Famous Delusion Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Behind the Arras

by Bliss Carman
 I like the old house tolerably well, 
Where I must dwell 
Like a familiar gnome; 
And yet I never shall feel quite at home. 
I love to roam. 
Day after day I loiter and explore 
From door to door; 
So many treasures lure 
The curious mind. What histories obscure 
They must immure! 

I hardly know which room I care...Read more of this...

For the Young Who Want To

by Marge Piercy
 Talent is what they say 
you have after the novel 
is published and favorably 
reviewed. Beforehand what 
you have is a tedious 
delusion, a hobby like knitting. 

Work is what you have done 
after the play is produced 
and the audience claps. 
Before that friends keep asking 
when you are planning to go 
out and get a job. 

Genius...Read more of this...

The Gardener LXXV: At Midnight

by Rabindranath Tagore
 At midnight the would-be ascetic
announced:
"This is the time to give up my
home and seek for God. Ah, who has
held me so long in delusion here?"
God whispered, "I," but the ears
of the man were stopped.
With a baby asleep at her breast
lay his wife, peacefully sleeping on
one side of the bed.
The man said, "Who are ye that
have fooled me so long?"
The...Read more of this...

Postcards

by Margaret Atwood
 I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a...Read more of this...

Symbolism

by George William Russell
 NOW when the spirit in us wakes and broods,
Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings
From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods,
Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things:
Clothing the vast with a familiar face;
Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race.


Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires
Stare from the blue; so shows the...Read more of this...

25. My Father was a Farmer: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O,
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O;
For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O.


Then out into the world my course I did determine, O;
Tho’ to be rich was not my...Read more of this...

Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life

by George Meredith
 All other joys of life he strove to warm, 
And magnify, and catch them to his lip: 
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, 
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. 
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show 
The coming minute mock the one that went. 
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent, 
Stood high...Read more of this...

The Song of Los

by William Blake
 AFRICA 

I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet: 
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity. 
In heart-formed Africa. 
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd! 
And thus the Song began 

Adam stood in the garden of Eden: 
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat; 
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations 
By...Read more of this...

Something For The Touts The Nuns The Grocery Clerks And You . .

by Charles Bukowski
 we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXV. O dolci sguardi, o parolette accorte. HE SIGHS FOR THOSE GLANCES FROM WHICH, TO HIS GRIEF, FORTUNE EVER DELIGHTS TO WITHDRAW HIM.  O angel looks! O accents of the skies!Shall I or see or hear you once again?O golden tresses, which my heart enchain,And lead it forth, Love's willing sacrifice!Read more of this...

Milton: The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los

by William Blake
 The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: 
And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe:
And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds bow
To meet the flat earth and the...Read more of this...

Ego Dominus Tuus

by William Butler Yeats
 Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.

Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I...Read more of this...

Beggarly Heart

by Rabindranath Tagore
 When the heart is hard and parched up, 
come upon me with a shower of mercy. 

When grace is lost from life, 
come with a burst of song. 

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from 
beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest. 

When my beggarly heart sits...Read more of this...

The Sky is an Immortal Tent Built by the Sons of Los (from

by William Blake
 The sky is an immortal tent built by the Sons of Los: 
And every space that a man views around his dwelling-place
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his universe:
And on its verge the sun rises and sets, the clouds bow
To meet the flat earth and the...Read more of this...

Lines to Him Who Will Understand Them

by Mary Darby Robinson
 THOU art no more my bosom's FRIEND; 
Here must the sweet delusion end, 
That charm'd my senses many a year, 
Thro' smiling summers, winters drear.­ 
O, FRIENDSHIP! am I doom'd to find 
Thou art a phantom of the mind? 
A glitt'ring shade, an empty name, 
An air-born vision's vap'rish flame? 
And yet, the dear DECEIT so long 
Has wak'd...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

A Hymn

by Anne Bronte
 Eternal power of earth and air,
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound. 
If e'er thine ear in mercy bent
When wretched mortals cried to thee,
And if indeed thy Son was sent
To save lost sinners such as me. 

Then hear me now, while kneeling here;
I lift to thee my heart and eye
And all my...Read more of this...

Herbert Marshall

by Edgar Lee Masters
 All your sorrow, Louise, and hatred of me
Sprang from your delusion that it was wantonness
Of spirit and contempt of your soul's rights
Which made me turn to Annabelle and forsake you.
You really grew to hate me for love of me,
Because I was your soul's happiness,
Formed and tempered
To solve your life for you, and would not.
But you were my misery. If...Read more of this...

Three Songs of Zahir-u-Din

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Who does not feel desire unending
     To solace through his daily strife,
   With some mysterious Mental Blending,
     The hungry loneliness of life?

   Until, by sudden passion shaken,
     As terriers shake a rat at play,
   He finds, all blindly, he...Read more of this...

To Baynard Taylor

by Sidney Lanier
 To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much...Read more of this...

The Doubters Prayer

by Anne Bronte
 Eternal Power, of earth and air!
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound. 
If e'er thine ear in mercy bent,
When wretched mortals cried to Thee,
And if, indeed, Thy Son was sent,
To save lost sinners such as me: 

Then hear me now, while, kneeling here,
I lift to thee my heart and eye,
And all my...Read more of this...

Happy Dust

by Aleister Crowley
 For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter,...Read more of this...

From The Testament of Beauty

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

The Explorer

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
 So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
 Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable...Read more of this...

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