Famous Circles Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Circles poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous circles poems. These examples illustrate what a famous circles poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Alfonsina Storni
You said the word that enamors
My hearing. You already forgot. Good.
Sleep peacefully. Your face should
Be serene and beautiful at all hours.
When the seductive mouth enchants
It should be fresh, your speech pleasant;
For your office as lover it's not good
That many tears come from your face.
More glorious destinies reclaim you
That were brought, between the black wells
Of the dark circles beneath your...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;
They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,
And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.
I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;
If I...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it it should always be.
On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in...Read more of this...
by
Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Being a father
Is quite a bother.
You are as free as air
With time to spare,
You're a fiscal rocket
With change in your pocket,
And then one morn
A child is born.
Your life has been runcible,
Irresponsible,
Like an arrow or javelin
You've been constantly travelin'.
But mostly, I daresay,
Without a chaise percée,
To which by comparison
Nothing's embarison.
But all children matures,
Maybe even yours.
You improve them mentally
And straighten them dentally,
They...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!
Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear; -
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
And she sent him word she loved him so much,
So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
All was nothing if her love for him was not first
Of all; the patter of her lips ran, I love him,
I love...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
How the handsome Yenadizze
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding;
How the gentle Chibiabos,
He the sweetest of musicians,
Sang his songs of love and longing;
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
Told his tales of strange adventure,
That the feast might be more joyous,
That the time might pass more gayly,
And...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,
confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief.
Don't they depend on a compass
lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate
their true course? How many ways,
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
girl
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it...Read more of this...
by
Mihai Eminescu
On the pond bright sparks are falling,
Wavelets in the sunlight glisten ;
Gazing on the woods with rapture ,
Do I let my spirit capture
Drowsiness, and lie and listen...
Quails are calling.
All the silent water sleeping
Of the streams and of the rivers ;
Only where the sun is shining
Thousand circles there designing
As with...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni)
1
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, - with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.
But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The Christian race.
Isa. 40:28-31.
Awake, our souls; away, our fears,
Let every trembling thought begone;
Awake, and run the heav'nly race,
And put a cheerful courage on.
True, 'tis a strait and thorny road,
And mortal spirits tire and faint;
But they forget the mighty God,
That feeds the strength of every saint.
Thee, mighty God! whose matchless power
Is ever new and ever young,
And firm endures, while...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
GIFT from the cold and silent Past!
A relic to the present cast,
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
BROTHER, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother--
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you--
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Where the moon slants and wavers....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Chatterton
Where the rough Caigra rolls the surgy wave,
Urging his thunders thro' the echoing cave;
Where the sharp rocks, in distant horror seen,
Drive the white currents thro' the spreading green;
Where the loud tiger, pawing in his rage,
Bids the black archers of the wilds engage;
Stretch'd on the sand, two panting warriors lay,
In all the burning...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Acacia, burnt myrrh, velvet, pricky stings.
-”I'm not so young but not so very old,
said screwed-up lovely 23.
A final sense of being right out in the cold,
unkissed.
(-”My psychiatrist can lick your psychiatrist.) Women get under
things.
All these old criminals sooner or later
have had it. I've been reading old journals.
Gottwald & Co., out of business now.
Thick chests quit. Double agent,...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace
All our pleasures belong.
Though Ceres may spread
All her gifts on the shrine,
Though the glass may be red
With the blush of the vine,
What boots--if the while
Fall no spark on the hearth;
If...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
THE DREAM
This has nothing to do with war
or the end of the world. She
dreams there are gray starlings
on the winter lawn and the buds
of next year's oranges alongside
this year's oranges, and the sun
is still up, a watery circle
of fire settling into the sky
at dinner time, but there's no
flame racing through...Read more of this...
by
Howard Nemerov
Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.
We stand while he's enraptured by a bush
Till I can't stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel O’Lang.
Monsieur O’Lang had sympathy to such a great degree.
No virtuoso ever...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
"Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!
Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten.
There was peace among the nations;
Unmolested roved the hunters,
Built the birch canoe for sailing,
Caught the...Read more of this...
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