Famous Head Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Head poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous head poems. These examples illustrate what a famous head poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ss, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan ang...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...hut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack
Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...r,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you c...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ings motion, all at one
Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none
When down the slope there came with lifted head
And back-blown mane and caverned mouth and red,
A lion, roaring, all the air ashake
That heard his hunger. Upward flight to take
No heart was mine, for where the further way
Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay,
That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she
In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see,
And where she lay amon...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...half inclosed me with her arms, She press'd me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head look'd up, And gaz'd upon my face. 'Twas partly Love, and partly Fear, And partly 'twas a bashful Art That I might rather feel than see The Swelling of her Heart. I calm'd her Tears; and she was calm, And told ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nd forthwith cipher and show me a cent,
Exactly the contents of one, and exactly the contents of two, and which is
ahead?
4
Trippers and askers surround me;
People I meet—the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I
live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...een is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denial;
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not
denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger,
the
laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But stil...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...e also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.
But who shall look from Alfred's hood
Or breathe his breath alive?
His century like a small dark cloud
Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,
Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive.
Lady, by one light only
We look from Alfred's eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere
With a convulsion—then rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...to outgo
The step of science; and against her shames
Imagination stakes out heavenly claims,
Building a tower above the head of woe.
Nor is there fairer work for beauty found
Than that she win in nature her release
From all the woes that in the world abound:
Nay with his sorrow may his love increase,
If from man's greater need beauty redound,
And claim his tears for homage of his peace.
9
Thus to thy beauty doth my fond heart look,
That late dismay'd her faithless ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...p;My Johnny do, I pray you do." To this did Johnny answer make, Both with his head, and with his hand, And proudly shook the bridle too, And then! his words were not a few, Which Betty well could understand. And now that Johnny is just going, Though Betty's in a mighty flurry, She gently pats the pony's side, On which her i...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...of sweet delight. can never be defil'd,
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. lift up
thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs
on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn. braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest. the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
P...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...able expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 75
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 80
"Wretch," I cried, ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:
It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat,
All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.
With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.
Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it h...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...nt's lease,
With nothing but new names subscribed upon't;
'Twill one day finish: meantime they increase,
'With seven heads and ten horns,' and all in front,
Like Saint John's foretold beast; but ours are born
Less formidable in the head than horn.
VIII
In the first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...member
"Nothing?"
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
"What shall we ever do?"
The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing l...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ingle salty tear
The heart will wring.
The evil heart will pity
Something and then regret.
But this light-headed sadness
It will not forget.
I only sow. To harvest.
Others will come. And yes!
The lovely group of harvesters
May true God bless.
And that more perfectly I could
Give to you gratitude,
Allow me to give the world
Love incorruptible.
x x x
My voice is weak, but will does not get weaker.
It has become...Read more of this...
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