Famous Egypt Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Egypt poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous egypt poems. These examples illustrate what a famous egypt poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Matthew Arnold
'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.
'I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime--that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,
And times and things, as in that vision, seem
Keeping along it their eternal stands,--
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,
The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.
Then comes a mightier...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white,
And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach to-morrow night,
You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care,
And as yet be unacquainted with the Demon of Despair;
For I rather think that nothing heaps the trouble on your mind
Like...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
In dis howlin' wildaness,
Fu' to speak some words of comfo't
To each othah in distress.
An' we chooses fu' ouah subjic'
Dis—we'll 'splain it by an' by;
"An' de Lawd said, 'Moses, Moses,'
An' de man said, 'Hyeah am I.'"
Now ole Pher'oh, down in Egypt,
Was de wuss man evah bo'n,
An' he had de Hebrew chillun
Down dah wukin' in his co'n;
'T...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ our passover.
Lo, the destroying angel flies
To Pharaoh's stubborn land;
The pride and flower of Egypt dies
By his vindictive hand.
He passed the tents of Jacob o'er,
Nor poured the wrath divine;
He saw the blood on every door,
And blessed the peaceful sign.
Thus the appointed Lamb must bleed,
To break the Egyptian yoke;
Thus Isr'el is from bondage freed,
And 'scapes the angel's stroke.
Lord, if my...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
DREAM faces bloom around your face
Like flowers upon one stem;
The heart of many a vanished race
Sighs as I look on them.
The sun rich face of Egypt glows,
The eyes of Eire brood,
With whom the golden Cyprian shows
In lovely sisterhood.
Your tree of life put forth these flowers
In ages past away:
They had the love in other hours
...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
I was here from the moment of the
Beginning, and here I am still. And
I shall remain here until the end
Of the world, for there is no
Ending to my grief-stricken being.
I roamed the infinite sky, and
Soared in the ideal world, and
Floated through the firmament. But
Here I am, prisoner of measurement.
I heard...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on the 18th of August in the year of 1798,
That Nelson saw with inexpressible delight
The City of Alexandria crowded with the ships of France,
So he ordered all sail to be set, and immediately advance.
And upon the deck, in deep anxiety he stood,
And from anxiety of mind he took but little food;
But now he ordered dinner and prepared...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust,...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
To give the glow-worm light?
Or, on...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Padel
The ground verdigris, fluffy with young mosquitoes. Waters
as sacred as these, as fatted with reeds. Bronze palm planted
to Sun. Lizards, Nile alligators, hindquarters
rolling on granite sphinx-chippings. Air salted with confident
brown larks, Travelling, you remember (mind
upturning these foreign priests, finding
the causes) that stamen-summit: white long
unbloody altar, giddy blues under you, calyx of bronze
flat islands unfolding, blind....Read more of this...
by
Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,...Read more of this...
by
Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
God's conduct of Israel, and the plagues of Egypt.
Give thanks to God, invoke his name,
And tell the world his grace;
Sound through the earth his deeds of fame,
That all may seek his face.
His cov'nant, which he kept in mind
For num'rous ages past,
To num'rous ages yet behind
In equal force shall last.
He sware to Abraham and his seed,
And made the blessing sure;
Gentiles...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
-”Thass a funny title, Mr Bones.
-”When down she saw her feet, sweet fish, on the threshold,
she considered her fair shoulders
and all them hundreds who have them, all
the more who to her mime thickened & maled
from the supple stage,
and seeing her feet, in a visit, side by side
paused on the sill of The Tomb, she shrank: 'No.
They are not worthy,
fondled...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track --
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
There is a shattered palm
on this fierce shore,
its plumes the rusting helm-
et of a dead warrior.
Numb Antony, in the torpor
stretching her inert
sex near him like a sleeping cat,
knows his heart is the real desert.
Over the dunes
of her heaving,
to his heart's drumming
fades the mirage of the legions,
across love-tousled sheets,
the triremes fading.
Ar the carved door of her temple
a fly wrings its...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up
And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
“There’s a little thing made a hit with me
When I was in Cairo—I think I must see Cairo again some day.”
So there are...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
Here, where the noises of the busy town,
The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.
No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead;
The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent
That an undying radiance was to shed.
What prayers were in this...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Now I am all
One bowl of kisses,
Such as the tall
Slim votaresses
Of Egypt filled
For a God's excesses.
I lift to you
My bowl of kisses,
And through the temple's
Blue recesses
Cry out to you
In wild caresses.
And to my lips'
Bright crimson rim
The passion slips,
And down my slim
White body drips
The shining hymn.
And still before
The altar I
Exult the bowl
Brimful, and cry
To you to stoop
And drink, Most High.
Oh...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
"Alexander son of Philip, and the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians--"
We can very well imagine
that they were utterly indifferent in Sparta
to this inscription. "Except the Lacedaemonians",
but naturally. The Spartans were not
to be led and ordered about
as precious servants. Besides
a panhellenic campaign without
a Spartan king as a leader
would not have appeared very important.
O, of course "except the Lacedaemonians."
This too is a...Read more of this...
by
Richard Aldington
In Nineveh
And beyond Nineveh
In the dusk
They were afraid.
In Thebes of Egypt
In the dust
They chanted of them to the dead.
In my Lesbos and Achaia
Where the God dwelt
We knew them.
Now men say "They are not":
But in the dusk
Ere the white sun comes -
A gay child that bears a white...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.5-12
L. M.
The works of creation, providence, redemption of Israel, and destruction of enemies.
Great is the Lord, exalted high
Above all powers and every throne:
Whate'er he please, in earth or sea,
Or heav'n or hell, his hand hath done.
At his command the vapors rise,
The lightnings flash, the thunders roar;
He pours the rain, he brings the wind
And tempest from his airy store.
'Twas...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's...Read more of this...
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