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Famous Fugue Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...fatal car.
But his fortune each must bide by, so I watched the milestones slide by,
To "You call on Her to-morrow!" -- fugue with cymbals by the bar --
You must call on Her to-morrow!" -- post-horn gallop by the bar.

Yet a further stage my goal on -- we were whirling down to Solon,
With a double lurch and roll on, best foot foremost, ganz und gar --
"She was very sweet," I hinted. "If a kiss had been imprinted?" --
"'Would ha' saved a world of trouble!" clashed the busy ton...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
 he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden
 hair Margarete
he writes it ans steps out of doors and the sta...Read more of this...
by Celan, Paul
...Born from the natural attraction
Of vowels and consonants
Alliterating or merging into a fugue

Of sounds flowing 
From the fountain of language.
Meanings embodied 

In blasts of thunder, chirping, blowing; 
Sounds becoming meanings
In, for, and of themselves; 

A huge dictionary of sounds
Craving to be recognized and translated
Either into language or into understanding. ...Read more of this...
by Stojanovic, Dejan
...You see them vanish in their speeding cars, 
The many people hastening through the world,
And wonder what they would have done before
This time of time speed distance, random streams
Of molecules hastened by what rising heat?
Was there never a world where people just sat still?

Yet they might be all of them contemplatives
Of a timeless now, drivers and pa...Read more of this...
by Nemerov, Howard
...soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---

II.

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!

III.

See, the church empties apace:
Fast they extinguish the lights.
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes' grace!
Here's a crank ped...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...was seen; his volant touch, 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high, 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. 
In other part stood one who, at the forge 
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass 
Had melted, (whether found where casual fire 
Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale, 
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot 
To some cave's mouth; or whether washed by stream 
From underground;) the liquid ore he drained 
Into fit moulds prepared; from...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...
into the shabby apartment I live in, humming and feeling
happy with the avant-garde weather we're having,
the winds (a fugue for flute and oboe) pouring
into the windows which I left open although
I live on the ground floor and there have been
two burglaries on my block already this week,
do I quickly take a look to see
if the valuables are missing? No, that is I can't,
it's an epistemological quandary: what I consider
valuable, would they? Who are they, anyway? I'd answer t...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David
...
But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
And worst doth foam and flash to best,
And curst to blest.

Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west,
Love, Love alone can pore
On thy dissolving score
Of harsh half-phrasings,
Blotted ere writ,
And double erasings
Of chords most fit.
Yea, Love, sole music-master blest,
May read thy weltering palimpsest.
To follow Time's dying melodies through,
And never to lose the old in the new,
And ever to solve the discords true --
Love al...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ennae discovering an axis,
 erecting the architecture of a world?

Is it
 orchestration of the finger-tips,
 graph of a fugue:
Scaffold for colours:
 colour itself being god?...Read more of this...
by Tessimond, A S J
...r Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
 The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
 And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
 Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --
 You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
 Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
 And when I think of you, I am at rest....Read more of this...
by Teasdale, Sara

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things