Famous Harmonious Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Meeting

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I see her still--by her fair train surrounded,
The fairest of them all, she took her place;
Afar I stood, by her bright charms confounded,
For, oh! they dazzled with their heavenly grace.
With awe my soul was filled--with bliss unbounded,
While gazing on her softly radiant face;
But soon, as if up-borne on wings of fire,
My fingers 'gan to sweep the sounding lyre.

The thoughts...Read more of this...

The Human Face

by Paul Eluard
 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost...Read more of this...

The Lake

by Alphonse de Lamartine
Towards new and different shores forever driven onward,
Through endless darkness always borne away,
Upon the sea of time can we not lie at anchor
For but a single day?

Oh lake, the year has scarce run once more round its track,
And by these waves she had to see again,
Look! I have come alone to sit upon this rock
You saw her sit on then.

Beneath...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so...Read more of this...

Cliche Came Out of its Cage

by C S Lewis
 1

You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'. 
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House 
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes, 
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes, 
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses 
To pay where due the glory of...Read more of this...

On Hearing

by William Lisle Bowles
 O stay, harmonious and sweet sounds, that die 
In the long vaultings of this ancient fane! 
Stay, for I may not hear on earth again 
Those pious airs--that glorious harmony; 
Lifting the soul to brighter orbs on high, 
Worlds without sin or sorrow! Ah, the strain 
Has died--even the last sounds that lingeringly 
Hung on the roof ere they...Read more of this...

To a Lady with a Guitar

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ARIEL to Miranda:¡ªTake 
This slave of music for the sake 
Of him who is the slave of thee; 
And teach it all the harmony 
In which thou canst and only thou 5 
Make the delighted spirit glow  
Till joy denies itself again 
And too intense is turn'd to pain.
For by permission and command 
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand 10...Read more of this...

To His Lute

by William Drummond
 My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of...Read more of this...

Thoughts On The Works Of Providence

by Phillis Wheatley
 A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur'd, rise
To praise the monarch of the earth and skies,
Whose goodness and benificence appear
As round its centre moves the rolling year,
Or when the morning glows with rosy charms,
Or the sun slumbers in the ocean's arms:
Of light divine be a rich portion lent
To guide my soul, and favour my intend.
Celestial muse,...Read more of this...

142. Epistle to Major Logan

by Robert Burns
 HAIL, thairm-inspirin’, rattlin’ Willie!
Tho’ fortune’s road be rough an’ hilly
To every fiddling, rhyming billie,
 We never heed,
But take it like the unback’d filly,
 Proud o’ her speed.


When, idly goavin’, whiles we saunter,
Yirr! fancy barks, awa we canter,
Up hill, down brae, till some mischanter,
 Some black bog-hole,
Arrests us; then the scathe an’ banter
 We’re forced to thole.


Hale be your heart!...Read more of this...

The Task: Book I The Sofa (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence...Read more of this...

Sweet Charmer.{1}

by Victor Hugo
 ("L'aube naît et ta porte est close.") 
 
 {XXIII., February, 18—.} 


 Though heaven's gate of light uncloses, 
 Thou stirr'st not—thou'rt laid to rest, 
 Waking are thy sister roses, 
 One only dreamest on thy breast. 
 Hear me, sweet dreamer! 
 Tell me all thy fears, 
 Trembling in song, 
 But to break in...Read more of this...

Wandering at Morn

by Walt Whitman
 WANDERING at morn, 
Emerging from the night, from gloomy thoughts—thee in my thoughts, 
Yearning for thee, harmonious Union! thee, Singing Bird divine! 
Thee, seated coil’d in evil times, my Country, with craft and black dismay—with
 every
 meanness, treason thrust upon thee; 
—Wandering—this common marvel I beheld—the parent thrush I watch’d,
 feeding
 its young,
(The singing thrush, whose tones of joy...Read more of this...

In a Spring Grove

by William Allingham
 Here the white-ray'd anemone is born, 
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup; 
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up, 
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn, 
Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn. 
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest 
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn, 
Whose partner cheers her little brooding breast, 
Piping from some near...Read more of this...

To a Skylark

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! 
Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it, 
Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher 
From the earth thou springest, 
Like a cloud of fire 
The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning 
Of the sunken sun, 
O'er...Read more of this...

Take a cup of wine in thy hand, then mingle thy voice

by Omar Khayyam
Take a cup of wine in thy hand, then mingle thy voice
with that of the nightingale, for, if it were meet to drink
this juice of the vine without accompaniment of harmonious
sound, the wine itself would make no noise in
slipping out of the flask....Read more of this...

The Progress of Poetry

by Jonathan Swift
 The Farmer's Goose, who in the Stubble, 
Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble; 
Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still, 
Can scarce get o'er the Barn-Door Sill: 
And hardly waddles forth, to cool 
Her Belly in the neighb'ring Pool: 
Nor loudly cackles at the Door; 
For Cackling shews the Goose is poor.

But when she must be turn'd to graze,...Read more of this...

A Hymn To Christ At The Authors Last Going Into Germany

by John Donne
 In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.

I sacrifice this Island unto thee,
And all...Read more of this...

Mr Floods Party

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again,...Read more of this...

Mac Flecknoe

by John Dryden
 All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
This aged prince now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To...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...

The Triumph Of Love

by Friedrich von Schiller
 By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!

In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang--
Mankind from lifeless stone.

Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and...Read more of this...

Aaron

by George Herbert
 Holiness on the head,
Light and perfection on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To led them unto life and rest.
Thus are true Aarons dressed. 

Profaneness in my head,
Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest.
Poor priest thus am I dressed. 

Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
another...Read more of this...

Colonus Praise

by William Butler Yeats
 (From Oedipus at Colonus)

Chorus. Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
The nightingale that deafens daylight there,
If daylight ever visit where,
Unvisited by tempest or by sun,
Immortal ladies tread the ground
Dizzy with harmonious sound,
Semele's lad a gay companion.

And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives
The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives
Athenian intellect its mastery,
Even the grey-leaved olive-tree
Miracle-bred out...Read more of this...

Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead?

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some...Read more of this...

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