Famous Effect Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...hey their passions likewise lent me
Of grief and blushes, aptly understood
In bloodless white and the encrimson'd mood;
Effects of terror and dear modesty,
Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

''And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,
With twisted metal amorously impleach'd,
I have received from many a several fair,
Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd,
With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd,
And deep-brain'd sonnets that did amplify
Each stone's dear natu...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


A poem on divine revelation

...
The pow'r of torture and reproach was vain, 
But what not torture or reproach could do, 
Dark superstition did in part effect. 
That superstition, which saint John beheld, 
Rise in thick darkness from th' infernal lake. 
Locust and scorpion in the smoke ascend, 
False teacher, heretic, and Antichrist. 
The noon day sun is dark'ned in the sky, 
The moon forbears to give her wonted light. 
Full many a century the darkness rul'd, 
With heavier gloom than once on Egypt came, 
Sa...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry

Absalom And Achitophel

...ur native land,
Than a successive title, long, and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark.

What cannot praise effect in mighty minds,
When flattery soothes, and when ambition blinds!
Desire of pow'r, on earth a vicious weed,
Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed:
In God 'tis glory: And when men aspire,
'Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire.
Th' ambitious youth, too covetous of fame,
Too full of angel's metal in his frame;
Unwarily was led from virtue's wa...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Astrophel and Stella

...der is for thy hard bit.
But if that needes thou wilt vsurping be
The little reason that is left in me,
And still th'effect of thy perswasions prooue,
I sweare, my heart such one shall show to thee,
That shrines in flesh so true a deitie,
That, Virtue, thou thyself shalt be in loue. 
V 

It is most true that eyes are form'd to serue
The inward light, and that the heauenly part
Ought to be King, from whose rules who do swerue,
Rebels to nature, striue for their own...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip

Beowulf (Modern English)

...ame, the well-born champion
himself with his troop, where the wise man waited
whether All-Wielding God ever wished to effect
a reversal after this woeful news. Then he went
down the hall, the army-worthy man
amid his selected soldiers. The hall-wood clattered
until he addressed that wise man wordfully,
the lord of the Ingwines, asking him if he had
had an pleasant night according to his wish. (ll. 1310-20)

 

XX.

Hrothgar spoke, the helmet of the Scyldings:
“...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Comus

...a thousand names,
Telling their strange and vigorous faculties.
Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,
But of divine effect, he culled me out.
The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil:
Unknown, and like esteemed, and the dull swain
Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly
That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.
He called it Haemony, and ga...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Humanitad

...

To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
In natural honour, not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the li...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Lara

...his memory fix'd 
Too deep for words, indelible, unmix'd 
In that corroding secresy which gnaws 
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 ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva

...
of our postmodern, 
post-Christian,
post-human nations,
progress to the nihil
of our spent civilization.
But cause and effect,
just and inexorable
law of the universe
no fix of science,
nor amenable god
can save from ourselves
the selves we have become —
At the end of history
to whom can we pray
but to the destroyer,
the liberator, the purifier?

In the beginning
the stars sang together
the cosmic harmony,
but Time, imperceptible
taker-away
of all that has been,
all that wil...Read more of this...
by Raine, Kathleen

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...twixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air 
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. 
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled, 
At certain revolutions all the damned 
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, 
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice 
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine 
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round 
Periods of time,--thence hurried ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...formed of earth, and him endow, 
Exalted from so base original, 
With heavenly spoils, our spoils: What he decreed, 
He effected; Man he made, and for him built 
Magnificent this world, and earth his seat, 
Him lord pronounced; and, O indignity! 
Subjected to his service angel-wings, 
And flaming ministers to watch and tend 
Their earthly charge: Of these the vigilance 
I dread; and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist 
Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry 
In every bush and br...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Plutonian Ode

...ified
 imago of practicioner in Black Arts
I dare your reality, I challenge your very being! I 
 publish your cause and effect!
I turn the wheel of Mind on your three hundred tons!
 Your name enters mankind's ear! I embody your
 ultimate powers!
My oratory advances on your vaunted Mystery! This 
 breath dispels your braggart fears! I sing your 
 form at last
behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress
 of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered
 cabinets a...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Samson Agonistes

...with a kind of delight,
stirr'd up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Song of Myself

...one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is
 ahead? 

4
Trippers and askers surround me; 
People I meet—the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I
 live in, or the nation, 
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, 
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, 
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack o...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bride of Abydos

...nd Paswan's rebel hordes attest [31] 
How little love they bore such guest: 
His death is all I need relate, 
The stern effect of Giaffir's hate; 
And how my birth disclosed to me, 
Whate'er beside it makes, hath made me free. 

XIV. 

"When Paswan, after years of strife, 
At last for power, but first for life, 
In Widdin's walls too proudly sate, 
Our Pachas rallied round the state; 
Nor last nor least in high command, 
Each brother led a separate band; 
They gave their hors...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Flight Of The Duchess

...ed to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
---Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God should please she needed me,---
Then, do you know, her face looked down on me
With a look that placed a crown on me,
And she felt in her bosom,---mark, her bosom---
And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,
Dropped me . . . ah, had it been a purse
Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse,
Why, you see, as soon as ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Hunting Of The Snark

...xultation was suddenly checked
 When the jailer informed them, with tears,
Such a sentence would have not the slightest effect,
 As the pig had been dead for some years.

The Judge left the Court, looking deeply disgusted:
 But the Snark, though a little aghast,
As the lawyer to whom the defence was intrusted,
 Went bellowing on to the last.

Thus the Barrister dreamed, while the bellowing seemed
 To grow every moment more clear:
Till he woke to the knell of a furious bell,
 ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Knights Tale

...s take his Aventure."

Great was the strife and long between these tway,
If that I hadde leisure for to say;
But to the effect: it happen'd on a day
(To tell it you as shortly as I may),
A worthy duke that hight Perithous
That fellow was to the Duke Theseus
Since thilke* day that they were children lite** *that **little
Was come to Athens, his fellow to visite,
And for to play, as he was wont to do;
For in this world he loved no man so;
And he lov'd him as tenderly again....Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Man of Laws Tale

...'s might, this ado?*
That helpeth folk out of the fiendes snare:"
And *so farforth* she gan our law declare, *with such effect*
That she the Constable, ere that it were eve,
Converted, and on Christ made him believe.

This Constable was not lord of the place
Of which I speak, there as he Constance fand,* *found
But kept it strongly many a winter space,
Under Alla, king of Northumberland,
That was full wise, and worthy of his hand
Against the Scotes, as men may well hear;
But ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Walk

...more actively wakes, swifter moves in him the world.
See! the emulous forces in fiery conflict are kindled,
Much, they effect when they strive, more they effect when they join.
Thousands of hands by one spirit are moved, yet in thousands of bosoms
Beats one heart all alone, by but one feeling inspired--
Beats for their native land, and glows for their ancestors' precepts;
Here on the well-beloved spot, rest now time-honored bones.

Down from the heavens descends the blessed ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

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