Famous Greek Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Greek poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous greek poems. These examples illustrate what a famous greek poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Composed, by Special Request, 18th June 1890
Then Pilate, the Roman Governor, took Jesus and scourged Him,
And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and thought it no sin
To put it on His head, while meekly Jesus stands;
They put on Him a purple robe, and smote Him with their hands.
Then Pilate went forth again, and said unto them,
Behold, I...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
LXXIII. — TO FINE GRAND. What is't, FINE GRAND, makes thee my friendship fly, Or take an Epigram so fearfully, As 'twere a challenge, or a borrower's letter: The world must know your greatness is my debtor.Imprimis, Grand, you owe me for a jest I lent you, on mere acquaintance, at a feast.Item, a tale or two some fortnight after, That...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
Like one whom reveries numb.
How much of consciousness informs Thy will
Thy biddings, as if blind,
Of death-inducing kind,
Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill
But moments...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
We knew thee of old,
Oh divinely restored,
By the light of thine eyes
And the light of they Sword.
From the graves of our slain
Shall thy valour prevail
As we greet thee again --
Hail, Liberty! Hail!
Long time didst thou dwell
Mid the peoples that mourn,
Awaiting some voice
That should bid thee return.
Ah, slow broke that day
And no man...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
I may not weep, not weep, and he is dead.
A weary, weary weight of tears unshed
Through the long day in my sad heart I bear;
The horrid sun with all unpitying glare
Shines down into the dreary weaving-room,
Where clangs the ceaseless clatter of the loom,
And ceaselessly deft maiden-fingers weave
The fine-wrought web; and I from morn till eve
Work with the rest, and...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
For base designs, for cunning ends,
To wear a mask like the Greek actors --
Your eight-page paper -- behind which you huddle,
Bawling through...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.
ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
I was the laughing-stock of the village,
Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves --
Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek
The same as English.
For instead of talking free trade,
Or preaching some form of baptism;
Instead of believing in the efficacy
Of walking cracks -- picking up pins the right way,
Seeing the new moon over the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton’s laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,”
So wondered at by most,
Phrased so disdainfully,
Composed so painfully.
He struck what Milton missed,
Milling an English grist
With homely turn and twist.
He was...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
After the wailing had already begun
along the walls, their ruin certain,
the Trojans fidgeted with bits of wood
in the three-ply doors, itsy-bitsy
pieces of wood, fussing with them.
And began to get their nerve back and feel hopeful....Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
What I have already learned as a lover,
I see you, beloved, learning angrily;
then for you it distantly departed,
now your destiny stands in all the stars.
Over your breasts we will together contend:
since as glowingly shining they've ripened,
so also your hands desire to touch them
and their own pleasure superintend....Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I one
Whose prayer availeth much, my wish should be
Your favoring trad-wind and consenting sea.
By sail or steed was never love outrun,
And, here or there, love follows her in whom
All graces and sweet charities unite,
The old Greek beauty set in holier light;
And her for whom New England's...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Canaris! nous t'avons oublié.")
{VIII., October, 1832.}
O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song
Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long!
But when the tragic actor's part is done,
When clamor ceases, and the fights are won,
When heroes realize what Fate decreed,
When chieftains mark no more which thousands...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I
A HAPPY MAN
(Carphyllides)
When these graven lines you see,
Traveler, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.
Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.
My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Les Turcs ont passés là.")
{XVIII., June 10, 1828.}
All is a ruin where rage knew no bounds:
Chio is levelled, and loathed by the hounds,
For shivered yest'reen was her lance;
Sulphurous vapors envenom the place
Where her true beauties of Beauty's true race
Were lately linked close in the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I - STARLIGHT
With two bright eyes, my star, my love,
Thou lookest on the stars above:
Ah, would that I the heaven might be
With a million eyes to look on thee.
Plato.
II - ROSELEAF
A little while the rose,
And after that the thorn;
An hour of dewy morn,
And then the glamour goes.
Ah, love in...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
as the landscape falls away
the hawthorn in its gnarly fashion
is content to stand alone
berries (the very tint of passion)
that birds are wont to feed upon
bloodstain the shortened day
a stubborn tree that speaks
of crusty age - its thorns alert
to any too-spirited invasion
who comes (it seems to say) gets hurt
not those birds with juicy beaks
insects swarm – by invitation
come may...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Thy petals yet are closely curled,
Rose of the world,
Around their scented, golden core;
Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er
Thy tender clusters that begin
To swell within
The dewy vine-leaves' early screen
Of sheltering green.
O hearts that are Love's helpless prey,
While yet you may,
Fly, ere the shaft is on the string!
The fire that...Read more of this...
by
Theodore Roethke
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
How well her wishes went! She...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
He yelled at me in Greek,
my God!-”It's not his language
and I'm no good at-”his Aramaic,
was-”I am a monoglot of English
(American version) and, say pieces from
a baker's dozen others: where's the bread?
but rising in the Second Gospel, pal:
The seed goes down, god dies,
a rising happens,
some crust, and then occurs an eating. He said so,
a Greek idea,
troublesome to imaginary Jews,
like a...Read more of this...
by
Odysseus Elytis
"Calendar of an Invisible April"
Translation from Greek: Marios Dikaiakos
"The wind was wistling continuously, it was
getting darker, and that distant voice was
incessantly reaching my ears : "an entire life"...
"an entire life"...
On the opposite wall, the shadows of the
trees were playing cinema"
----------------
"It seems that somewhere people are celebrating;
although there are no houses or human beings
I can listen to guitars...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night!
See where it casts the shadow of that tree
Far out upon the grass. And every gust
Of light night wind comes laden with the scent
Of opening flowers which never bloom by day:
Night-scented stocks, and four-o'clocks, and that
Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall stalk,
The evening primrose, comrade of the stars.
It seems as though...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my klooch to town,
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.
And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three --
One for...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Greek poems.