Famous Embraces Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To His Love When He Had Obtained Her

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Now Serena be not coy, 
Since we freely may enjoy 
Sweet embraces, such delights, 
As will shorten tedious nights. 
Think that beauty will not stay 
With you always, but away, 
And that tyrannizing face 
That now holds such perfect grace 
Will both changed and ruined be; 
So frail is all things as we see, 
So subject unto conquering Time....Read more of this...

Don Juan

by A S J Tessimond
 Under the lips and limbs, the embraces, faces,
Under the sharp circumference, the brightness,
Under the fence of shadows,
Is something I am seeking;
Under the faces a face,
Under the new an old or a not-yet-come-to;
Under the voices a peace.

Am I a darkness all your flames must light?
A mirror all your eyes must look into -
That dares not yet reflect the neutral sky,
The...Read more of this...

January 31

by David Lehman
 Nothing extends a phone
call more effectively than
saying you're on your way out
but she wants to tell you
the five things she requires
in a man one is intelligence
he must have a brain
also he must be good a term
she likes because it embraces both
the opposite of evil and "good in
bed" and you admire the way
she skillfully maneuvered the
conversation to the sex lives
of...Read more of this...

Portsmouths Looking Glass

by John Wilmot
 Methinks I see you, newly risen
From your embroider'd Bed and pissing,
With studied mien and much grimace,
Present yourself before your glass,
To vanish and smooth o'er those graces,
You rubb'd off in your Night Embraces....Read more of this...

Fantasie -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Name, my Laura, name the whirl-compelling
Bodies to unite in one blest whole--
Name, my Laura, name the wondrous magic
By which soul rejoins its kindred soul!

See! it teaches yonder roving planets
Round the sun to fly in endless race;
And as children play around their mother,
Checkered circles round the orb to trace.

Every rolling star, by thirst tormented,
Drinks with joy its bright and golden...Read more of this...

The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt)

by Alexander Pope
 He said, and pass'd with sad presaging heart
To seek his spouse, his soul's far dearer part;
At home he sought her, but he sought in vain:
She, with one maid of all her menial train,
Had thence retir'd; and, with her second joy,
The young Astyanax, the hope of Troy,
Pensive she stood on Ilion's tow'ry height,
Beheld the war, and sicken'd at the sight;
There...Read more of this...

The Prophet

by D. H. Lawrence
 Ah, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom
The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces,
Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom,
Wounding themselves against her, denying her fecund embraces....Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...

The Father's Curse

by Victor Hugo
 ("Vous, sire, écoutez-moi.") 
 
 {LE ROI S'AMUSE, Act I.} 


 M. ST. VALLIER (an aged nobleman, from whom King Francis I. 
 decoyed his daughter, the famous beauty, Diana of 
 Poitiers). 
 
 A king should listen when his subjects speak: 
 'Tis true your mandate led me to the block, 
 Where pardon came upon me,...Read more of this...

Prayer

by Richard Crashaw
 LO here a little volume, but great Book
A nest of new-born sweets;
Whose native fires disdaining
To ly thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comly bands
(Fair one) from the kind hands
And confidently look
To find the rest
Of a rich binding in your Brest.
It is, in one choise handfull, heavenn; and all
Heavn’s Royall host; incamp’t thus small
To prove that true schooles...Read more of this...

I Loved..

by Alan Seeger
 I loved illustrious cities and the crowds 
That eddy through their incandescent nights. 
I loved remote horizons with far clouds 
Girdled, and fringed about with snowy heights. 
I loved fair women, their sweet, conscious ways 
Of wearing among hands that covet and plead 
The rose ablossom at the rainbow's base 
That bounds the world's desire and all its need....Read more of this...

1777

by Amy Lowell
 I
The Trumpet-Vine Arbour
The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are 
wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting...Read more of this...

