Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Evanescent Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...h recurrent memory of his eyes, 
And of the man himself that I had known 
So long and well, made soon of all my toil
An evanescent and a vain evasion; 
And it was half as in expectancy 
That I obeyed the summons of his wife 
A little before dawn, and was again 
With Avon in the room where I had left him,
But not with the same Avon I had left. 
The doctor, an august authority, 
With eminence abroad as well as here, 
Looked hard at me as if I were the doctor 
And he the fri...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...r State, known or unknown, 
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build Eidólons.
 The ostent evanescent; 
The substance of an artist’s mood, or savan’s studies long, 
Or warrior’s, martyr’s, hero’s toils, To fashion his Eidólon. 
 Of every human life, 
(The units gather’d, posted—not a thought, emotion, deed, left out;)
The whole, or large or small, summ’d, added up, In its Eidólon. 
 The old, old urge; 
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo! n...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...s 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 and green, 
and lets peep out through the folds his feet, 
at whose touch I forget myself. 

Days come and ages pass, 
and it is ever he who moves my heart in many a name, 
in many a guise, in many a rapture of joy and of sorrow....Read more of this...

by Kendall, Henry
...r him, gleaming on that quiet shore? 


``Ere you quit this ancient casement, tell me, is it well to yearn 
For the evanescent visions, vanished never to return? 
Is it well that I should with to leave this dreary world behind, 
Seeking for your fair Utopia, which perchance I may not find? 
Passing through a gloomy forest, scaling steeps like prison walls, 
Where the scanty sunshine wavers and the moonlight seldom falls? 
Oh, the feelings re-awakened! Oh, the hopes o...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...r
Of life-teeming earth.
In children so rich.
Wander and feed
In vacant enjoyment,
And 'mid the dark sorrows
Of evanescent
Restricted life,--
Bow'd by the heavy
Yoke of Necessity.

But unto us he
Hath his most versatile,
Most cherished daughter
Granted,--what joy!

Lovingly greet her
As a beloved one!
Give her the woman's
Place in our home!

And oh, may the aged
Stepmother Wisdom
Her gentle spirit
Ne'er seek to harm!

Yet know I her sister,
The older, sedater,
Min...Read more of this...



by Stevens, Wallace
...force,
Too vague idealist, overwhelmed
By an afflatus that persists.
For this, then, we endure brief lives,
The evanescent symmetries
From that meticulous potter's thumb....Read more of this...

by Matthews, William
...t I've taught myself
in two months here to discern:
night restoring its opacities,
though for an instant as intense
and evanescent as waking from a dream
of eating blackberries and almost
being able to remember it, I think
I see the parts -- haze, dusk, light
broken into grains, fatigue,
the mineral dark of the White Mountains,
the wavering shadows steadying themselves --
separate, then joined, then seamless:
the way, in fact, Frost's great poems,
like all great poems, concea...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...-flame, flowery may-blobs,
Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love; 
You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent, 
You with your face all rich, like the sheen of a dove. 

You are always asking, do I remember, remember
The butter-cup bog-end where the flowers rose up
And kindled you over deep with a cast of gold? 
You ask again, do the healing days close up 
The open darkness which then drew us in, 
The dark which then drank up our brimming cup.

You...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...flew,
Had wept departed Summer's transient bloom:
But the wind rises, and the turf receives
The glittering web: -- So, evanescent, fade
Bright views that Youth with sanguine heart believes:
So vanish schemes of bliss, by Fancy made;
Which, fragile as the fleeting dews of morn,
Leave but the wither'd heath, and barren thorn!...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ere were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years gone by.
I waited, and between their silences
There was an evanescent faded noise;
And though a child, I knew it was the voice
Of one whose occupation was to die....Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...from behind the enshrouded horizon 
Comes the voice of a God saying "Let there be light." 

And lo, there is light! Evanescent and tender, 
It glows ruby-red where 'twas now ashen-grey; 
And purple and scarlet and gold in its splendour -- 
Behold, 'tis that marvel, the birth of a day!...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...is blazonry
To paint these porcelains with unknown hues
Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues,
Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen
Their colours are felt, but never seen.
Strange winged dragons writhe about
These vases, poisoned venoms spout,
Impregnate with old Chinese charms;
Sealed urns containing mortal harms,
They fill the mind with thoughts impure,
Pestilent drippings from the ure
Of vicious thinkings. "Ah, I see,"
Said I, "you deal in pottery."
The ...Read more of this...

by Nemerov, Howard
...Across the millstream below the bridge 
Seven blue swallows divide the air 
In shapes invisible and evanescent, 
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s 
Or memory’s power to keep them there. 

“History is where tensions were,” 
“Form is the diagram of forces.” 
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, 
While gazing down upon those birds— 
How strange, to be above the birds!— 
Thus helplessly the mind in its brain 
Weaves up relation’s spindrift web, 
Seeing...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...“We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, 
From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. 
You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes,—
Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet. 

“You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong,
But we know that we are neither and we say that you ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...rust -
Write the characters in the dust;
Stamp them on the running stream,
Print them on the moon's pale beam,
And each evanescent letter
Shall be clearer, firmer, better,
And more permanent, I ween,
Than the thing those letters mean.

I have strain'd the spider's thread
'Gainst the promise of a maid;
I have weigh'd a grain of sand
'Gainst her plight of heart and hand;
I told my true love of the token,
How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:
Again her word an...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...Two nights I have dreamed of you

Once as an adolescent, evanescent

Yet tangible still to the spirit’s touch,

Then as a ten year old in the shared 

Secret garden of our imagination....Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...f perfume.

And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!

And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of
 things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, 
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!— 
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.

Firefly's your name. You are evanescent. 
But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, 
And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, 
Till you are lost,—as a voice is lost in silence.

Till I am lost, as a voice is lost in silence. . . 
Are you the one who would close so cool about me? 
My fire sheds into a...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Evanescent poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things