Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Circular Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...lings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown-
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air,
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
Save, when, between th' empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit Flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that greyish green
That Nature loves the best Beauty...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan



...Between going and staying the day wavers, 
in love with its own transparency. 
The circular afternoon is now a bay 
where the world in stillness rocks. 

All is visible and all elusive, 
all is near and can't be touched. 

Paper, book, pencil, glass, 
rest in the shade of their names. 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 
the same unchanging syllable of blood. 

The light turns the indifferent wall 
into a ghostly theater of reflections....Read more of this...
by Paz, Octavio
...sounding high. 

Chorus 

And thew's a wood sawmill by the roadway,
And the noise can be heard by night and day,
As the circular saw wheels round and round,
Making the village with its echoes resound. 

Chorus 

And in the harvest time on a fine summer morn
The Howe looks most beautiful when the corn is shorn;
And to hear the beautiful lark singing on high
Will make you exclaim, "Dull care, good-bye."...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...(A Christmas Circular Letter)


THE CITY had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He p...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...y boding heart,
Unhired, unaccompanied, sing
A strain not meet for the dance.
Yes even the palace appears
To my yoke of circular eyes
(The right, nor omit I the left)
Like a slaughterhouse, so to speak,
Garnished with woolly deaths
And many sphipwrecks of cows.
I therefore in a Cissian strain lament:
And to the rapid
Loud, linen-tattering thumps upon my chest
Resounds in concert
The battering of my unlucky head.

ERIPHYLE (within): O, I am smitten with a hatchet's jaw;
And th...Read more of this...
by Housman, A E



...d do 
And claim a title in him by their praise. 

5

How shall I then begin, or where conclude 
To draw a fame so truly circular? 
For in a round what order can be shew'd, 
Where all the parts so equal perfect are? 

6

His grandeur he deriv'd from Heav'n alone, 
For he was great ere fortune made him so, 
And wars like mists that rise against the sun 
Made him but greater seem, not greater grown. 

7

No borrow'd bays his temples did adorn, 
But to our crown he did fresh jewe...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John
...from his contemporaries,
Neglected by the young,
Because of these reveries.

Brennbaum. 

The sky-like limpid eyes,
The circular infant's face,
The stiffness from spats to collar
Never relaxing into grace;

The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,
Showed only when the daylight fell
Level across the face
Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable".

Mr. Nixon 

In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer
Dangers of delay. "C...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra
...knew such harmony alone 
Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union. 

At last surrounds their sight 
A Globe of circular light, 
 That with long beams the shame-fac't night array'd, 
The helmed Cherubim 
And sworded Seraphim, 
 Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid, 
Harping in loud and solemn quire, 
With unexpressive notes to Heav'ns new-born Heir. 

Such musick (as 'tis said) 
Before was never made, 
 But when of old the sons of morning sung, 
While the ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your one ghost pierced, his pointed ferrule,
Brass and...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan
...onder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to avoid!
Psychology which explains everything
explains nothing
and we are still in doubt.
Eve: beautiful woman --
I have seen her
when she was so handsome
she gave me a start,
able to write simultaneously
in three languages --
English, German and French
and t...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne
...ness, does it
Hang motionless in dying vision before
It knows it will accept the mortal limit,
And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore

The breath of earth?Of rock?Of rot?Of other such
Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?...Read more of this...
by Warren, Robert Penn
...nmate bad! and toward Eve 
Addressed his way: not with indented wave, 
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, 
Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape 
And lovely; never since of serpent-kind 
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed, 
Hermione an...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...
 per ch'un nasce Solone e altro Serse,
altro Melchised?ch e altro quello
che, volando per l'aere, il figlio perse.
 La circular natura, ch'? suggello
a la cera mortal, fa ben sua arte,
ma non distingue l'un da l'altro ostello.
 Quinci addivien ch'Esa? si diparte
per seme da Iac?b; e vien Quirino
da s? vil padre, che si rende a Marte.
 Natura generata il suo cammino
simil farebbe sempre a' generanti,
se non vincesse il proveder divino.
 Or quel che t'era dietro t'? davanti:
m...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...creation.

Whatever you hoped,
you will not find yourselves in the garden,
among the growing plants.
Your lives are not circular like theirs:

your lives are the bird's flight
which begins and ends in stillness--
which begins and ends, in form echoing
this arc from the white birch
to the apple tree....Read more of this...
by Gluck, Louise
...e says:
'Your bath is ready, darling. Don't wait too long.'
But he has already drawn away to the window
And through its circular opening looks,
As a man into the pages of his death.
'Terrible horsemen are setting fire to the earth.
Houses are burning ... the people fly before
The red spears of a speckled madness . . .'
'Please, dear,' interrupts the original woman,
'We cannot help them ... Under the cancerous foot
Of their hatred, they were born to perish -
Like beasts in a w...Read more of this...
by Patchen, Kenneth
...t 
Was heard a loud "Tut-Tut!"

Said A to B, "I don't like C;
His manners are a lack.
For all I ever see of C
Is a semi-circular back!"

"I disagree," said D to B,
"I've never found C so.
From where I stand he seems to be
An uncompleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't d...Read more of this...
by Milligan, Spike
...intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing—the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself—but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young—yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
T...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union.

XI

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light, 
That with long beams the shame faced night arrayed
The helmed Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes to Heav'ns new-born Heir.

XII

Such Musick (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...alvador, pray for us,St. Thomas, San Domingo, 
ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia 
of no eyes," and when the circular chaplet 
reached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidad 
they began again, their knees drilled into stone, 
where Colon had begun, with San Salvador's bead, 
beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians. 
And while they prayed for an economic miracle, 
ulcers formed on the municipal portraits, 
the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels,...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...m where for land of shadows
You had left, my soothing one.



x x x

I have visions of hilly Pavlovsk,
Meadow circular, water dead,
With most heavy and most shady,
All of this I will never forget.

In the cast-iron gates you will enter,
Blissful tremor the flesh does rile,
You don't live, but you're screaming and ranting
Or you live in another style.

In late autumn fresh and biting
Wanders wind, for its loneliness glad.
In white gowns dressed the black f...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Circular poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things