Famous Gates Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Gates poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous gates poems. These examples illustrate what a famous gates poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...indred glory burns:
She burns enkindled with a purer flame
Than Troy of old, when Grecian kings combin'd
Had set her gates on fire: The Hellespont
And all th' Egean sea shone to the blaze.
But now more west the gracious day serene
On Athens rising, throws a dark eclipse
On that high learning by her sages taught,
In each high school of philosophic fame;
Vain wisdom, useless sophistry condemn'd,
As ignorance and foolishness of men.
Let her philosophers deba...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...r on the wind, as down the road
In joyous dance these country folk did pass,
And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass.
Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
And the rose-petals falling from the wreath
As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
And seemed to be in some entranced swoon
Till through the open roof above the full and brimming moon
Flooded with sheeny waves the marble floo...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant,
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the hap...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...
He is not dead, the immemorial Fates
Forbid it, and the closing shears refrain.
Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates!
Ye argent clarions, sound a loftier strain
For the vile thing he hated lurks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.
Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirr...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...d muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd
From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled
To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours
Before the dawn in season due should blush,
He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals,
Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide
Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams.
The planet orb of fire, whereon he rode
Each day from east to west the heavens through,
Spun round in sable curtaining of clouds;
Not theref...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...und, but yet
We passed thereover, and the water clear
As dry land bore me; and the walls ahead
Their seven strong gates made open one by one,
As each we neared, that where my Master led
With ease I followed, although without were none
But deep that stream beyond their wading spread,
And closed those gates beyond their breach had been,
Had they sought entry with us.
Of
coolest green
Stretched the wide lawns we midmost found, for there,
Intolerant of ...Read more of this...
by
St Vincent Millay, Edna
...r me
Compassionate Euterpe!)
"There is a gate beyond the gate of Death,
Beyond the gate of everlasting Life,
Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith,
"Whereon but to believe is horror!
Whereon to meditate engendereth
Even in deathless spirits such as I
A tumult in the breath,
A chilling of the inexhaustible blood
Even in my veins that never will be dry,
And in the austere, divine monotony
That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.
This is her province...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s up to light.
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,
Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
These passed, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next,
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf.
If thence he scape, into whatever world,
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers, and ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...d of Adria's stormy sea!
The Queen of double Empires! and to thee
Were not the nations given as thy prey!
And now - thy gates lie open night and day,
The grass grows green on every tower and hall,
The ghastly fig hath cleft thy bastioned wall;
And where thy mailed warriors stood at rest
The midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ities
Look willful and tired, the games of an old man.
What we need now is this unlikely
Challenger pounding on the gates of an amazed
Castle. Your argument, Francesco,
Had begun to grow stale as no answer
Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now
Into dust, that only means its time had come
Some time ago, but look now, and listen:
It may be that another life is stocked there
In recesses no one knew of; that it,
Not we, are the change; that we are in fact i...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...carried me there.
You villian touch! what are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.
29
Blind, loving, wrestling touch! sheath’d, hooded, sharp-tooth’d touch!
Did it make you ache so, leaving me?
Parting, track’d by arriving—perpetual payment of perpetual loan;
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital:
Lan...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hose turning eye-balls?
7
Here is the efflux of the Soul;
The efflux of the Soul comes from within, through embower’d gates, ever provoking
questions:
These yearnings, why are they? These thoughts in the darkness, why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me, the sun-light expands my blood?
Why, when they leave me, do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under, but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...God," the wanderer said,
"I am but a common king,
Nor will I ask what saints may ask,
To see a secret thing.
"The gates of heaven are fearful gates
Worse than the gates of hell;
Not I would break the splendours barred
Or seek to know the thing they guard,
Which is too good to tell.
"But for this earth most pitiful,
This little land I know,
If that which is for ever is,
Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,
Seeing the stranger go?
"When our last bow is broken, Q...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.
Was Jesus gentle, or did He
Give any marks of gentility?
When twelve years old He ran away,
And left His parents in dismay.Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...ney earning.
But quite your damndest want of grace
Is what you do to save your face;
The way you sit astride the gates
By padding wages out of rates;
Your Christmas gifts of shoddy blankets
That every working soul may thank its
Loving parson, loving squire
Through whom he can't afford a fire.
Your well-packed bench, your prison pen,
To keep them something less than men;
Your friendly clubs to help 'em bury.
Your charities of midwifery.
Your biddin...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...it, and ghastly for to see.
And thereout came *a rage and such a vise*, *such a furious voice*
That it made all the gates for to rise.
The northern light in at the doore shone,
For window on the walle was there none
Through which men mighten any light discern.
The doors were all of adamant etern,
Y-clenched *overthwart and ende-long* *crossways and lengthways*
With iron tough, and, for to make it strong,
Every pillar the temple to sustain
Was tunne-great*, of iron...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...stark,
Whose force so oft in happier days
His boyish wonder loved to praise.'
XXI.
The Castle gates were open flung,
The quivering drawbridge rocked and rung,
And echoed loud the flinty street
Beneath the coursers' clattering feet,
As slowly down the steep descent
Fair Scotland's King and nobles went,
While all along the crowded way
Was jubilee and loud huzza.
And ever James was bending low
To his...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...true, beyond suspicion,
And accurate as any other vision.
XXXV
The spirits were in neutral space, before
The gates of heaven; like eastern thresholds is
The place where Death's grand cause is argued o'er,
And souls despatch'd to that world or to this;
And therefore Michael and the other wore
A civil aspect: though they did not kiss,
Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness
There pass'd a mutual glance of great politeness.
XXXVI
The Archangel ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...proceed humanity's founders,
Morals and arts ye sent forth, e'en to the ocean's far isles.
'Twas at these friendly gates that the law was spoken by sages;
In their Penates' defence, heroes rushed out to the fray.
On the high walls appeared the mothers, embracing their infants,
Looking after the march, till the distance 'twas lost.
Then in prayer they threw themselves down at the deities' altars,
Praying for triumph and fame, praying for your safe return.
Hono...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.
Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.
x x x
I have ceased and desisted from smiling
The frosty wind chills lips - say so long
To one hope of which will be lesser,
Instead there will be one more song.
And this song, without my volition,
I will give out for laughter and parable,
For this that the silence of love
Is to me...Read more of this...
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