Famous Delirium Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Delirium poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous delirium poems. These examples illustrate what a famous delirium poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ce Sheridan-Bickers]
A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies
Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims
And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns
Of sorceries, of spells, of necromancies;
And all my spirit shudders; dew bedims
My sight -these girls and thei...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...all the world.
There, ended childhood. What succeeded next
I recollect as, after fevers, men
Thread back the passage of delirium,
Missing the turn still, baffled by the door ;
Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives ;
A weary, wormy darkness, spurr'd i' the flank
With flame, that it should eat and end itself
Like some tormented scorpion. Then at last
I do remember clearly, how there came
A stranger with authority, not right,
(I thought not) who commanded, caug...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...p,
And there's something in the bank,
And a section of land in Manitoba.
But just as I slipped I had a vision
In a last delirium:
I saw myself lying nailed in a box
With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière,
And my wife was sitting by a window
Some place afar overlooking the sea;
She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat,
Although her hair was white.
And she smiled and said to a colored waiter:
"Another slice of roast beef, George.
Here's a nickel for your trouble."...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...ould I use them for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...vapour escapes, a whirlwind of
ruinous sparks,
No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in
sickness of lust,
Delirium born of disease-ah, whence was the master,
the "must"
Imposed on the All? is it true, then, that
something in me
Is subject to fate? Are there two, after all,
that can be?
I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am suffic-
ient and sole.
Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this
homologous Whole?
I have stripped every garment from...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...c men in thousands, men of mark and men of note,
Rushing down the Mooki River, after Johnson’s antidote.
It will cure delirium tremens, when the patient’s eyeballs stare
At imaginary spiders, snakes which really are not there.
When he thinks he sees them wriggle, when he thinks he sees them bloat,
It will cure him just to think of Johnson’s Snakebite Antidote.”
Then he rushed to the museum, found a scientific man—
“Trot me out a deadly serpent, just the deadliest you ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...see in Shakespeare's tragedy of Othello, which is sublime,
Cassio losing his lieutenancy through drinking wine;
And, in delirium and grief, he exclaims -
"Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"
A young man in London went to the theatre one night
To see the play of George Barnwell, and he got a great fright;
He saw George Barnwell murder his uncle in the play,
And he had resolved to murder his uncle, but was stricken with dismay.
But ...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...tired look you walk around with
Through this beautiful summer afternoon
To the right, to the left,
Here, there,
In the delirium of uselessness....Read more of this...
by
Desnos, Robert
...s this Change, has Wisdom left that Head,
(His Friend demands) where such right Schemes were bred?
What Phrenzy, what Delirium mars the Scull,
Which fill'd the Chests, and was it self so full?
Here interrupting, sadly he Reply'd,
In Me's no Change, but Fate must all Things guide;
To Providence I attribute my Loss.
Vain-glorious Man do's thus the Praise engross,
When Prosp'rous Days around him spread their Beams:
But, if revolv'd to opposite Extreams,
Still his own S...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...es slithered up in a sudden crescendo
As we sliced the hill and scattered its grazing sheep;
The days were a wheeling delirium that led without end to
Nights when we plunged into roaring tunnels of sleep.
But now I am tired of the train. I have learned that one tree
Is much like another, one hill the dead spit of the next
I have seen tailing off behind all the various types of country
Like a clock running down. I am bored and a little perplexed;
And weak with the ef...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...
The charisma of someone’s lips
Spreads dreamily on all sides
Like angel dust . . . light-specks of smiles,
Delirium raining down
From the sweet wine of someone’s gaze,
Someone’s slender, silver-bangled arm
Raised in a silent gesture of greeting !
With her elbows resting on the parapet,
And the air of a Diva,
Stands someone … coyly blushing and silent
With a muted message in her fleeting glance !...Read more of this...
by
Amjad, Majeed
...half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.
That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.
However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:
Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms
Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting word...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...e Youths,
Who hang enraptur'd on the empassion'd strain
Gazing with eloquent eye, even till the heart
Sinks in the deep delirium! and ye too
Shall witness, unborn Ages! to that song
Of warmest zeal; ah witness ye, how hard,
Her fate who hymn'd the votive hymn in vain!
Ungrateful Goddess! I have hung my lute
In yonder holy pile: my hand no more
Shall wake the melodies that fail'd to move
The heart of Phaon--yet when Rumour tells
How from Leucadia Sappho hurl'd her down
A self-...Read more of this...
by
Southey, Robert
...tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...tree branches hanging over
Her and her lover.
Theodore, still her lover!
The evening passed like this, in a half faint,
Delirium with waking intervals
Which were the entr'acts. Under the restraint
Of a large company, the constant calls
For oranges or syrops from the stalls
Outside, the talk, the passing to and fro,
Lotta sat ill at ease, incognito.
She heard the Gebnitz praised, the tenor lauded,
The music vaunted as most excellent.
The scenery and the costumes were applauded...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...cling to your body, my
mouth breathes in the shadow of your breath. Someday
perhaps the sea will reveal itself, the delirium of
the flesh fatigue at dawn.
11
It hurts to say I am sorry. So let us use unfamiliar words.
The summer has gone the ground's turned cold. The old
road calls me back again. Anothertime we shall meet again:
as strangers or as friends, or perhaps as lovers once
again. Now turn, turn, to the rain again.
15
Tonight I draw your body to my...Read more of this...
by
Nandy, Pritish
...victory.
But I lay still, and with me oft she sat:
Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard,
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek
'You are not Ida;' clasp it once again,
And call her Ida, though I knew her not,
And call her sweet, as if in irony,
And call her hard and cold which seemed a truth:
And still she feared that I should lose my mind,
And often she believed that I should die:
Till out of long frustration...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come -
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath -
Seem but the clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades;
Or a bird's sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades....Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...ne of them around to remind me
of important things about myself
when I sink or soar too high
in my petty existential delirium.
Some of them had nearly given up on themselves
and on me: they fell in and grew together with their own lunacies pulling me and lifting me up
as a magnet picks up iron filings,
or a comb torn bits of paper.
People
that I love,
scattered along the meridians
and along their abysses:
among monsters of normalcy....Read more of this...
by
Skenderija, Sasha
...whom you'd rather lay your eyes,
And for long these lips of mine
Do not kiss, but prophesize.
Do not think I'm in delirium
Or with boredom I do whine
Loudly I speak of pain:
It's the very trade of mine.
And I know how to teach,
That the unexpected happened,
How to tame for centuries
Her, whose love is so rapid.
You want glory? Ask from me
For advice for this your plight,
Only it is but a trap,
There's no joy here and no light.
Well, go home, and forget...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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