Famous Curtained Poems by Famous Poets

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

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from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

Dead

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A knock is at her door, but she is weak;
Strange dews have washed the paint streaks from her cheek;
She does not rise, but, ah, this friend is known,
And knows that he will find her all alone.
So opens he the door, and with soft tread
Goes straightway to the richly curtained bed.
His soft hand on her dewy head he lays.
A strange white...Read more of this...

Come Rest Awhile

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Come, rest awhile, and let us idly stray 
In glimmering valleys, cool and far away. 

Come from the greedy mart, the troubled street, 
And listen to the music, faint and sweet, 

That echoes ever to a listening ear, 
Unheard by those who will not pause to hear­ 

The wayward chimes of memory's pensive bells, 
Wind-blown o'er misty hills and...Read more of this...

The Sleepers

by William Henry Davies
 No map traces the street
Where those two sleepers are.
We have lost track of it.
They lie as if under water
In a blue, unchanging light,
The French window ajar

Curtained with yellow lace.
Through the narrow crack
Odors of wet earth rise.
The snail leaves a silver track;
Dark thickets hedge the house.
We take a backward look.

Among petals pale as death
And leaves steadfast in shape
They sleep on,...Read more of this...

Progress

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Let there be many windows to your soul, 
That all the glory of the universe 
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane 
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays 
That shine from countless sources. Tear away 
The blinds of superstition; let the light 
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself 
And high as God. 
Why should...Read more of this...

To a Very Wise Man

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames 
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. 
Your soul is full of cities with dead names, 
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone 
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, 
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords 
And wizardry of ghosts. 

II

In...Read more of this...

The Innocent Eye

by Barry Tebb
 I struggled through streets of

Bricked-up, boarded-up houses,

Mostly burned-out, keeping

To the middle of the road,

Watching the abandoned gardens

With here and there a house

Still lived in, curtained

Against the daylight and distantly

I saw the iron railings of the school

I’d taught in thirty years before.

The same brick buildings, hop scotch

Squares and rounders posts

And the sign, ‘Welcome to Wyther Park

Primary School’. The wooden prefabs

Where...Read more of this...

Sleeping Together

by Katherine Mansfield
 Sleeping together... how tired you were...
How warm our room... how the firelight spread
On walls and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers as children do,
And now it was I--and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake--"My dear,
I'm not at all sleepy," one of us said....

Was it a thousand years ago?
I woke in your arms--you were sound asleep--
And...Read more of this...

Villeggiature

by Edith Nesbit
 My window, framed in pear-tree bloom,
White-curtained shone, and softly lighted:
So, by the pear-tree, to my room
Your ghost last night climbed uninvited.

Your solid self, long leagues away,
Deep in dull books, had hardly missed me;
And yet you found this Romeo's way,
And through the blossom climbed and kissed me.

I watched the still and dewy lawn,
The pear-tree boughs hung white above you;
I listened...Read more of this...

The Poet To His Wife

by Victor Hugo
 ("À toi, toujours à toi.") 
 
 {XXXIX., 1823} 


 To thee, all time to thee, 
 My lyre a voice shall be! 
 Above all earthly fashion, 
 Above mere mundane rage, 
 Your mind made it my passion 
 To write for noblest stage. 
 
 Whoe'er you be, send blessings to her—she 
 Was sister of...Read more of this...

Koening Of The River

by Derek Walcott
 Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust,...Read more of this...

The Universal Prayer

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ma fille, va prier!") 
 
 {XXXVII., June, 1830.} 


 I. 
 
 Come, child, to prayer; the busy day is done, 
 A golden star gleams through the dusk of night; 
 The hills are trembling in the rising mist, 
 The rumbling wain looms dim upon the sight; 
 All things wend home to rest; the roadside...Read more of this...

The Day Is Gone And All Its Sweets Are Gone

by John Keats
 The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang'rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise— 
Vanished unseasonably at shut...Read more of this...

The Barefoot Boy

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared...Read more of this...

The Twelve-Forty-Five

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Edward J. Wheeler)

Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on,...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus

by Conrad Aiken
 The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting
To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,
We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.
She blinks...Read more of this...

The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson
 I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed...Read more of this...

To Flush My Dog

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Yet, my pretty sportive friend,
Little is't to such an end
That I praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in these drooping ears,
And this glossy fairness.

But of thee it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary— 
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
Round the sick and dreary.

Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that...Read more of this...

Portrait of My Father as a Young Man

by Rainer Maria Rilke
In the eyes dream. The brow as if it could feel
something far off. Around the lips a great
freshness-seductive though there is no smile.
Under the rows of ornamental braid
on the slim Imperial officer's uniform:
the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay
folded upon it going nowhere calm
and now almost invisible as if they 
were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve.
And all the...Read more of this...

To An Isle In The Water

by William Butler Yeats
 Shy one, shy one,
Shy one of my heart,
She moves in the firelight
pensively apart.

She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.

With catries in the candles,
And lights the curtained room,
Shy in the doorway
And shy in the gloom;

And shy as a rabbit,
Helpful and shy.
To an isle in the water
With her would...Read more of this...

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