Famous Enchantment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Spensers Ireland

by Marianne Moore
 has not altered;--
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.

If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather...Read more of this...

the singing dog

by Rg Gregory
 when the dog began to sing
the people ran amok
a man shinned up a flagpole
a woman chewed her sock

children danced the drainpipe
a policeman robbed a bank
the mayor and all the councillors
fired doughnuts from a tank

the queen embraced the dustman
the clergy showed their knees
librarians in their thousands
begged mercy from the trees

the dog sang in the market
it didn't understand
the panic and predicament
it'd...Read more of this...

The Tree of Laughing Bells

by Vachel Lindsay
 [A Poem for Aviators]


How the Wings Were Made

From many morning-glories 
That in an hour will fade, 
From many pansy buds 
Gathered in the shade, 
From lily of the valley 
And dandelion buds, 
From fiery poppy-buds 
Are the Wings of the Morning made. 


The Indian Girl Who Made Them

These, the Wings of the Morning, 
An Indian Maiden wove, 
Intertwining subtilely...Read more of this...

A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir

by Delmore Schwartz
 Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
Foolish Follies.

They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness
Of their youth and beauty
In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of
 awareness
Heightened, intensified and softened
By the soft and the silk of...Read more of this...

Drink of This Cup

by Thomas Moore
 Drink of this cup; -- you'll find there's a spell in 
Its every drop 'gainst the ills of mortality; 
Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen; 
Her cup was a fiction, but this is reality. 
Would you forget the dark world we are in 
Just taste of the bubble that gleams on the top of it; 
But would...Read more of this...

In the Stalls

by Arthur Symons
 My life is like a music-hall, 
Where, in the impotence of rage, 
Chained by enchantment to my stall, 
I see myself upon the stage 
Dance to amuse a music-hall. 

'Tis I that smoke this cigarette, 
Lounge here, and laugh for vacancy, 
And watch the dancers turn; and yet 
It is my very self I see 
Across the cloudy cigarette....Read more of this...

A Song of Enchantment

by Walter de la Mare
 A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green-green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree. 

Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green. 

Twilight came: silence came:
The planet of...Read more of this...

Caroline Branson

by Edgar Lee Masters
 With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
In the inspired improvisation of love!
But to put back of us as...Read more of this...

On the Cliffs Newport

by Alan Seeger
 Tonight a shimmer of gold lies mantled o'er 
Smooth lovely Ocean. Through the lustrous gloom 
A savor steals from linden trees in bloom 
And gardens ranged at many a palace door. 
Proud walls rise here, and, where the moonbeams pour 
Their pale enchantment down the dim coast-line, 
Terrace and lawn, trim hedge and flowering vine, 
Crown with fair culture...Read more of this...

A precious -- mouldering pleasure -- tis

by Emily Dickinson
 A precious -- mouldering pleasure -- 'tis --
To meet an Antique Book --
In just the Dress his Century wore --
A privilege -- I think --

His venerable Hand to take --
And warming in our own --
A passage back -- or two -- to make --
To Times when he -- was young --

His quaint opinions -- to inspect --
His thought to...Read more of this...

Shore Twilight

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Lo, find we here when the ripe day is o'er
A kingdom of enchantment by the shore! 

Behold the sky with early stars ashine,
A jewelled flagon brimmed with purple wine. 

Like a dumb poet's soul the troubled sea
Moans of its joy and sorrow wordlessly; 

But the glad winds that utter naught of grief
Make silver speech by headland and by reef....Read more of this...

Om

by George William Russell
 FAINT grew the yellow buds of light
Far flickering beyond the snows,
As leaning o’er the shadowy white
Morn glimmered like a pale primrose.


Within an Indian vale below
A child said “OM” with tender heart,
Watching with loving eyes the glow
In dayshine fade and night depart.


The word which Brahma at his dawn
Outbreathes and endeth at his night,
Whose tide of sound so rolling on
Gives birth...Read more of this...

Each And All

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's...Read more of this...

Impossibility like Wine

by Emily Dickinson
 Impossibility, like Wine
Exhilarates the Man
Who tastes it; Possibility
Is flavorless -- Combine

A Chance's faintest Tincture
And in the former Dram
Enchantment makes ingredient
As certainly as Doom --...Read more of this...

Sonnet X

by Alan Seeger
 A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, 
With palms extent for amorous charity 
And eyes incensed with love for all they see, 
A wonder more to be adored than wooed, 
On whom the grace of conscious womanhood 
Adorning every little thing she does 
Sits like enchantment, making glorious 
A careless pose, a casual attitude; 
Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise...Read more of this...

Cockroach

by Anne Sexton
 Roach, foulest of creatures,
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
you are lumps of coal that are mechanized
and when I turn on the light you scuttle
into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land.
Yet I know you are only the common angel
turned into, by way of enchantment, the ugliest.
Your uncle was made into...Read more of this...

Sleep Spaces

by Robert Desnos
 In the night there are of course the seven wonders
of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment.
Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets.
There is you.
In the night there are the walker's footsteps the murderer's
the town policeman's light from the street lamp and the ragman's lantern
There is you.
In the night trains go past and boats
and the fantasy of...Read more of this...

Farewell! -- But Whenever You Welcome the Hour

by Thomas Moore
 Farewell! but whenever you welcome the hour 
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower, 
Then think of the friend who once welcomed it too, 
And forgot his own griefs to be happy with you. 
His griefs may return, not a hope may remain 
Of the few that have brighten'd his pathway of pain, 
But he ne'er will...Read more of this...

Colophon

by Aleister Crowley
 TO LAYLAH EIGHT-AND-TWENTY

Lamp of living loveliness,
Maid miraculously male,
Rapture of thine own excess
Blushing through the velvet veil
Where the olive cheeks aglow
Shadow-soften into snow,
Breasts like Bacchanals afloat
Under the proudly phallic throat!
Be thou to my pilgrimage
Light, and laughter sweet and sage,
Till the darkling day expire
Of my life in thy caress,
Thou my frenzy and my fire,
Lamp of living loveliness!

Thou the ruler of the...Read more of this...

Serenade

by Victor Hugo
 ("Quand tu chantes.") 


 When the voice of thy lute at the eve 
 Charmeth the ear, 
 In the hour of enchantment believe 
 What I murmur near. 
 That the tune can the Age of Gold 
 With its magic restore. 
 Play on, play on, my fair one, 
 Play on for evermore. 
 
 When...Read more of this...

Magica

by Jean Delville
Behold the hour for your clairvoyant eyes to shine,
Intent Pythoness, inert in the silent heart of evening!
Your spirit has departed, lost amid the soul of the world,
Seeking the treasure, as your desire weaves its magic.

The sacred flame, which reabsorbs your fleshly being,
Will soon tranform the chasms of life into blazing pyres,
As the powers summon you to most secret sabbaths,
Reality of...Read more of this...

Reason says Love says

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Reason says, “I will beguile him with the tongue;”
Love says, “Be silent. I will beguile him with the soul.”
The soul says to the heart, “Go, do not laugh at me and yourself. What is there that is not his, that I may beguile him thereby?” 

Mother Earth by Henry Van Dyke

 Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,
Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!
Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,
Issued in some strange way, thou lying...Read more of this...

Innermost One

by Rabindranath Tagore
 He it is, the innermost one, 
who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches. 

He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes 
and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart 
in varied cadence of pleasure and pain. 

He it is who weaves the web of this maya 
in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue...Read more of this...

The Earth Breath

by George William Russell
 FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows
 Breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage
 To the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle
 Every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
 And enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses,
 Turns and, wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit
 Finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
 With the eyes of God
Over fields a slave...Read more of this...

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