Famous Fragile Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Fragile poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous fragile poems. These examples illustrate what a famous fragile poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Dorothy Parker
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?
A...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Among the market greens,
a bullet
from the ocean
depths,
a swimming
projectile,
I saw you,
dead.
All around you
were lettuces,
sea foam
of the earth,
carrots,
grapes,
but
of the ocean
truth,
of the unknown,
of the
unfathomable
shadow, the
depths
of the sea,
the abyss,
only you had survived,
a pitch-black, varnished
witness
to deepest night.
Only you, well-aimed
dark bullet
from the abyss,
mangled at one tip,
but constantly
reborn,
at anchor in the current,
winged fins
windmilling
in the swift
flight
of
the
marine
shadow,
a mourning arrow,
dart of the sea,
olive, oily fish.
I saw you dead,
a deceased...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For My Mother)
The fragile splendour of the level sea,
The moon's serene and silver-veiled face,
Make of this vessel an enchanted place
Full of white mirth and golden sorcery.
Now, for a time, shall careless laughter be
Blended with song, to lend song sweeter grace,
And the old stars, in their unending race,
Shall heed and envy young humanity.
And yet to-night, a hundred leagues away,
These waters...Read more of this...
by
Walter Savage Landor
Ianthe! you are call'd to cross the sea!
A path forbidden me!
Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds
Upon the mountain-heads,
How often we have watcht him laying down
His brow, and dropt our own
Against each other's, and how faint and short
And sliding the support!
What will succeed it now? Mine is unblest,
Ianthe! nor will rest
But on the very thought that swells with pain.
O...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Softly the feathery Palm-trees fade in the violet Distance,
Faintly the lingering light touches the edge of the sea,
Sadly the Music of Waves, drifts, faint as an Anthem's insistence,
Heard in the aisles of a dream, over the sandhills, to me.
Now that the Lights are reversed, and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Three maids there were in meadow bright,
The eldest less then seven;
Their eyes were dancing with delight,
And innocent as Heaven.
Wild flowers they wound with tender glee,
Their cheeks with rapture rosy;
All radiant they smiled at me,
When I besought a posy.
She gave me a columbine,
And one a poppy brought me;
The tiniest, with eyes ashine,
A simple daisy sought me.
And as I went my...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Everything that lives about us in the fragile and gentle light, frail grasses, tender branches, hollyhocks, and the shadow that brushes them lightly by, and the wind that knots them, and the singing and hopping birds that swarm riotously in the sun like clusters of jewels,— everything that lives in the fine ruddy garden loves us artlessly, and we—we love...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
When I am old, and comforted,
And done with this desire,
With Memory to share my bed
And Peace to share my fire,
I'll comb my hair in scalloped bands
Beneath my laundered cap,
And watch my cool and fragile hands
Lie light upon my lap.
And I will have a sprigged gown
With lace to kiss my throat;
I'll draw my curtain to the town,
And hum a purring...Read more of this...
by
Quincy Troupe
ice sheets sweep this slick mirrored dark place
space as keys that turn in tight, trigger
pain of situations
where we move ever so slowly
so gently into time — traced agony
the bright turning of imagination
so slowly
grooved through revolving doors, opening up to enter
mountains where spirits walk voices, ever so slowly
swept by cold, breathing fire
as these elliptical moments of illusion
link fragile loves sunk...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXII. Come va 'l mondo! or mi diletta e piace. HE BLESSES LAURA FOR HER VIRTUE. How goes the world! now please me and delightWhat most displeased me: now I see and feelMy trials were vouchsafed me for my weal,That peace eternal should brief war requite.O hopes and wishes, ever...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
When the fine snow with its sparkling grains silts over our threshold, I hear your footsteps wander and stop in the neighbouring room.
You withdraw the bright and fragile mirror from its place by the window, and your bunch of keys dances along the drawer of the beech-wood wardrobe.
I listen, and you are poking the fire and arousing the embers; and...Read more of this...
by
Hilda Doolittle
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets
Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail
Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,
Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool
Of...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Turner Smith
O'er faded heath-flowers spun, or thorny furze,
The filmy Gossamer is lightly spread;
Waving in every sighing air that stirs,
As Fairy fingers had entwined the thread:
A thousand trembling orbs of lucid dew
Spangle the texture of the fairy loom,
As if soft Sylphs, lamenting as they flew,
Had wept departed Summer's transient bloom:
But the wind rises, and the turf receives
The glittering web: -- So,...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
She has one good bumblebee
which she leads about town
on a leash of clover.
It's as big as a Saint Bernard
but also extremely fragile.
People want to pet its long, shaggy coat.
These would be mostly whirling dervishes
out shopping for accessories.
When Lily winks they understand everything,
right down to the particle
of a butterfly's wing lodged
in her last good eye,
so the situation is avoided,
the potential...Read more of this...
by
Horace
Thus may Cyprus' heavenly queen,
Thus Helen's brethren, stars of brightest sheen,
Guide thee! May the Sire of wind
Each truant gale, save only Zephyr, bind!
So do thou, fair ship, that ow'st
Virgil, thy precious...Read more of this...
by
Godfrey Mutiso Gorry
If you meet literature from Africa
Or even their mentors
In such works
You realize a trait of madness
Pumping into the throbbing poetics.
There is a knack in it that sparks alight
The nearest shrubs;
Intrigue and sensation incomparable.
The heart of African literature
Pumping wordy blood into fragile young minds.
Rejuvenating the African word
That merges into a whirlpool mixture
Of creativity, and strengthen our verbosity.
Impregnated words
Be borne from...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
LITTLE leaves and flow'rets too,
Scatter we with gentle hand,
Kind young spring-gods to the view,
Sporting on an airy band.
Zephyr, bear it on the wing,
Twine it round my loved one's dress;
To her glass then let her spring,
Full of eager joyousness.
Roses round her let her see,
She herself a youthful rose.
Grant, dear life, one look to me!
'Twill repay me all my woes,
What this...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
From torrid heat to frigid cold
I've rovered land and sea;
And now, with halting heart I hold
My grandchild on my knee:
Yet while I've eighty years all told,
Of moons she has but three.
She sleeps, that fragile miniature
Of future maidenhood;
She will be wonderful, I'm sure,
As over her I brood;
She is so innocent, so pure,
I know she...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around;
Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
SO live, so love, so use that fragile hour,
That when the dark hand of the shining power
Shall one from other, wife or husband, take,
The poor survivor may not weep and wake....Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
At night the wide and level stretch of wold,
Which at high noon had basked in quiet gold,
Far as the eye could see was ghostly white;
Dark was the night save for the snow's weird light.
I drew the shades far down, crept into bed;
Hearing the cold wind moaning overhead
Through the sad pines, my soul, catching...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell.
So noble were the five I found to dwell
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me
And no great praise is thine; but if it be
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Some, too fragile for winter winds
The thoughtful grave encloses --
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.
Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look,
And sportsman is not bold.
This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold,
Sparrow, unnoticed by the Father --
Lambs for whom time had not a fold....Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Fragile poems.