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Famous Clef Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilbur, Richard
...ay now appear; 

And who but those unfathomably deaf
Who quiet all this ground
Could catch, within the ear's diminished clef, 
A music innocent of time and sound? 

What do the living hear, then, when the bell
Hangs plumb within the tower
Of the still church, and still their thoughts compel
Pure tollings that intend no mortal hour? 

As when a ferry for the shore of death
Glides looming toward the dock, 
Her engines cut, her spirits bating breath
As the ranked pilings narrow ...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...XXVI.

Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,
Proved a mere mountain in labour?
Better submit; try again; what's the clef?
'Faith, 'tis no trifle for pipe and for tabor---
Four flats, the minor in F.

XXVII.

Friend, your fugue taxes the finger
Learning it once, who would lose it?
Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,
Truth's golden o'er us although we refuse it---
Nature, thro' cobwebs we string her.

XXVIII.

Hugues! I advise _Me Pn_
(Counterpoint gl...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song, 
As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of
 the future. 

A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, 
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, 
All distances of place, however wide, 
All distances of time—all inanimate forms, 
All Souls—all living bodies, though...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ow they fell
Like Litanies of Lead --

On here and there -- a creature --
They'd modify the Glee
To fit some Crucifixal Clef --
Some Key of Calvary --...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs