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Famous Discern Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...race. 2


By stately tow’r, or palace fair,
Or ruins pendent in the air,
Bold stems of heroes, here and there,
 I could discern;
Some seem’d to muse, some seem’d to dare,
 With feature stern.


My heart did glowing transport feel,
To see a race heroic 3 wheel,
And brandish round the deep-dyed steel,
 In sturdy blows;
While, back-recoiling, seem’d to reel
 Their Suthron foes.


His Country’s Saviour, 4 mark him well!
Bold Richardton’s heroic swell,; 5
The chief, on Sark who gl...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...l our intolerable self-disdain 
Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; 
For manifest in that disastrous light 
We shall discern the right 
And do it, tardily. -- O ye who lead, 
Take heed! 
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite....Read more of this...
by Moody, William Vaughn
...h in what I hold 
About the need of trial to man's faith, 
Still, when you bid me purify the same, 
To such a process I discern no end. 


Clearing off one excrescence to see two, 
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big, 
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again! 
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last 
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself? 
Experimentalize on sacred things! 
I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain 
To stop betimes: they all get drunk alik...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...nal Sea. 

As low my fires of drift-wood burn, 
I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, 
And, fair in sunset light, discern 
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace....Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...th with our pens. They will sabotage
Both our children
And our art.


Because when we show what we see,
They will discern the inevitable:
We do not worship them.


We do not worship them.
We do not worship what they have made.
We do not trust them.


We do not believe what they say.
We do not love their efficiency.
Or their power plants.
We do not love their factories.
Or their smog.
We do not love their television programs.
Or their radioactive leaks.
W...Read more of this...
by Walker, Alice



...
 "Enough. Now, Gasclin, hark!" 
 Exclaimed the knight, "you must at once return 
 By other path than that which you discern, 
 So that you be not seen. At break of day 
 Bring back our horses fresh, and every way 
 Caparisoned; now leave me, boy, I say." 
 The page looked at his master like a son, 
 And said, "Oh! if I might stay on, 
 For they are two." 
 
 "Go—I suffice alone!" 
 
 X. 
 
 EVIRADNUS MOTIONLESS. 
 
 And lone the hero is within the hall, 
 A...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...reatly in me, that I may not tell 
 How passed I from them, sense and memory failed 
 So far. 
 But here new torments I discern, 
 And new tormented, wheresoe'er I turn. 
 For sodden around me was the place of bane, 
 The third doomed circle, where the culprits know 
 The cold, unceasing, and relentless rain 
 Pour down without mutation. Heavy with hail, 
 With turbid waters mixed, and cold with snow, 
 It streams from out the darkness, and below 
 The soil is putrid, where t...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...
The heart to shew the effect, but not the cause? 
Not so in him; his breast had buried both, 
Nor common gazers could discern the growth 
Of thoughts that mortal lips must leave half told; 
They choke the feeble words that would unfold. 

XVII. 

In him inexplicably mix'd appear'd 
Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd; 
Opinion varying o'er his hidden lot, 
In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot; 
His silence form'd a theme for others' prate — 
They guess'd — t...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...te, 
Begins among her silent bars to climb. 
As in and out, in silvery dusk, we thread, 
I hear the laugh of Madam, and discern 
My Lady's heel before me at each turn. 
Our tragedy, is it alive or dead?...Read more of this...
by Meredith, George
...Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap 
...Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S
...nce they fell! 
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed 
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, 
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side, 
One next himself in power, and next in crime, 
Long after known in Palestine, and named 
Beelzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy, 
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words 
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:-- 
 "If thou beest he--but O how fallen! how changed 
From him who, in the happy realms of light 
Cloth...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Bent all on speed, and marked his aery gait; 
But in the mount that lies from Eden north, 
Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks 
Alien from Heaven, with passions foul obscured: 
Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade 
Lost sight of him: One of the banished crew, 
I fear, hath ventured from the deep, to raise 
New troubles; him thy care must be to find. 
To whom the winged warriour thus returned. 
Uriel, no wonder if thy perfect sight, 
Amid the sun's bright c...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...held, 
Where universally admired; but here 
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among, 
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern 
Half what in thee is fair, one man except, 
Who sees thee? and what is one? who should be seen 
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served 
By Angels numberless, thy daily train. 
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned: 
Into the heart of Eve his words made way, 
Though at the voice much marvelling; at length, 
Not unamazed, she thus in answer spak...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...y
Some other tending, in his hand
A Scepter or quaint staff he bears,
Comes on amain, speed in his look.
By his habit I discern him now
A Public Officer, and now at hand.
His message will be short and voluble.

Off: Ebrews, the Pris'ner Samson here I seek.

Chor: His manacles remark him, there he sits.

Off: Samson, to thee our Lords thus bid me say; 
This day to Dagon is a solemn Feast,
With Sacrifices, Triumph, Pomp, and Games;
Thy strength they know surpassing human rate,
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...s sweet pity with her go! 
The outward wayward life we see, 
The hidden springs we may not know. 
Nor is it given us to discern 
What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
Through what ancestral years has run 
The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in solitudes, 
And held the love within her mute, 
What mingled madness in the blood 
A life-long discord and annoy, 
Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 
Pev...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings 
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...e.
The northern light in at the doore shone,
For window on the walle was there none
Through which men mighten any light discern.
The doors were all of adamant etern,
Y-clenched *overthwart and ende-long* *crossways and lengthways*
With iron tough, and, for to make it strong,
Every pillar the temple to sustain
Was tunne-great*, of iron bright and sheen. *thick as a tun (barrel)
There saw I first the dark imagining
Of felony, and all the compassing;
The cruel ire, as red as any...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...y faith!
     Nor saw I aught could augur scathe.'
     'O haste thee, Allan, to the kern:
     Yonder his tartars I discern;
     Learn thou his purpose, and conjure
     That he will guide the stranger sure!—
     What prompted thee, unhappy man?
     The meanest serf in Roderick's clan
     Had not been bribed, by love or fear,
     Unknown to him to guide thee here.'
     XVII.

     'Sweet Ellen, dear my life must be,
     Since it is worthy care from thee;
...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...ring length would sweep into her stride, 
Making the greenness milky with her foam. 

But when we rose next morning, we discerned 
Her beauty once again a shattered thing; 
Towing to dock the Wanderer returned, 
A wounded sea-bird with a broken wing. 

A spar was gone, her rigging's disarray 
Told of a worse disaster than the last; 
Like draggled hair dishevelled hung the stay, 
Drooping and beating on the broken mast. 

Half-mast upon her flagstaff hung her flag; 
Word went ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John
...on saints, to sinners not unknown; 
 In harlot, nun, philanthropist, and rake, 
It shines for those who love; none else discern 
 Evil from good; Men's fall did not bestow 
That threatened wisdom; blindly still we yearn 
 After a virtue that we do not know, 
Until our thirst and longing rise above 
The barriers of reason—and we love. 

XIII 
And still I did not see my life was changed, 
Utterly different—by this love estranged 
For ever and ever from my native land; 
That I w...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things