is turning home again and there I...Read more of this...

Poems in Three Parts

by Robert Bly
1

Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh 
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.

2

Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals 
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of...Read more of this...

The Kitchen Chimney

by Robert Frost
 Builder, in building the little house,
In every way you may please yourself;
But please please me in the kitchen chimney:
Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.

However far you must go for bricks,
Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,
But me enough for a full-length chimney,
And build the chimney clear from the ground.

It's not that I'm greatly afraid of fire,
But I...Read more of this...

The Revenge - A Ballad of the Fleet

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 
'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted' 
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; 
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, 
And the half my men...Read more of this...

The Invincible Armada

by Friedrich von Schiller
 She comes, she comes--the burden of the deeps!
Beneath her wails the universal sea!
With clanking chains and a new god, she sweeps,
And with a thousand thunders, unto thee!
The ocean-castles and the floating hosts--
Ne'er on their like looked the wild water!--Well
May man the monster name "Invincible."
O'er shuddering waves she gathers to thy coasts!
The horror that she spreads can claim
Just title to...Read more of this...

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