Famous Chrysalis Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Chrysalis poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous chrysalis poems. These examples illustrate what a famous chrysalis poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ll feel the light come stealing in,
That drives away the cloud of sin
And breaks its power.
And you shall burst your chrysalis,
And wing away to realms of bliss,
Untrammelled, pure, divinely free,
Above all earth's anxiety
From that same hour.
...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...dreams can't go on being lived
the dreamers' necks having been twisted
(visions root in mists and spread outwards)
the chrysalis has to be taken apart
for the wings to erupt into freedom
ideas grow from the flesh they've grown into
murder's a godfather to birth
and the born sing illiterate songs
they intend as a new kind of language
only as their hands bloom red
with their own brand of murders
will their words simmer down to the same
but their rawness is something to hope...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ed that I regret
This enterprise no more than I regret
My life; and I am glad that I was born.
That evening, at “The Chrysalis,” I found
The faces of my comrades all suffused
With what I chose then to denominate
Superfluous good feeling. In return,
They loaded me with titles of odd form
And unexemplified significance,
Like “Bellows-mender to Prince Æolus,”
“Pipe-filler to the Hoboscholiast,”
“Bread-fruit for the Non-Doing,” with one more
That I remember, and a dozen...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...f all I believe
In gods of bitter dullness,
Cruel local gods
Who scared my childhood.
II
I've seen people put
A chrysalis in a match-box,
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come."
But when it broke its shell
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
And tried to climb to the light
For space to dry its wings.
That's how I was.
Somebody found my chrysalis
And shut it in a match-box.
My shrivelled wings were beaten,
Shed their colours in ...Read more of this...
by
Aldington, Richard
...all the world suspect?
An hour, and gay on every tree
Your secret, perched in ecstasy
Defies imprisonment!
An hour in Chrysalis to pass,
Then gay above receding grass
A Butterfly to go!
A moment to interrogate,
Then wiser than a "Surrogate,"
The Universe to know!...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...behind --
Death's large -- Democratic fingers
Rub away the Brand --
If Circassian -- He is careless --
If He put away
Chrysalis of Blonde -- or Umber --
Equal Butterfly --
They emerge from His Obscuring --
What Death -- knows so well --
Our minuter intuitions --
Deem unplausible --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...or them down to its core;
Leave more than the painter's or poet's snail-bright trail on a friable leaf;
Can build their chrysalis round them - stand in their sculpture's belly.
They see through stone, they cage and partition air, they cross-rig space
With footholds, planks for a dance; yet their maze, their flying trapeze
Is pinned to the centre. They write their euclidean music standing
With a hand on a cornice of cloud, themselves set fast, earth-square....Read more of this...
by
Tessimond, A S J
...n which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won't be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.
Sir, you with the red snippers
in your hand, hovering over me,
casting your shadow, I greet you,
whether you come as an angel of death
or of mercy. But tell me,
before you choose to slice me in two:
Who can understand the ways
of the Great Worm in the...Read more of this...
by
Kunitz, Stanley
...h.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hat chamber is the ghostly!”
Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous, --no web, no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.
The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.
One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,
Embroidered on th...Read more of this...
by
Hood, Thomas
...the regret they leave remains alone.
And there lay Visions swift and sweet and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis;--
Some eager to burst forth; some weak and faint
With the soft burden of intensest bliss
It is their work to bear to many a saint
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's; and others, white, green, grey, and black,
And of all shapes:--and each was at her beck.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...-- be --
The Waves grew sleepy -- Breath -- did not --
The Winds -- like Children -- lulled --
Then Sunrise kissed my Chrysalis --
And I stood up -- and lived --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...,
Measures his own length on the garden wall
And breaks his shell in the last shocked beginning;
A crocodile before the chrysalis,
Before the fall from love the flying heartbone,
Winged like a sabbath ass this children's piece
Uncredited blows Jericho on Eden.
The insect fable is the certain promise.
Death: death of Hamlet and the nightmare madmen,
An air-drawn windmill on a wooden horse,
John's beast, Job's patience, and the fibs of vision,
Greek in the Irish sea the agele...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
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