Famous Glitter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

The Progress of Poesy

by Thomas Gray
 A Pindaric Ode

Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign;
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it...Read more of this...

Outside The Ball-room

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ainsi l'Hôtel de Ville illumine.") 
 
 {VI., May, 1833.} 


 Behold the ball-room flashing on the sight, 
 From step to cornice one grand glare of light; 
 The noise of mirth and revelry resounds, 
 Like fairy melody on haunted grounds. 
 But who demands this profuse, wanton glee, 
 These shouts prolonged and wild festivity— 
...Read more of this...

Performance

by Les Murray
 I starred that night, I shone:
I was footwork and firework in one,

a rocket that wriggled up and shot
darkness with a parasol of brilliants
and a peewee descant on a flung bit;
I was blusters of glitter-bombs expanding
to mantle and aurora from a crown,
I was fouéttes, falls of blazing paint,
para-flares spot-welding cloudy heaven,
loose gold off fierce toeholds of white,
a finale red-tongued as...Read more of this...

The Prayers of God

by W. E. B. Du Bois
Name of God's Name!
Red murder reigns;
All hell is loose;
On gold autumnal air
Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;
While high on hills of hate,
Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,
Thou sittest, dumb.
Father Almighty!
This earth is mad!
Palsied, our cunning hands;
Rotten, our gold;
Our argosies reel and stagger
Over empty seas;
All the long aisles
Of Thy Great Temples, God,
Stink with the entrails
Of our souls.
And Thou art dumb.
Above the thunder of Thy Thunders,...Read more of this...

Pompeii And Herculaneum

by Friedrich von Schiller
 What wonder this?--we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee--and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou?--is there life in the abyss--
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome--Greece!--Oh, come!--Behold--behold! for this!
Our living world--the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
House upon house--its silent halls once more
Opes the broad portico!--Oh, haste...Read more of this...

To Victory

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Return to greet me, colours that were my joy, 
Not in the woeful crimson of men slain, 
But shining as a garden; come with the streaming 
Banners of dawn and sundown after rain. 

I want to fill my gaze with blue and silver, 
Radiance through living roses, spires of green 
Rising in young-limbed copse and lovely wood, 
Where the...Read more of this...

Love As A Landscape Painter

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ON a rocky peak once sat I early,
Gazing on the mist with eyes unmoving;
Stretch'd out like a pall of greyish texture,
All things round, and all above it cover'd.

Suddenly a boy appear'd beside me,
Saying "Friend, what meanest thou by gazing
On the vacant pall with such composure?
Hast thou lost for evermore all pleasure
Both in painting cunningly, and forming?"
On the child I...Read more of this...

That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire And Of The Comfort Of The Resurrection

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut...Read more of this...

Dickeyville Grotto

by Mark Doty
 The priest never used blueprints, but worked all
the many designs out of his head.


Father Wilerus,
transplanted Alsatian,
built around
this plain Wisconsin

redbrick church
a coral-reef en-
crustation--meant,
the brochure says,

to glorify America
and heaven simul-
taneously. Thus:
Mary and Columbus

and the Sacred Heart
equally enthroned
in a fantasia of quartz
and seashells, broken

dishes, stalactites
and stick-shift knobs--
no separation
of nature and art

for Father Wilerus!
He's built fabulous blooms
--bristling mosaic tiles
bunched into chipped,

permanent roses---
and more...Read more of this...

Crows Fall

by Ted Hughes
When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white. 
He decided it glared much too whitely. 
He decided to attack it and defeat it. 

He got his strength flush and in full glitter. 
He clawed and fluffed his rage up. 
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre. 

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked....Read more of this...

Petropolis

by Osip Mandelstam
 From a fearful height, a wandering light,
but does a star glitter like this, crying?
Transparent star, wandering light
your brother, Petropolis, is dying.

From a fearful height, earthly dreams are alight,
and a green star is crying.
Oh star, if you are the brother of water and light,
your brother, Petropolis, is dying.

A monstrous ship, from a fearful height,
is rushing on, spreading its wings, flying.
Green...Read more of this...

Attack of the Squash People

by Marge Piercy
 And thus the people every year 
in the valley of humid July 
did sacrifice themselves 
to the long green phallic god 
and eat and eat and eat. 
They're coming, they're on us, 
the long striped gourds, the silky 
babies, the hairy adolescents, 
the lumpy vast adults 
like the trunks of green elephants. 
Recite fifty zucchini recipes! 

Zucchini tempura; creamed...Read more of this...

Villanelle Of Spring Bells

by Keith Douglas
 Bells in the town alight with spring
converse, with a concordance of new airs
make clear the fresh and ancient sound they sing.

People emerge from winter to hear them ring,
children glitter with mischief and the blind man hears
bells in the town alight with spring.

Even he on his eyes feels the caressing
finger of Persephone, and her voice escaped from tears
make clear the...Read more of this...

Brother and Sister

by D. H. Lawrence
 The shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path,
Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky, 
Draws towards the downward slope: some sorrow hath
Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares 
Along her foot-searched way without knowing why
She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs. 

Some day they see, though I have never seen, 
The dead moon...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

Les Lauriers Sont Coupée

by Elinor Wylie
 Ah, love, within the shadow of the wood 
The laurels are cut down; some other brows 
May bear the classic wreath which Fame allows 
And find the burden honorable and good. 
Have we not passed the laurels as they stood-- 
Soft in the veil with which Spring endows 
The wintry glitter of their woven boughs-- 
Nor stopped to break...Read more of this...

Totem

by Sylvia Plath
 The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.

Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,

Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,

White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.

There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's...Read more of this...

Postscript

by Seamus Heaney
 And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers...Read more of this...

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

by J R R Tolkien
 All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king....Read more of this...

Gigolo

by Sylvia Plath
 Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,

A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,

No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,

Mill a litter of breasts like...Read more of this...

The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church

by Robert Browning
 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews -- sons mine -- ah God, I know not! Well --
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we...Read more of this...

Tar

by C K Williams
 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening...Read more of this...

Freedom XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." 

And he answered: 

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, 

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. 

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the...Read more of this...

Catching the Sunbeams

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Catching the sunbeams, oh, wee dimpled child,
  Gleefully laughing because they are bright;
Knowing, ah! never, my beautiful pet,
  Ne'er can our fingers imprison the light.
Beautiful sunshine, oh! fair is the light
  Falling on earth from the heavens above;
Beautiful childhood, oh! glad is the sight
  Filling the world with its measure of love.
Playing with sunbeams, oh, all...Read more of this...

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