Famous Glimmering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Il Penseroso

by John Milton
 Hence, vain deluding Joys,
............The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested
............Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
............And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
............As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
............The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage...Read more of this...

The Philosophical Egotist

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the love
Which warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above--
Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes,
And glimmering on the conscious eye--the world in glory breaks?

And hast thou seen the mother there her anxious vigil keep?
Buying with love that never sleeps the darling's happy sleep?
With her...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator

by Anne Sexton
 The end of the affair is always death. 
She's my workshop. Slippery eye, 
out of the tribe of myself my breath 
finds you gone. I horrify 
those who stand by. I am fed. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Finger to finger, now she's mine. 
She's not too far. She's my encounter. 
I beat her like a bell....Read more of this...

Tithonus

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, 
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, 
And after many a summer dies the swan. 
Me only cruel immortality 
Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms, 
Here at the quiet limit of the world, 
A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream...Read more of this...

On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank

by A E Housman
 On moonlit heath and lonesome bank 
The sheep beside me graze; 
And yon the gallows used to clank 
Fast by the four cross ways. 

A careless shepherd once would keep 
The flocks by moonlight there, * 
And high amongst the glimmering sheep 
The dead man stood on air. 

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: 
The whistles blow forlorn,...Read more of this...

Evening Star

by William Blake
 Thou fair hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains light,
Thy bright torch of love; Thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves; and when thou drawest the 
Blue curtains, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake;...Read more of this...

Hymn on the Morning of Christs Nativity

by John Milton
 IT was the Winter wilde, 
While the Heav'n-born-childe, 
 All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; 
Nature in aw to him 
Had doff't her gawdy trim, 
 With her great Master so to sympathize: 
It was no season then for her 
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour. 

Only with speeches fair 
She woo's the gentle Air...Read more of this...

The Countess Cathleen In Paradise

by William Butler Yeats
 All the heavy days are over;
Leave the body's coloured pride
Underneath the grass and clover,
With the feet laid side by side.

Bathed in flaming founts of duty
She'll not ask a haughty dress;
Carry all that mournful beauty
To the scented oaken press.

Did the kiss of Mother Mary
Put that music in her face?
Yet she goes with footstep wary,
Full of earth's old timid grace.

'Mong the...Read more of this...

A Vision of Beauty

by George William Russell
 WHERE we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted,
We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted.
By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led
Upward to the heaven of heavens—through the star-mists overhead
Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night
Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean...Read more of this...

A Love Song from the North

by Sarojini Naidu
 Tell me no more of thy love, papeeha,
Wouldst thou recall to my heart, papeeha,
Dreams of delight that are gone,
When swift to my side came the feet of my lover
With stars of the dusk and the dawn?
I see the soft wings of the clouds on the river,
And jewelled with raindrops the mango-leaves quiver,
And tender boughs flower on the plain.....
But what...Read more of this...

The Princess (The Conclusion)

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 So closed our tale, of which I give you all 
The random scheme as wildly as it rose: 
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased 
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me, 
'What, if you drest it up poetically?' 
So prayed the men, the women: I gave...Read more of this...

Autumnal Sonnet

by William Allingham
 Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, 
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, 
And night by night the monitory blast 
Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass'd 
O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, 
Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt 
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods 
Than any joy indulgent...Read more of this...

I Thought I was not Alone

by Walt Whitman
 I THOUGHT I was not alone, walking here by the shore, 
But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore, 
As I lean and look through the glimmering light—that one has utterly disappeared, 
And those appear that perplex me....Read more of this...

Tinuviel

by J R R Tolkien
 The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled,
He walked alone and...Read more of this...

Written among the Euganean Hills North Italy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of Misery, 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 5 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round his vessel's track; 
Whilst above, the sunless sky 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10 
And...Read more of this...

To the Evening Star

by William Blake
 Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wing sleep on
The...Read more of this...

Middle-Ages

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I heard a clash, and a cry, 
And a horseman fleeing the wood. 
The moon hid in a cloud. 
Deep in shadow I stood. 
‘Ugly work!’ thought I,
Holding my breath. 
‘Men must be cruel and proud, 
‘Jousting for death’. 

With gusty glimmering shone 
The moon; and the wind blew colder.
A man went over the hill, 
Bent to his horse’s...Read more of this...

A Call

by George William Russell
 DUSK its ash-grey blossoms sheds on violet skies,
Over twilight mountains where the heart songs rise,
Rise and fall and fade away from earth to air.
Earth renews the music sweeter. Oh, come there.
Come, acushla, come, as in ancient times
Rings aloud the underland with faery chimes.
Down the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece
Winding ever onward to a fold of peace,
So my...Read more of this...

The Iron Gate

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,

Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting,
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,
Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?

Old age, the graybeard! Well,...Read more of this...

Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

Nocturne Of Remembered Spring

by Conrad Aiken
 I. 

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to...Read more of this...

To His Dead Body

by Siegfried Sassoon
 When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried, 
Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died, 
Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head 
phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled. 

Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair
Can bring me no report of how you fare, 
Safe quit of wars, I speed you on your way...Read more of this...

The Cloud

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains...Read more of this...

Break of Day

by Siegfried Sassoon
 There seemed a smell of autumn in the air 
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there 
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay, 
Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay 
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why, 
Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in 
Under...Read more of this...

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...

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