Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Embodied Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Hardy, Thomas
...The world's amendment flows; 

 But which, benumbed at birth 
By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be 
 Embodied on the earth; 
And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity 
 May wake regret in me....Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...hat great immortal Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilom did pass
Down from the top of purest heaven's height
To be embodied here, it then took light
And lively spirits from that fairest star,
Which lights the world forth from his fiery car.

Which power retaining still or more or less,
When she in fleshly seed is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impress,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit ...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...hat great immortal Spright,
By whom all live to love, whilom did pass
Down from the top of purest heaven's height
To be embodied here, it then took light
And lively spirits from that fairest star,
Which lights the world forth from his fiery car.

Which power retaining still or more or less,
When she in fleshly seed is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impress,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit ...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...ll sung, 
Which gives delight, although the soul is wrung.
Farther and fainter to the sight and sound
The beautiful embodied poem wound; 
Till like a ribbon, stretched across the land
Seemed the long narrow line of that receding band.



XXVIII.
The lot of those who in the silence wait
Is harder than the fighting soldiers' fate.
Back to the lonely post two women passed, 
With unaccustomed sorrow overcast.
Two sad for sighs, too desolate for tears, 
The dar...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ed—redeem—

680

Each Life Converges to some Centre—
Expressed—or still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—

Embodied scarcely to itself—it may be—
Too fair
For Credibility's presumption
To mar—

Adored with caution—as a Brittle Heaven—
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow's Raiment
To touch—

Yet persevered toward—sure—for the Distance—
How high—
Unto the Saints' slow diligence—
The Sky—

Ungained—it may be—by a Life's low Venture—
But then—
Ete...Read more of this...



by Seeger, Alan
...


There, in your beauty's sweet abandonment to pleasure, 
The mute, half-open lips and tender, wondering eyes, 
I saw embodied first smile back on me the treasure 
Long sought across the seas and back of summer skies. 


Dear face, when courted Death shall claim my limbs and find them 
Laid in some desert place, alone or where the tides 
Of war's tumultuous waves on the wet sands behind them 
Leave rifts of gasping life when their red flood subsides, 


Out of the past'...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...Each Life Converges to some Centre --
Expressed -- or still --
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal --

Embodied scarcely to itself -- it may be --
Too fair
For Credibility's presumption
To mar --

Adored with caution -- as a Brittle Heaven --
To reach
Were hopeless, as the Rainbow's Raiment
To touch --

Yet persevered toward -- sure -- for the Distance --
How high --
Unto the Saint's slow diligence --
The Sky --

Ungained -- it may be -- by a Life's low Ventu...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...through the wood.

Soon a tender pair I spy,

And I look down from my seat

On the beauteous maiden's head--

When embodied there I meet

All I lost as soon as dead,
Happy as before am I.

Him she clasps with silent smile,

And his mouth the hour improves,

Sent by kindly Deities;

First from breast to mouth it roves,

Then from mouth to hands it flies,
And I round him sport the while.

And she sees me hov'ring near;

Trembling at her lovers rapture,

Up she spri...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ner race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove...Read more of this...

by Gunn, Thom
...friends, and
a few with historical 
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all

the past lapping them like a 
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me, distant now.

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested 
hard ener...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ower, by those statues' godhead,
And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway,
And your little grace, by their grace embodied,
And your little date, by their forms that stay.

XIII.

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The Son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use.
You're wroth---can you slay your snake like Apollo?
You're grieved---still Niobe's the grander!
You live-...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...d now his heart 
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength, 
Glories: for never, since created Man, 
Met such embodied force as, named with these, 
Could merit more than that small infantry 
Warred on by cranes--though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who si...Read more of this...

by Fletcher, John Gould
...my heart move

Blindly in bones that ride above you,

Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,

Through viewless valves embodied so –



Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,

The riving and the driving forth,

Life with remorseless forceps beckoning –

Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth....Read more of this...

by Davidson, John
...of the sky: 
But the sun 
Is outrun, 
And Time passed by. 

O'er bosky dens, 
By marsh and mead, 
Forest and fens 
Embodied speed 
Is clanked and hurled; 
O'er rivers and runnels; 
And into the earth 
And out again 
In death and birth 
That know no pain, 
For the whole round world 
Is a warren of railway tunnels. 

Hark! hark! hark! 
It screams and cleaves the dark; 
And the subterranean night 
Is gilt with smoky light. 
Then out again apace 
It runs its thunderi...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ump is that, bent, crouch’d there on the sand? 
Streaming tears—sobbing tears—throes, choked with wild cries; 
O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach; 
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace; 
But away, at night, as you fly, none looking—O then the unloosen’d ocean, 
Of tears! tears! tears!...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...e has been erected a handsome monument
In memory of the Black Watch, which is magnificent to see,
Where they first were embodied at Aberfeldy. 

And as a Highland regiment they are worthy of what has been done for them,
Because a more courageous regiment we cannot find of men
Who have bravely fought and bled in defence of their country,
Especially in the Ruusian War and Soudan War they made their enemies flee. 

The monument I hope will stand secure for many a long da...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...o the race.
And we, descendants of that elder time,
Have learnt to love the very form in which
The thought has been embodied to our years.
And here we feel that we are not alone,
We too are one with our own richest past;
And here that veiled, but ever smouldering fire
Of race, which rarely seen yet never dies,
Springs up afresh and warms us with its heat.
And must they take away this treasure house,
To us so full of thoughts and memories;
To all the world beside a...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...world contends for to mine eye
Seemed not so real a meaning of success
As only once to clasp before I die
My vision of embodied happiness....Read more of this...

by Naidu, Sarojini
...er 
The ruined grandeur of your fort. 

Though centuries falter and decline, 
Your proven strongholds shall remain 
Embodied memories of your line, 
Incarnate legends of your reign. 

O Queens, in vain old Fate decreed 
Your flower-like bodies to the tomb; 
Death is in truth the vital seed 
Of your imperishable bloom 

Each new-born year the bulbuls sing 
Their songs of your renascent loves; 
Your beauty wakens with the spring 
To kindle these pomegranate groves....Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ever came and went)--
Since in that cave a dewy splendor hidden
Took shape and motion. With the living form
Of this embodied Power the cave grew warm.

A lovely Lady garmented in light
From her own beauty: deep her eyes as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a temple's cloven roof; her hair
Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar;
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Embodied poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things