Famous Element Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Element poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous element poems. These examples illustrate what a famous element poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...erst exil'd in Midian did sing
The world from chaos rising, and the birth
Of various nature in the earth, or sea,
Or element of air, or heav'n above.
This is that light which on fair Zion hill
Descending gradual, in full radiance beam'd
O'er Canaan's happy land. Her fav'rite seers
Had intercourse divine with this pure source,
And oft from them a stream of light did flow,
To each adjoining vale and desert plain,
Lost in the umbrage of dark heathen shades.Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ate'er it was,
You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.
--That, my ideal never can include,
Upon that element of truth and worth
Never be based! for say they make me Pope--
(They can't--suppose it for our argument!)
Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached
My height, and not a height which pleases you:
An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
With pasteboar...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ak
Thy great words, and describe thy royal face--
Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most,
Within the eventual element of calm.
Thy letter's first requirement meets me here.
It is as thou hast heard: in one short life
I, Cleon, have effected all those things
Thou wonderingly dost enumerate.
That epos on thy hundred plates of gold
Is mine,--and also mine the little chant,
So sure to rise from every fishing-bark
When, lights at prow, the seamen hau...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...er shoots;
Their port was more than human, as they stood.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,
And, as I passed, I worshiped. If those you seek,
It were a journey like the path to Heaven
To help you find them.
LADY. Gentle villager,
What readiest way would bring me to that place?
COMUS. Due west it rises from this shrubby point.Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...lodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknown--but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,
Upon thy Mount Lycean!
Even while they brought the burden to a close,
A shout from the whole multitude arose,
That lingered in the air like dying r...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...unconfin'd,
Can make a ladder of the eternal wind,
And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents
To watch the abysm-birth of elements.
Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate
A thousand Powers keep religious state,
In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne;
And, silent as a consecrated urn,
Hold sphery sessions for a season due.
Yet few of these far majesties, ah, few!
Have bared their operations to this globe--
Few, who with gorgeous pageantry enrobe
Our piece of heaven-...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...and Porphyrion,
With many more, the brawniest in assault,
Were pent in regions of laborious breath;
Dungeon'd in opaque element, to keep
Their clenched teeth still clench'd, and all their limbs
Lock'd up like veins of metal, crampt and screw'd;
Without a motion, save of their big hearts
Heaving in pain, and horribly convuls'd
With sanguine feverous boiling gurge of pulse.
Mnemosyne was straying in the world;
Far from her moon had Phoebe wandered;
And many else were free t...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ain experience --
'Tis Antidote to turn --
To Tomes of solid Witchcraft --
Magicians be asleep --
But Magic -- hath an Element
Like Deity -- to keep --...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...,
Without his literature and without his gods . . .
No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,
In an element that does not do for us,
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief,
Not one of the masculine myths we used to make,
A transparency through which the swallow weaves,
Without any form or any sense of form,
What we know in what we see, what we feel in what
We hear, what we are, beyond m...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...om whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye ha...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...n; understand the same
'Of fish within their watery residence,
'Not hither summoned, since they cannot change
'Their element, to draw the thinner air.'
As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold
Approaching two and two; these cowering low
With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing.
I named them, as they passed, and understood
Their nature, with such knowledge God endued
My sudden apprehension: But in these
I found not what methought I wanted still;
...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...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, billi...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...he savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet co...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...dded through the mire
Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.
I took no note of where we went,
His talk became the element
Wherein my being swam, content.
It flashed like rapiers in the night
Lit by uncertain candle-light,
When on some moon-forsaken sward
A quarrel dies upon a sword.
It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade,
And the noise in the air the broad words made
Was the cry of the wind at a window-pane
On an Autumn night of sobbing rain.
Then it woul...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...dirt,
125 Green barbarism turning paradigm.
126 Crispin foresaw a curious promenade
127 Or, nobler, sensed an elemental fate,
128 And elemental potencies and pangs,
129 And beautiful barenesses as yet unseen,
130 Making the most of savagery of palms,
131 Of moonlight on the thick, cadaverous bloom
132 That yuccas breed, and of the panther's tread.
133 The fabulous and its intrinsic verse
134 Came like two spirits parlaying, adorned
135 In radianc...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...y limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun
into the western sea.
Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary, element roaring
fled away:
Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king: his
grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans,
among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants:
banners, castles, slings and rocks,
Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens.
All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...rd me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.
THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind. They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.Read more of this...
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