Famous Grandeur Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Gods Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears...Read more of this...

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

by Vachel Lindsay
 I asked the old *****, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."


I. IN WHICH A RACING AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST

This is the order of the music of the morning: —
First, from the far East comes but a crooning.
The...Read more of this...

Unrecorded

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The splendors of a southern sun
  Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
  And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
  And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul—
  Whose glory none can tell.
Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
  Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the...Read more of this...

Long I Thought that Knowledge

by Walt Whitman
 LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me—O if I could but obtain
 knowledge! 
Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio’s land, the southern
 savannas,
 engrossed me—For them I would live—I would be their orator; 
Then I met the examples of old and new heroes—I heard of warriors, sailors, and all
 dauntless persons—And it seemed to...Read more of this...

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

by Walt Whitman
 1
AS a strong bird on pinions free, 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, 
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, 
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...

the buddha's tooth

by Rg Gregory
 (for matt – 15)

in the first seven years you choose your howdah
having by then bare inklings of a journey
but where or why - confusion there to cloud a
judgement no more ready than a sore knee
to enter the lists of a whole life’s tourney -
but after this howdah-do (this introduction)
what’s to carry you where - from muddy fluxion

and glimpsing that...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

by John Keats
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 
Its lovliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 
Spite of despondence, of...Read more of this...

Lines inscribed to P. de Loutherbourg Esq. R. A

by Mary Darby Robinson
 WHERE on the bosom of the foamy RHINE,
In curling waves the rapid waters shine;
Where tow'ring cliffs in awful grandeur rise,
And midst the blue expanse embrace the skies;
The wond'ring eye beholds yon craggy height,
Ting'd with the glow of Evening's fading light:
Where the fierce cataract swelling o'er its bound,
Bursts from its source, and dares the depth profound.
On ev'ry side the headlong...Read more of this...

Casey At The Bat

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day, 
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play. 

And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, 
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game. 

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. 
The rest clung to that...Read more of this...

Psalm 58

by Isaac Watts
 Warning to magistrates.

Judges, who rule the world by laws,
Will ye despise the righteous cause,
When th' injured poor before you stands?
Dare ye condemn the righteous poor,
And let rich sinners 'scape secure,
While gold and greatness bribe your hands?

Have ye forgot, or never knew,
That God will judge the judges too?
High in the heav'ns his justice reigns;
Yet you invade the rights of God,
And...Read more of this...

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder...Read more of this...

There is no shield which is proof against an arrow

by Omar Khayyam
There is no shield which is proof against an arrow
hurled by Destiny. Grandeur, money, gold all go for
nothing. The more I consider the things of this world,
the more I see that the only good is good, all else is
nothing.
303...Read more of this...

Dream Song 126: A Thurn

by John Berryman
 A Thurn

Among them marble where the man may lie
lie chieftains grand in final phase, or pause,
'O rare Ben Jonson',
dictator too, & the thinky other Johnson,
dictator too, backhanders down of laws,
men of fears, weird & sly.

Not of these least is borne to rest.
If grandeur & mettle prompted his lone journey
neither oh crowded shelved 
nor this slab I celebrates attest
his complex...Read more of this...

Shall the Harp Then Be Silent

by Thomas Moore
 Shall the Harp then be silent, when he who first gave 
To our country a name, is withdrawn from all eyes? 
Shall a Minstrel of Erin stand mute by the grave 
Where the first -- where the last of her Patriots lies? 

No -- faint though the death-song may fall from his lips, 
Though his Harp, like his soul,...Read more of this...

St. Winefreds Well

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W....Read more of this...

Sonnet XIII

by Alan Seeger
 I fancied, while you stood conversing there, 
Superb, in every attitude a queen, 
Her ermine thus Boadicea bare, 
So moved amid the multitude Faustine. 
My life, whose whole religion Beauty is, 
Be charged with sin if ever before yours 
A lesser feeling crossed my mind than his 
Who owning grandeur marvels and adores. 
Nay, rather in my dream-world's ivory...Read more of this...

Good-by

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Good-by, proud world, I'm going home,
Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine;
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam,
But now, proud world, I'm going home.

Good-by to Flattery's fawning face,
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace,
To upstart Wealth's averted eye,
To supple Office low and high,
To crowded halls, to court,...Read more of this...

On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time

by John Keats
 My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the...Read more of this...

The Master

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 A flying word from here and there 
Had sown the name at which we sneered, 
To be reviled and then revered: 
A presence to be loved and feared-- 
We cannot hide it, or deny 
That we, the gentlemen who jeered, 
May be forgotten by and by. 

He came when days were perilous 
And hearts of men were sore beguiled,...Read more of this...

The Morrow Of Grandeur

by Victor Hugo
 ("Non, l'avenir n'est à personne!") 
 
 {V. ii., August, 1832.} 


 Sire, beware, the future's range 
 Is of God alone the power, 
 Naught below but augurs change, 
 E'en with ev'ry passing hour. 
 Future! mighty mystery! 
 All the earthly goods that be, 
 Fortune, glory, war's renown, 
 King or kaiser's sparkling crown, 
...Read more of this...

grandeur

by Rg Gregory
 loneliness is a state
the lonely cannot reach

it carries a grandeur
that doesn't fit into

bed-sitters or rejected
ideas - it's the label stuck

on the bottle after
the tables have gone...Read more of this...

He Digesteth Harde Yron

by Marianne Moore
 Although the aepyornis
or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
with them in size--the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is
a symbol of justice.

This bird watches his chicks with
a maternal concentration-and he's
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks--his legs
their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a...Read more of this...

I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago

by Charles Baudelaire
 I love the naked ages long ago 
When statues were gilded by Apollo, 
When men and women of agility 
Could play without lies and anxiety, 
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, 
As it exercised its noble machine. 
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, 
Would not place on her daughters a burden, 
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the...Read more of this...

An Hymn to the Evening

by Phillis Wheatley
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;
Majestic grandeur!  From the zephyr's wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
  Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are
    spread!
But the west glories in the deepest...Read more of this...

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