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Famous Darkly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...rembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given;
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;
Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are....Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...ld, but love anew 
May nerve young hearts to prove as true. 

II. 

The winds are high, and Helle's tide 
Rolls darkly heaving to the main; 
And Night's descending shadows hide 
That field with blood bedew'd in vain, 
The desert of old Priam's pride; 
The tombs, sole relics of his reign, 
All — save immortal dreams that could beguile 
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle! 

III. 

Oh! yet — for there my steps have been! 
These feet have press'd the sacred shore,...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...esume not God to scan; 
The proper study of Mankind is Man. 
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,(28) 
A being darkly wise, and rudely great: 
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, 
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, 
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest, 
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; 
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer, 
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; 
Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 
Whether he thinks too litt...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 And close alliance. All the people near 
 From red horizon dwelt in abject fear, 
 Mastered by them; their figures darkly grand 
 Had ruddy reflex from the wasted land, 
 And fires, and towns they sacked. Besides the one, 
 Like David, poet was, the other shone 
 As fine musician—rumor spread their fame, 
 Declaring them divine, until each name 
 In Italy's fine sonnets met with praise. 
 The ancient hierarch in those old days 
 Had custom strange, a now forgotte...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...My whole eye was sunset red,
the old cut cornea throbbed,
I saw things darkly,
as through an unwashed goldfish globe.

I lay all day on my bed.
I chain-smoked through the night,
learning to flinch
at the flash of the matchlight.

Outside, the summer rain,
a simmer of rot and renewal,
fell in pinpricks.
Even new life is fuel.

My eyes throb.
Nothing can dislodge
the house with my first toot...Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...im earth now disclosed no other guide; 
What marvel then he rarely left his side? 

XXVI. 

Light was his form, and darkly delicate 
That brow whereon his native sun had sate, 
But had not marr'd, though in his beams he grew, 
The cheek where oft the unbidden blush shone through; 
Yet not such blush as mounts when health would show 
All the heart's hue in that delighted glow; 
But 'twas a hectic tint of secret care 
That for a burning moment fever'd there; 
And the wild s...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...rries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...sat together halfway up a cliff
In a small niche let into it, the girl
Brightly, as if a star played on the place,
Paul darkly, like her shadow. All the light
Was from the girl herself, though, not from a star,
As was apparent from what happened next.
All those great ruffians put their throats together,
And let out a loud yell, and threw a bottle,
As a brute tribute of respect to beauty.
Of course the bottle fell short by a mile,
But the shout reached the girl and...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...nd search the depth of its fair eyes
For long departed memories!
And so I lived till that sweet load
Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed
The stream of years, and on it bore
Two shapes of gladness to my sight; 
Two other babes, delightful more,
In my lost soul's abandoned night,
Than their own country ships may be
Sailing towards wrecked mariners
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;
And a loosening warmth, as each one la...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...artless cries,
That darkling spirit tossed and torn,
But God will not despise! 
We may regret such waste of tears
Such darkly toiling misery,
Such 'wildering doubts and harrowing fears,
Where joy and thankfulness should be;
But wait, and Heaven will send relief.
Let patience have her perfect work:
Lo, strength and wisdom spring from grief,
And joys behind afflictions lurk!

It asked for light, and it is heard;
God grants that struggling soul repose
And, guided by His hol...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...f Storm." 
Emerson,The Snow Storm. 


The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 
A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
That checked, mid-vein, the circling r...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ld, but love anew 
May nerve young hearts to prove as true. 

II. 

The winds are high, and Helle's tide 
Rolls darkly heaving to the main; 
And Night's descending shadows hide 
That field with blood bedew'd in vain, 
The desert of old Priam's pride; 
The tombs, sole relics of his reign, 
All — save immortal dreams that could beguile 
The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle! 

III. 

Oh! yet — for there my steps have been! 
These feet have press'd the sacred shore,...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...hat thou well mayest hate.
His doom was sealed - he knew it well
Warned by the voice of stern Taheer,
Deep in whose darkly boding ear
The deathshot pealed of murder near,
As filed the troop to where they fell!
He died too in the battle broil,
A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;
One cry to Mahomet for aid,
One prayer to Allah all he made:
He knew and crossed me in the fray -
I gazed upon him where he lay,
And watched his spirit ebb away:
Though pierced like pard by hunter...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...ithin whose brain
Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.



PART II.


I.

The round red sun heaves darkly out of the sea.
The walls and towers are warmed and gleam.
Sounds go drowsily up from streets and wharves.
The city stirs like one that is half in dream.

And the mist flows up by dazzling walls and windows,
Where one by one we wake and rise.
We gaze at the pale grey lustrous sea a moment,
We rub the darkness from our eyes,

And fa...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...plain
     As what they ne'er might see again;
     Then foot and point and eye opposed,
     In dubious strife they darkly closed.
     XV.

     Ill fared it then with Roderick Dhu,
     That on the field his targe he threw,
     Whose brazen studs and tough bull-hide
     Had death so often dashed aside;
     For, trained abroad his arms to wield
     Fitz-James's blade was sword and shield.
     He practised every pass and ward,
     To thrust, to strike, to ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...are the Days, and lustrous are the Nights,
Brighten'd with starry Worlds, till then unseen.
Mean while, the Orient, darkly red, breathes forth
An Icy Gale, that, in its mid Career,
Arrests the bickering Stream. The nightly Sky,
And all her glowing Constellations pour
Their rigid Influence down: It freezes on
Till Morn, late-rising, o'er the drooping World,
Lifts her pale Eye, unjoyous: then appears
The various Labour of the silent Night,
The pendant Isicle, the Frost-...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...
Around her form a thin robe twining, 
Nought conceal'd her bosom shining; 
Through the parting of her hair, 
Floating darkly downward there, 
Her rounded arm shew'd white and bare: 
And ere yet she made reply, 
Once she raised her hand on high; 
It was so wan and transparent of hue, 
You might have seen the moon shine through. 

XXI. 

"I come from my rest to him I love best, 
That I may be happy, and he may be blest. 
I have pass'd the guards, the gate, the wal...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat, 

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him. 

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude: 

For it ...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...light flickers, the shadow in the corner stirs; 
The wax face lifts; the eyes open. 

A thin trickle of blood worms darkly against the vast red coverlet and spreads to a pool on the floor....Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...rries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep....Read more of this...

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