Love

by Ahmet Yalcinkaya
I come every morning to the beginning of this street 
thinking that you will pass from here 
I wait, wait, and wait… 

when you are seen from far 
my heart does not fit to its cage, 
tulips bloom in me… 
an inexplicable warmth embraces my body 
I burn from top to toe… 
I do not see who is on the...Read more of this...

Resignation

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THERE is no flock however watched and tended  
But one dead lamb is there! 
There is no fireside howsoe'er defended  
But has one vacant chair! 

The air is full of farewells to the dying 5 
And mournings for the dead; 
The heart of Rachel for her children crying  
Will not be comforted! 

Let us be patient! These...Read more of this...

Romance Moderne

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose 
flickering mountain—bulging nearer, 
ebbing back into the sun 
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,— 
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, 
churning itself white, drawing 
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels 
fall— 
And—the other world— 
the windshield a blunt barrier: 
Talk...Read more of this...

Unfolded Out of the Folds

by Walt Whitman
 UNFOLDED out of the folds of the woman, man comes unfolded, and is always to
 come unfolded; 
Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth, is to come the superbest
 man of the earth; 
Unfolded out of the friendliest woman, is to come the friendliest man; 
Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman, can...Read more of this...

A Lost Angel

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When first we met she seemed so white
 I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
 I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
 I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
 I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
 I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
 I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
 To...Read more of this...

The Changeling

by Russell Edson
 A man had a son who was an anvil. And then sometimes 
he was an automobile tire.
 I do wish you would sit still, said the father.
 Sometimes his son was a rock.
 I realize that you have quite lost boundary, where no 
excess seems excessive, nor to where poverty roots hunger to 
need. But should you allow time...Read more of this...

The Talisman

by Alexander Pushkin
 Where the sea forever dances
Over lonely cliff and dune,
Where sweet twilight's vapor glances
In a warmer-glowing moon,
Where with the seraglio's graces
Daylong toys the Mussulman,
An enchantress 'mid embraces
Handed me a talisman.

'Mid embraces I was bidden:
"Guard this talisman of mine:
In it secret power is hidden!
Love himself has made it thine.
Neither death nor ills nor aging,
My beloved, does it ban,
Nor in gales and...Read more of this...

Who Learns My Lesson Complete?

by Walt Whitman
 WHO learns my lesson complete? 
Boss, journeyman, apprentice—churchman and atheist, 
The stupid and the wise thinker—parents and offspring—merchant, clerk, porter
 and
 customer, 
Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy—Draw nigh and commence; 
It is no lesson—it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still. 

The great laws take and effuse without argument;...Read more of this...

In The Village Of My Ancestors

by Vasko Popa
 Someone embraces me
Someone looks at me with the eyes of a wolf
Someone takes off his hat
So I can see him better

Everyone asks me
Do you know how I'm related to you

Unknown old men and women
Appropriate the names
Of young men and women from my memory

I ask one of them
Tell me for God's sake
Is George the Wolf still living

That's me he answers
With...Read more of this...

Kashmiri Song by Juma

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   You never loved me, and yet to save me,
   One unforgetable night you gave me
   Such chill embraces as the snow-covered heights
   Receive from clouds, in northern, Auroral nights.
   Such keen communion as the frozen mere
   Has with immaculate moonlight, cold and clear.
   And all...Read more of this...

A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa

by Richard Crashaw
 LOVE, thou are absolute, sole Lord
Of life and death. To prove the word,
We'll now appeal to none of all
Those thy old soldiers, great and tall,
Ripe men of martyrdom, that could reach down
With strong arms their triumphant crown:
Such as could with lusty breath
Speak loud, unto the face of death,
Their great Lord's glorious name; to none
Of those whose spacious bosoms spread...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXI. Piangete, donne, e con voi pianga Amore. ON THE DEATH OF CINO DA PISTOIA.  Weep, beauteous damsels, and let Cupid weep,Of every region weep, ye lover train;He, who so skilfully attuned his strainTo your fond cause, is sunk in death's cold sleep!Such limits let not my affliction keep,As...Read more of this...

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