Famous Elements Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Elements poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous elements poems. These examples illustrate what a famous elements poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Donne
She's dead; and all which die
To their first elements resolve;
And we were mutual elements to us,
And made of one another.
My body then doth hers involve,
And those things whereof I consist hereby
In me abundant grow, and burdenous,
And nourish not, but smother.
My fire of passion, sighs of air,
Water of tears, and earthly sad despair,
Which my materials be,
But near worn out by...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
As she goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty;
And enamour'd, do wish, so they might
But enjoy such a sight,
That they still were to run by her side,
Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
Do but look...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
Lovers eminent in love
Ever diversities combine;
The vocal chords of the cushat-dove,
The snake's articulated spine.
Such elective elements
Educate the eye and lip
With one's refreshing innocence,
The other's claim to scholarship.
The serpent's knowledge of the world
Learn, and the dove's more naïve charm;
Whether your ringlets should be curled,
And why he likes his claret warm....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
How the elements solidify! ---
The moonlight, that chalk cliff
In whose rift we lie
Back to back. I here an owl cry
From its cold indigo.
Intolerable vowels enter my heart.
The child in the white crib revolves and sighs,
Opens its mouth now, demanding.
His little face is carved in pained, red wood.
Then there are the stars - ineradicable, hard.
One touch : it burns and sickens.
I...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
I
Not once in all our days of poignant love,
Did I a single instant give to thee
My undivided being wholly free.
Not all thy potent passion could remove
The barrier that loomed between to prove
The full supreme surrendering of me.
Oh, I was beaten, helpless utterly
Against the shadow-fact with which I strove.
For when a...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite;
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My worlds both parts, and (oh!) both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
Broken in pieces all asunder,
Lord, hunt me not,
A thing forgot,
Once a poor creature, now a wonder,
A wonder tortur'd in the space
Betwixt this world and that of grace.
My thoughts are all a case of knives,
Wounding my heart
With scatter'd smart,
As wat'ring pots give flowers their lives.
Nothing their fury can control,
While they do wound and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O thou who art the result of the four [elements] and
the seven [heavens], I see you in perplexity amongst
these four and seven. Drink wine, for, as I have said
to you more than four times, you will return no more;
once departed, you are gone indeed....Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined;
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wand'rer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heav'ns' mysterious face;
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Now I knew I lost her --
Not that she was gone --
But Remoteness travelled
On her Face and Tongue.
Alien, though adjoining
As a Foreign Race --
Traversed she though pausing
Latitudeless Place.
Elements Unaltered --
Universe the same
But Love's transmigration --
Somehow this had come --
Henceforth to remember
Nature took the Day
I had paid so much for --
His is Penury
Not who toils for Freedom
Or for Family
But the...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
In me the cave-man clasps the seer,
And garlanded Apollo goes
Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Four elements, joined in
Harmonious strife,
Shadow the world forth,
And typify life.
Into the goblet
The lemon's juice pour;
Acid is ever
Life's innermost core.
Now, with the sugar's
All-softening juice,
The strength of the acid
So burning reduce.
The bright sparkling water
Now pour in the bowl;
Water all-gently
Encircles the whole.
Let drops of the spirit
To join them now flow;
Life to the living
Naught else can bestow.
Drain it off quickly
Before it exhales;
Save when...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile
And eloquence of beauty and she glides 5
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Turner Smith
Press'd by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its power combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o'er the shrinking land sublimely rides.
The wild blast, rising from the Western cave,
Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed;
Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead,
And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave!
With shells and sea-weed...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
Not in rich furniture, or fine array,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who from me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should'st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sin:
But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep'st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recured
By those swift messengers...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same—
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,—
A world to roam through, and a...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she
Hath all things whereby others beautious be,
For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great,
Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet,
Though they be dim, yet she is light enough,
And though her harsh hair fall, her skin is rough;
What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red;
Give her thine, and she...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
And the priestess spoke again and said: "Speak to us of Reason and Passion."
And he answered saying:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
You won't become a gourmet* cook
By studying our Fannie's book--
Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House
Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss.
Nevertheless, you'll find, Frank dear,
The basic elements** are here.
And if a problem should arise:
The Soufflé fall before your eyes,
Or strange things happen to the Rice
--You know I love to give advice....Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Nay, why reproach each other, be unkind,
For there's no plane on which we two may meet?
Let's both forgive, forget, for both were blind,
And life is of a day, and time is fleet.
And I am fire, swift to flame and burn,
Melting with elements high overhead,
While you are water in an earthly urn,
All pure,...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Child of four elements and sevenfold heaven,
Who fume and sweat because of these eleven,
Drink! I have told you seventy times and seven,
Once gone, nor hell will send you back, nor heaven....Read more of this...
by
Kathleen Raine
God in me is the fury on the bare heath
God in me shakes the interior kingdom of my heaven.
God in me is the fire wherein I burn.
God in me swirling cloud and driving rain
God in me cries a lonely nameless bird
God in me beats my head upon a stone.
God in me the four elements of storm
Raging in the shelterless...Read more of this...
by
Gary Snyder
Smokey the Bear Sutra
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from...Read more of this...
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