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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Before Her Portrait In Youth

by Francis Thompson
 As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:
And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,
Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing
To let one thought's...Read more of this...

The Lay Of The Mountain

by Friedrich von Schiller
 To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,
To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;
That thou wake not the wild one, all silently tread--
Let thy lip breathe no breath in the pathway of dread!

High over the marge of the horrible deep
Hangs and hovers a...Read more of this...

Song Of The Spirit

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Too sweet and too subtle for pen or for tongue
In phrases unwritten and measures unsung, 
As deep and as strange as the sounds of the sea, 
Is the song that my spirit is singing to me.

In the midnight and tempest when forest trees shiver, 
In the roar of the surf, and the rush of the river, 
In the rustle...Read more of this...

Winged Man

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits, 
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates, 
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar, 
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar. 

There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise, 
The man who chained the Minotaur,...Read more of this...

In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

by Walt Whitman
 1
IN cabin’d ships, at sea, 
The boundless blue on every side expanding, 
With whistling winds and music of the waves—the large imperious waves—In
 such, 
Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine, 
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star
 at night,...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...

The Great Breath

by George William Russell
 ITS edges foamed with amethyst and rose,
Withers once more the old blue flower of day:
There where the ether like a diamond glows
 Its petals fade away.


A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air;
Sparkle the delicate dews, the distant snows;
The great deep thrills, for through it everywhere
 The breath of Beauty blows.


I saw how all the trembling ages past,
Moulded to her...Read more of this...

It was a quiet way --

by Emily Dickinson
 It was a quiet way --
He asked if I was his --
I made no answer of the Tongue
But answer of the Eyes --
And then He bore me on
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots
And distance, as of Wheels.
This World did drop away
As Acres from the feet
Of one that leaneth from Balloon
Upon an Ether street.
The Gulf behind was not,
The...Read more of this...

193. On Scaring some Water-Fowl in Lock Turit

by Robert Burns
 WHY, ye tenants of the lake,
For me your wat’ry haunt forsake?
Tell me, fellow-creatures, why
At my presence thus you fly?
Why disturb your social joys,
Parent, filial, kindred ties?—
Common friend to you and me,
yature’s gifts to all are free:
Peaceful keep your dimpling wave,
Busy feed, or wanton lave;
Or, beneath the sheltering rock,
Bide the surging billow’s shock.


 Conscious, blushing for our race,
Soon, too soon,...Read more of this...

The Granny Grey a Love Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 DAME DOWSON, was a granny grey,
Who, three score years and ten,
Had pass'd her busy hours away,
In talking of the Men !
They were her theme, at home, abroad,
At wake, and by the winter fire,
Whether it froze, or blew, or thaw'd,
In sunshine or in shade, her ire
Was never calm'd; for still she made
Scandal her pleasure--and her trade!

A Grand-daughter DAME DOWSON had--
As...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV: Come Soft Aeolian Harp

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, soft Aeolian harp, while zephyr plays
Along the meek vibration of thy strings,
As twilight's hand her modest mantle brings,
Blending with sober grey, the western blaze!
O! prompt my Phaon's dreams with tend'rest lays,
Ere night o'er shade thee with its humid wings,
While the lorn Philomel his sorrow sings
In leafy cradle, red with parting rays!
Slow let thy dulcet tones on ether glide,
So...Read more of this...

I In My Intricate Image

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She...Read more of this...

I Grant You Ample Leave

by George Eliot
 "I grant you ample leave 
To use the hoary formula 'I am' 
Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 
But fill the void with definition, 'I' 
Will be no more a datum than the words 
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so' 
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one...Read more of this...

Dropped into the Ether Acre --

by Emily Dickinson
 Dropped into the Ether Acre --
Wearing the Sod Gown --
Bonnet of Everlasting Laces --
Brooch -- frozen on --

Horses of Blonde -- and Coach of Silver --
Baggage a strapped Pearl --
Journey of Down -- and Whip of Diamond --
Riding to meet the Earl --...Read more of this...

Its little Ether Hood

by Emily Dickinson
 Its little Ether Hood
Doth sit upon its Head --
The millinery supple
Of the sagacious God --

Till when it slip away
A nothing at a time --
And Dandelion's Drama
Expires in a stem....Read more of this...

The Giant In Glee

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ho, guerriers! je suis né dans le pays des Gaules.") 
 
 {V., March 11, 1825.} 


 Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls; 
 O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls 
 Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed 
 Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I...Read more of this...

Confessions

by Robert Browning
 What is he buzzing in my ears?
"Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you...Read more of this...

Lyonnesse

by Sylvia Plath
 No use whistling for Lyonnesse! 
Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is. 
Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead- 

There's where it sunk. 
The blue, green, 
Gray, indeterminate gilt 

Sea of his eyes washing over it 
And a round bubble 
Popping upward from the mouths of bells 

People and cows. 
The Lyonians had always thought 
Heaven would...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 10: Sudden Death

by Conrad Aiken
 'Number four—the girl who died on the table—
The girl with golden hair—'
The purpling body lies on the polished marble.
We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . .

One, who held the ether-cone, remembers
Her dark blue frightened eyes.
He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast
More hurriedly fall and rise.
Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her...Read more of this...

Elegy for an Enemy

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 (For G. H.) 

Say, does that stupid earth 
Where they have laid her, 
Bind still her sullen mirth, 
Mirth which betrayed her? 
Do the lush grasses hold, 
Greenly and glad, 
That brittle-perfect gold 
She alone had? 

Smugly the common crew, 
Over their knitting, 
Mourn her -- as butchers do 
Sheep-throats they're slitting! 
She was my enemy, 
One of the...Read more of this...

Love And Death

by Sara Teasdale
 Shall we, too, rise forgetful from our sleep,
And shall my soul that lies within your hand
Remember nothing, as the blowing sand
Forgets the palm where long blue shadows creep
When winds along the darkened desert sweep?

Or would it still remember, tho' it spanned
A thousand heavens, while the planets fanned
The vacant ether with their voices deep?
Soul of my soul, no word shall...Read more of this...

Angels Of The Love Affair

by Anne Sexton
 "Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that...Read more of this...

Summer Wind

by William Cullen Bryant
 It is a sultry day; the sun has drank 
The dew that lay upon the morning grass, 
There is no rustling in the lofty elm 
That canopies my dwelling, and its shade 
Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint 
And interrupted murmur of the bee, 
Settling on the sick flowers, and then again 
Instantly on the wing....Read more of this...

The Married Lover

by Coventry Patmore
 Why, having won her, do I woo? 
Because her spirit's vestal grace 
Provokes me always to pursue, 
But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; 
Because her womanhood is such
That, as on court-days subjects kiss 
The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch 
Affirms no mean familiarness; 
Nay, rather marks more fair the height 
Which can with safety so neglect 
To dread, as...Read more of this...

Eight forms has Shiva

by Kalidasa
Eight forms has Shiva, lord of all and king:
And these are water, first created thing;
And fire, which speeds the sacrifice begun;
The priest; and time's dividers, moon and sun;
The all-embracing ether, path of sound;
The earth, wherein all seeds of life are found;
And air, the breath of life: may he draw near,
Revealed in these, and bless those gathered here....Read more of this...

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