Famous Golden Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Beowulf (Modern English)

...sent him forth at the start,
alone over the waves, while still a baby. (ll. 43-46)

Nevertheless they set over him a golden standard,
high over his head, letting the seas bear him,
giving him to the spear-waves—their hearts grieving,
minds mourning. No man knows how to say truly,
among the hall-wise or heroes under heaven,
who took in those treasures. (ll. 47-52)

 

I.

Then in the strongholds was the Scylding Beow
the beloved king of the people for a very lon...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...mneys,
Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles
Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors
Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens,
Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the children
Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless them.
Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and maidens,
Hailing his slow...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Howl

...shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Humanitad

...
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

Then up and down the field the sower goes,
While close behind the laughing younker scares
With shrilly whoop the black and thievish crows,
And then the chestnut-tree its glory wears,
And on the grass the creamy blossom falls
In odorous exc...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hyperion

...repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must---it must
Be of ripe progress---Saturn must be King.
Yes, there must be a golden victory;
There must be Gods thrown down, and trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings in hollow shells; and there shall be
Beautiful things made new, for the surprise
Of the sky-children; I will give command:
Thea! Thea! Thea! where is Saturn?"
This pas...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

...I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils; 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay: 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced; but they 
Out-d...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Inferno (English)

...in love's avail, 
 With scanty time therefor, that half I dread 
 Too late I came. But thou shalt haste, and go 
 With golden wisdom of thy speech, that so 
 For me be consolation. Thou shalt say, 
 "I come from Beatric?." Downward far, 
 From Heaven to I leaven I sank, from star to star, 
 To find thee, and to point his rescuing way. 
 Fain would I to my place of light return; 
 Love moved me from it, and gave me power to learn 
 Thy speech. When next before my Lord I stand...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Ravenna

...ge')


I.


A year ago I breathed the Italian air, -
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled wi...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Song of Myself

...

Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital: 
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden. 

30
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it; 
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon; 
The insignificant is as big to me as any; 
(What is less or more than a touch?) 

Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. 

Only what proves itself ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...ry
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings 
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales a whole tribe feigns
Too English to be true.

Of a go...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Growth of Love

...ht swims like a ship, that with the weight
Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas
Becalm'd, and cannot stir her golden freight. 

6
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair ...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Holy Grail

...uld on the sudden vanish, wrapt 
In unremorseful folds of rolling fire. 
And in he rode, and up I glanced, and saw 
The golden dragon sparkling over all: 
And many of those who burnt the hold, their arms 
Hacked, and their foreheads grimed with smoke, and seared, 
Followed, and in among bright faces, ours, 
Full of the vision, prest: and then the King 
Spake to me, being nearest, "Percivale," 
(Because the hall was all in tumult--some 
Vowing, and some protesting), "what is t...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Hunting Of The Snark

...Dedication

Inscribed to a dear Child:
in memory of golden summer hours
and whispers of a summer sea.


Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task,
 Eager she wields her spade; yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
 The tale he loves to tell.

Rude spirits of the seething outer strife,
 Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life,
 Empty of all del...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Lady of the Lake

...to hear!
     XIX.

     A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
     Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
     Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.
     And seldom was a snood amid
     Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid,
     Whose glossy black to shame might bring
     The plumage of the raven's wing;
     And seldom o'er a breast so fair
     Mantled a plaid with modest care,
     And never brooch the folds combined
     Above a heart more good and kind.
   ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advanci...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Three Voices

...ked him "Wherefore so?"
He felt his very whiskers glow,
And frankly owned "I do not know." 

While, like broad waves of golden grain,
Or sunlit hues on cloistered pane,
His colour came and went again. 

Pitying his obvious distress,
Yet with a tinge of bitterness,
She said "The More exceeds the Less." 

"A truth of such undoubted weight,"
He urged, "and so extreme in date,
It were superfluous to state." 

Roused into sudden passion, she
In tone of cold malignity:
"To others, ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Triumph of Life

...& bees
And falling drops moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
"Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.--
"And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
"All that was seemed as if it had been not,
As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers, & she,...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Waste Land

...a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubl...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The White Cliffs

...To see the tall shining towers 
Rise over the rim of the bay, 
To feel the west wind steadily blowing 
And the sunshine golden and hot, 
To speak to each man as an equal, 
Whether he is or not. 

XLV 
Was this America—this my home? 
Prohibition and Teapot Dome—
Speakeasies, night-clubs, illicit stills, 
Dark faces peering behind dark grills, 
Hold-ups, kidnappings, hootch or booze— 
Every one gambling—you just can't lose,
Was this my country? Even the bay 
At home was altered...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

White Flock

...ld it weren't you that, on to my lips pressing,
Prayed of love, and for love did wish,
Would it weren't you that with golden verses
Immortalized my anguish

Over future I do secret magic
If the evening is truly blue,
And I divine a second meeting,
Unavoidable meeting with you.



x x x

How spacious are these squares,
How resonant bridges and stark!
Heavy, peaceful, and starless
Is the covering of the dark.

And we walk on the fresh snow
As if we were mo...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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