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Famous Ether Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Robinson, Mary Darby
...dles at its fires. 

O, justly gifted with the Sacred Lyre, 
Whose sounds can more than mortal thoughts inspire, 
Whether its strings HEROIC measures move, 
Or lyric numbers charm the soul to love; 
Whether thy fancy "pours the varying verse" 
In bow'rs of bliss, or o'er the plumed hearse; 
Whether of patriot zeal, or past'ral sports, 
The peace of hamlets, or the pride of courts: 
Still Nature glows in ev'ry classic line­ 
Still Genius dictates­still the verse is thine.<...Read more of this...



by Poe, Edgar Allan
...d "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven-
Of rosy head that, towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve- at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light-
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pave...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...defiled.



3. ANGEL OF FLIGHT AND SLEIGH BELLS

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vas...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...me! 

WE knew that sugared stuff 
Poisoned the other; 
Rough as the wind is rough, 
Sister and brother! 
Breathing the ether clear 
Others forlorn have found -- 
Oh, for that peace austere 
She and her scorn have found!...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...sill the air, the subtle food,
To make us feel existence, and to shew
How quiet death is. Where soil is men grow,
Whether to weeds or flowers; but for me,
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of land--
Alone? No, no; and by the Orphean lute,
When mad Eurydice is listening to 't;
I'd rather stand upon this misty peak,
With not a thing to sigh for, or to seek,
But the soft shadow of my thrice-seen ...Read more of this...



by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So t...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ath;
His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours
And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared
From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,
Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,
And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,
Until he reach'd the great main cupola;
There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,
And from the basements deep to the high towers
Jarr'd his own go...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...d the spiral turnkey,
Your corkscrew grave centred in navel and nipple,
The neck of the nostril,
Under the mask and the ether, they making bloody
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A cock-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...head; 
Then, FANCY, on her wing sublime,
Shall waft me to the sacred clime
Where my enlighten'd sense shall view,
Thro' ether realms of azure hue, 
That flame, where SHAKESPEARE us'd to fill, 
With matchless fire, his "golden quill." 
While, from its point bright Genius caught
The wit supreme, the glowing thought, 
The magic tone, that sweetly hung
About the music of his tongue. 
Then will I skim the floating air,
On a light couch of gossamer,
While with my wonder-ach...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ren. 

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded; 
I see through the broadcloth and gingham, whether or no; 
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away. 

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle;
I lift the gauze, and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my
 hand. 

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill; 
I peeringly view them from the top. 

The suicide s...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...laws of wonder-working might,
The stores by beauty brought to light,
Inventive reason in soft union planned
To blend together 'neath your forming hand.
The obelisk, the pyramid ascended,
The Hermes stood, the column sprang on high,
The reed poured forth the woodland melody,
Immortal song on victor's deeds attended.

The fairest flowers that decked the earth,
Into a nosegay, with wise choice combined,
Thus the first art from Nature had its birth;
Into a garland then we...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.

I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us, squalled out, we br...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...or warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety, 

But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether. 

If this be vague words, then seek not to clear them. 

Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end, 

And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning. 

Life, and all that lives, is conceived in the mist and not in the crystal. 

And who knows but a crystal is mist in decay? 

This would I have you remem...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.
N...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
... . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
And coiling slowly about him, and laughing ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...w descend,
Once more to mingle with their Watry Friends.
The vivid Stars shine out, in radiant Files;
And boundless Ether glows, till the fair Moon
Shows her broad Visage, in the crimson'd East; 
Now, stooping, seems to kiss the passing Cloud:
Now, o'er the pure Cerulean, rides sublime.
Wide the pale Deluge floats, with silver Waves,
O'er the sky'd Mountain, to the low-laid Vale;
From the white Rocks, with dim Reflexion, gleams, 
And faintly glitters thro' the waving ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ut more with motions which each other crost
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew;
And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
With overarching elms & caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...falls away steeply,
Wanders the greenish-hued stream, looking like glass as it flows.
Endlessly under me see I the ether, and endlessly o'er
Giddily look I above, shudderingly look I below,
But between the infinite height and the infinite hollow
Safely the wanderer moves over a well-guarded path.
Smilingly past me are flying the banks all teeming with riches,
And the valley so bright boasts of its industry glad.
See how yonder hedgerows that sever the farmer's po...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...doves 
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven 
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession 
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves 
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky 
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me]. 

*** 
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting 
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel 
Soldiers piss—under the watchful eye of a tank— 
And the autumnal day ends its golde...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...up, he goes where lightnings go. 

He cares no more for warnings, he rushes through the sky, 
Braving the crags of ether, daring the gods on high, 
Black 'gainst the crimson sunset, golden o'er cloudy snows, 
With all Adventure in his heart the first winged man arose. 

Dropping gold, dropping gold, where the mists of morning rolled, 
On he kept his way undaunted, though his breaths were stabs of cold, 
Through the mystery of dawning that no mortal may behold. 

...Read more of this...

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