Famous Faust Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Cloud in Trousers

...
or an oratorio! 
We ourselves are creators within a burning hymn ¨C 
the hum of mills and laboratories. 

What is Faust to me, 
in a fairy splash of rockets 
gliding with Mephistopheles on the celestial parquet! 
I know ¨C 
a nail in my boot 
is more nightmarish than Goethe¡¯s fantasy! 

I, 
the most golden-mouthed, 
whose every word 
gives a new birthday to the soul, 
gives a name-day to the body, 
I adjure you: 
the minutest living speck 
is worth more t...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir


Faust In Old Age

..."Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,

For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.

Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.

The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.

For I have walked within and seen each...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary

...odstock with the nightingales, 
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; 
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
Completed Faust when eighty years were past. 
These are indeed exceptions; but they show 
How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow 
Into the arctic regions of our lives, 
Where little else than life itself survives. 
As the barometer foretells the storm 
While still the skies are clear, the weather warm 
So something in us, as old age draws near, 
Betrays the pre...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Original Preface

...
poetical work of the greatest Poet that the world has seen for ages, 
that is really and generally read in England, is Faust, the translations 
of which are almost endless; while no single person has as yet appeared 
to attempt to give, in an English dress, in any collective or systematic 
manner, those smaller productions of the genius of Goethe which 
it is the object of the present volume to lay before the reader, 
whose indulgence is requested for its many imperfections....Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Proud Music of The Storm

...illiam Tell, the music of an arous’d and angry people; 
I hear Meyerbeer’s Huguenots, the Prophet, or Robert; 
Gounod’s Faust, or Mozart’s Don Juan. 

10
I hear the dance-music of all nations, 
The waltz, (some delicious measure, lapsing, bathing me in bliss;)
The bolero, to tinkling guitars and clattering castanets. 

I see religious dances old and new, 
I hear the sound of the Hebrew lyre, 
I see the Crusaders marching, bearing the cross on high, to the martial clang of cym...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Seth Compton

...luence.
For those of you who could not see the virtue
Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy"
And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline,"
Were really the power in the village,
And often you asked me,
"What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?"
I am out of your way now, Spoon River,
Choose your own good and call it good.
For I could never make you see
That no one knows what is good
Who knows not what is evil;
And no one knows what is true
Who kn...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

...through my lethargy,
Indignantly I hurled the cry:
"Is this a nightmare, or am I
Drunk with some infernal wine?
I am no Faust, and what is mine
Is what I call my soul! Old Man!
Devil or Ghost! Your hellish plan
Revolts me. Let me go." "My child,"
And the old tones were very mild,
"I have no wish to barter souls;
My traffic does not ask such tolls.
I am no devil; is there one?
Surely the age of fear is gone.
We live within a daylight world
Lit by the sun, where winds unfurled
...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Celebrated Woman - An Epistle By A Married Man

...r, a
Death-blow will prove to my Madeira;
It has given, alas! a mortal shock
To that old friend--my Steinberg hock!

If Faust had really any hand
In printing, I can understand
The fate which legends more than hint;--
The devil take all hands that print!

And what my thanks for all?--a pout--
Sour looks--deep sighs; but what about?
About! O, that I well divine--
That such a pearl should fall to swine--
That such a literary ruby
Should grace the finger of a booby!

Spring comes...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Cranes of Ibicus

...-loud, with eyes upon the stream,
The immortal screed he held within his hand.
For he was walking in an April land
With Faust and Helen. Shadowy as a dream
Was the prose-world, the river and the town.
Wild joy possessed him; through enchanted skies
He saw the cranes of Ibycus swoop down.
He closed the page, he lifted up his eyes,
Lo--a black line of birds in wavering thread
Bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!...Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma

The King Of Thule.*

...(* This ballad is also introduced in Faust, 
where it is sung by Margaret.)

IN Thule lived a monarch,

Still faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistress

A golden goblet gave.

Beyond all price he deem'd it,

He quaff'd it at each feast;
And, when he drain'd that goblet,

His tears to flow ne'er ceas'd.

And when he felt death near him,

His cities o'er he told,
And to his heir left all ...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

To E

...fine-frenzied eye,
You, stepped in learned lore, and I,
A poet too.

Our Poet brought us books and flowers,
He read us Faust; he talked for hours
Philosophy (sad Schopenhauer's),
Beneath the trees:

And do you mind that sunny day,
When he, as on the sward he lay,
Told of Lassalle who bore away
The false Louise?

Thrice-favoured bard! to him alone
That green and snug retreat was shown,
Where to the vulgar herd unknown,
Our pens we plied.

(For, in those distant days, it seems...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy

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