Famous Flesh Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold

by Omar Khayyam
O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold
vault of brilliant heaven is naught. Then give thyself
to joy in this disordered place [the world], for life is
but an instant wed to it, and that is equally naught.
298...Read more of this...

The Night Dances

by Sylvia Plath
 A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a...Read more of this...

One Flesh

by Elizabeth Jennings
 Lying apart now, each in a separate bed, 
He with a book, keeping the light on late, 
She like a girl dreaming of childhood, 
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait 
Some new event: the book he holds unread, 
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead. 

Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion, 
How cool...Read more of this...

The Life-Clock

by Anonymous
There is a little mystic clock,No human eye hath seen,That beateth on,—and beateth on,—From morning until e’en.And when the soul is wrapped in sleep,All silent and alone,It ticks and ticks the livelong night,And never runneth down.Oh! wondrous is that work of art,Which knells the passing hour;But art ne’er formed, nor mind conceived,The life-clock’s magic power.[Pg 006]Not set in gold, nor...Read more of this...

The Song of Los

by William Blake
 AFRICA 

I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet: 
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity. 
In heart-formed Africa. 
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd! 
And thus the Song began 

Adam stood in the garden of Eden: 
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat; 
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations 
By...Read more of this...

La Gitana

by Aleister Crowley
 Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced, 
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced, 
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel 
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil, 
In the pleasuance of the roses with the fountains and the yews 
Where the snowy Sierra soothed...Read more of this...

Ode To Tomatoes

by Pablo Neruda
 The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the...Read more of this...

Souls And Rain-Drops

by Sidney Lanier
 Light rain-drops fall and wrinkle the sea,
Then vanish, and die utterly.
One would not know that rain-drops fell
If the round sea-wrinkles did not tell.

So souls come down and wrinkle life
And vanish in the flesh-sea strife.
One might not know that souls had place
Were't not for the wrinkles in life's face....Read more of this...

With maids stately as cypresses, and fair

by Omar Khayyam
With maids stately as cypresses, and fair
As roses newly plucked, your wine-cups share,
Or e'er Death's blasts shall rend your robe of flesh
Like yonder rose leaves, lying scattered there!...Read more of this...

Fruit of the Flower

by Countee Cullen
 My father is a quiet man
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days. 
My mother's life is puritan,
No hint of cavalier,
A pool so calm you're sure it can
Have little depth to fear.

And yet my father's eyes can boast
How full his life has been;
There haunts them yet the languid ghost
Of some still sacred sin.

And though...Read more of this...

A Lost Angel

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When first we met she seemed so white
 I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
 I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
 I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
 I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
 I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
 I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
 To...Read more of this...

Romance Son?mbulo

by Federico García Lorca
 Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain. 
With the shade around her waist 
she dreams on her balcony, 
green flesh, her hair green, 
with eyes of cold silver. 
Green, how I want you green. 
Under the gypsy moon, 
all things are watching her 
and she cannot see...Read more of this...

O soul! could you but doff this flesh and bone,

by Omar Khayyam
O soul! could you but doff this flesh and bone,
You'd soar a sprite about the heavenly throne;
Had you no shame to leave your starry home,
And dwell an alien on this earthly zone?...Read more of this...

Sonnet 44: If the dull substance of my flesh were thought

by William Shakespeare
 If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would...Read more of this...

Ode On The Insurrection In Candia

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 STR. 1

I laid my laurel-leaf
At the white feet of grief,
Seeing how with covered face and plumeless wings,
With unreverted head
Veiled, as who mourns his dead,
Lay Freedom couched between the thrones of kings,
A wearied lion without lair,
And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air.

STR. 2

Who was it, who, put poison to thy mouth,
Who lulled with craft or chant thy...Read more of this...

One Joy of so much anguish

by Emily Dickinson
 One Joy of so much anguish
Sweet nature has for me
I shun it as I do Despair
Or dear iniquity --
Why Birds, a Summer morning
Before the Quick of Day
Should stab my ravished spirit
With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That will receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder
In Death's Immediately --...Read more of this...

Tormented

by Claude McKay
 I will not reason, wrestle here with you, 
Though you pursue and worry me about; 
As well put forth my swarthy arm to stop 
The wild wind howling, darkly mad without. 

The night is yours for revels; day will light. 
I will not fight you, bold and tigerish, 
For I am weak, while you are gaining strength; 
Peace! cease...Read more of this...

Pan and Luna

by Robert Browning
 Si credere dignum est.--Virgil, Georgics, III, 390


Oh, worthy of belief I hold it was, 
Virgil, your legend in those strange three lines! 
No question, that adventure came to pass 
One black night in Arcadia: yes, the pines, 
Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass 
Of black with void black heaven: the earth's confines, 
The sky's embrace,--below, above, around, 
All...Read more of this...

The Flesh and the Spirit

by Anne Bradstreet
 In secret place where once I stood
Close by the Banks of Lacrim flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was call'd, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit, who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere.
'Sister,' quoth Flesh, 'what liv'st thou on
Nothing but Meditation?
Doth Contemplation feed thee so
Regardlessly to...Read more of this...

A single Screw of Flesh

by Emily Dickinson
 A single Screw of Flesh
Is all that pins the Soul
That stands for Deity, to Mine,
Upon my side the Veil --

Once witnessed of the Gauze --
Its name is put away
As far from mine, as if no plight
Had printed yesterday,

In tender -- solemn Alphabet,
My eyes just turned to see,
When it was smuggled by my sight
Into Eternity --

More Hands -- to hold...Read more of this...

Meeting

by A S J Tessimond
 Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.

We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The...Read more of this...

The Last Rhyme of True Thomas

by Rudyard Kipling
 The King has called for priest and cup,
 The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
 And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
 They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
 That guards the gates...Read more of this...

enter no(silence is the blood whose flesh

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
enter no(silence is the blood whose flesh
is singing)silence:but unsinging. In
spectral such hugest how hush,one

dead leaf stirring makes a crash

-far away(as far as alive)lies
april;and i breathe-move-and-seem some
perpetually roaming whylessness-

autumn has gone:will winter never come?

o come,terrible anonymity;enfold
phantom me with the murdering minus of cold
-open this ghost with millionary knives of wind-
scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and

gently
(very whiteness:absolute peace,
never imaginable...Read more of this...

A Word made Flesh is seldom

by Emily Dickinson
 A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength --

A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He --
"Made Flesh and dwelt among us"
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved...Read more of this...

Psalm 27 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.8,9,13,14 
C. M.
Prayer and hope.

Soon as I heard my Father say,
"Ye children, seek my grace,"
My heart replied without delay,
"I'll seek my Father's face."

Let not thy face be hid from me,
Nor frown my soul away;
God of my life, I fly to thee
In a distressing day.

Should friends and kindred near and dear
Leave me to want or die,
My God would make my...Read more of this...

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