Famous Faces Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Faces poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous faces poems. These examples illustrate what a famous faces poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dickinson, Emily
...ace—
My own—so patient—covers—
Too far—the strength—
My timidness enfolds—
Haunting the Heart—
Like her translated faces—
Teasing the want—
It—only—can suffice!
271
A solemn thing—it was—I said—
A woman—white—to be—
And wear—if God should count me fit—
Her blameless mystery—
A hallowed thing—to drop a life
Into the purple well—
Too plummetless—that it return—
Eternity—until—
I pondered how the bliss would look—
And would it feel as big—
When I could...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...in silence stood.
Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods
At sight of the dejected King of day,
And many hid their faces from the light:
But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes
Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,
Uprose Iapetus, and Creus too,
And Phorcus, sea-born, and together strode
To where he towered on his eminence.
There those four shouted forth old Saturn's name;
Hyperion from the peak loud answered, "Saturn!"
Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods,
...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ts and great wasps, that buzzed and clung,
- Weak pain for weaklings meet, - and where they stung,
Blood from their faces streamed, with sobbing breath,
And all the ground beneath with tears and blood
Was drenched, and crawling in that loathsome mud
There were great worms that drank it.
Gladly
thence
I gazed far forward. Dark and wide the flood
That flowed before us. On the nearer shore
Were people waiting. "Master, show me whence
These ca...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord —
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored:
There be bright faces in the busy hall,
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.
II.
The chief of Lara is return'd again:
And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?
Left b...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...bsp; A fire was once within my brain; And in my head a dull, dull pain; And fiendish faces one, two, three, Hung at my breasts, and pulled at me. But then there came a sight of joy; It came at once to do me good; I waked, and saw my little boy, My little boy of flesh and blood; Oh joy for me that sight to see! For he was here, and only he...Read more of this...
by
St Vincent Millay, Edna
...oves that bear her name,
Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,
And cymbals struck on high and strident faces
Obstreperous in her praise
They neither love nor know,
A goddess of gone days,
Departed long ago,
Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes
Of her old sanctuary,
A deity obscure and legendary,
Of whom there now remains,
For sages to decipher and priests to garble,
Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,
Which even now, behold, the frie...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...ll not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...I am sick after the friendship of him who, I fear, is
indifferent
to me.
O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot tell how welcome
they
are to me.
6
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast!
O to continue and be employ’d there all my life!
O the briny and damp smell—the shore—the salt weeds exposed at low water,
The work of fishermen—the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...pervading hush is for my sake;
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy;
White and beautiful are the faces around me—the heads are bared of their
fire-caps;
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.
Distant and dead resuscitate;
They show as the dial or move as the hands of me—I am the clock myself.
I am an old artillerist—I tell of my fort’s bombardment;
I am there again.
Again the long roll of the drummers;
A...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nd now would
impart the
same secretly to me;
From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the
spirits
thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel! O pu...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...he earth came marching in
To torch and cresset gleam.
And the roads of the world that lead to Rome
Were filled with faces that moved like foam,
Like faces in a dream.
And men rode out of the eastern lands,
Broad river and burning plain;
Trees that are Titan flowers to see,
And tiger skies, striped horribly,
With tints of tropic rain.
Where Ind's enamelled peaks arise
Around that inmost one,
Where ancient eagles on its brink,
Vast as archangels, gather and drink
...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...r best cure! uncomforted. And friendless solitude, groaning and tears. And savage faces, at the clanking hour, Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon, By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies Circled with evil, till his very soul Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed By sights of ever more deformity! With other ministrations t...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...mple terms of good and ill,
Seeking the face of Beauty without blame.
17
Say who be these light-bearded, sunburnt faces
In negligent and travel-stain'd array,
That in the city of Dante come to-day,
Haughtily visiting her holy places?
O these be noble men that hide their graces,
True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay,
By tales of fame diverted on their way
Home from the rule of oriental races.
Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes
And motion delicate, bu...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...o burnt the hold, their arms
Hacked, and their foreheads grimed with smoke, and seared,
Followed, and in among bright faces, ours,
Full of the vision, prest: and then the King
Spake to me, being nearest, "Percivale,"
(Because the hall was all in tumult--some
Vowing, and some protesting), "what is this?"
`O brother, when I told him what had chanced,
My sister's vision, and the rest, his face
Darkened, as I have seen it more than once,
When some brave deed seemed to ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...ess alliance shone
The lights through arch of blackened stone,
And showed wild shapes in garb of war,
Faces deformed with beard and scar,
All haggard from the midnight watch,
And fevered with the stern debauch;
For the oak table's massive board,
Flooded with wine, with fragments stored,
And beakers drained, and cups o'erthrown,
Showed in what sport the night had flown.
Some, weary, snored on floor and bench;
So...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on . . ....Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...st we saw here had a tussle,
And ne'er would have got into heaven's good graces,
Had he not flung his head in all our faces.
XIX
'He was, if I remember, king of France;
That head of his, which could not keep a crown
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance
A claim to those of martyrs — like my own:
If I had had my sword, as I had once
When I cut ears off, I had cut him down;
But having but my keys, and not my brand,
I only knock'd his head from out his ha...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...der Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding ab...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...ed for me.
III
A light blue carpet on the stair
And tall young footmen everywhere,
Tall young men with English faces
Standing rigidly in their places,
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid
In powder and breeches and bright gold braid;
And high above them on the wall
Hung other English faces-all
Part of the pattern of English life—
General Sir Charles, and his pretty wife,
Admirals, Lords-Lieutenant of Shires,
Men who were served by these footmen's sires
At t...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...was ready.
SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now. I am not at home.
How white these sheets are. The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me: they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life. They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.
I have had my chances. I have tried and tried....Read more of this...
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