Famous Hermit Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hermit poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hermit poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hermit poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Li Bai
Thousands of feet high towers the Yellow Mountains
With its thirty-two magnificent peaks,
Blooming like golden lotus flowers
Amidst red crags and rock columns.
Once I was on its lofty summit,
Admiring Tianmu Pine below.
The place is still traceable where the immortal
Before ascending to heaven made elixir out of jade.
Now you embark on your journey there alone---
Another Wen Boxue* I happened to meet---
Who've been to...Read more of this...
by
Lew Welch
The image, as in a Hexagram:
The hermit locks his door against the blizzard.
He keeps the cabin warm.
All winter long he sorts out all he has.
What was well started shall be finished.
What was not, should be thrown away.
In spring he emerges with one garment
and a single book.
The cabin is very clean.
Except for that, you'd never guess
anyone lived there....Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
AN ATTACK ON BARBERCRAFT
[Dedicated to George Cecil Jones]
At last an end of all I hoped and feared!
Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard.
Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred.
I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard.
To all God's questions never a word he said,
But simply shook his venerable head.
God sent all plagues; he laughed and heeded not,
Till people...Read more of this...
by
Maxine Kumin
Up attic, Lucas Harrison, God rest
his frugal bones, once kept a tidy account
by knifecut of some long-gone harvest.
The wood was new. The pitch ran down to blunt
the year: 1811, the score: 10, he carved
into the center rafter to represent
his loves, beatings, losses, hours, or maybe
the butternuts that taxed his back and starved
the red squirrels higher up each scabbed...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.
The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory. And as
he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.
High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign
of...Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
You'll rejoice at how many kinds of **** there are:
gosling **** (which J. Williams said something
was as green as), fish **** (the generality), trout
****, rainbow trout **** (for the nice), mullet ****,
sand dab ****, casual sloth ****, elephant ****
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest ****,
horse **** (a favorite), caterpillar **** (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Take back your coins, King's Councillor. I am of those women you
sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never
seen a women. I failed in your bidding.
Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in
the stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like a
cluster of morning clouds, and his limbs shining...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
NOW the quietude of earth
Nestles deep my heart within;
Friendships new and strange have birth
Since I left the city’s din.
Here the tempest stays its guile,
Like a big kind brother plays,
Romps and pauses here awhile
From its immemorial ways.
Now the silver light of dawn,
Slipping through the leaves that fleck
My one window, hurries on,
Throws its arms around my neck.
Darkness to my doorway hies,
Lays...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Ecoute-moi, Madeline.")
{IX., September, 1825.}
List to me, O Madelaine!
Now the snows have left the plain,
Which they warmly cloaked.
Come into the forest groves,
Where the notes that Echo loves
Are from horns evoked.
Come! where Springtide, Madelaine,
Brings a sultry breath from Spain,
Giving...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
High, on the Solitude of Alpine Hills,
O'er-topping the grand imag'ry of Nature,
Where one eternal winter seem'd to reign;
An HERMIT'S threshold, carpetted with moss,
Diversified the Scene. Above the flakes
Of silv'ry snow, full many a modest flow'r
Peep'd through its icy veil, and blushing ope'd
Its variegated hues; The ORCHIS sweet,
The bloomy CISTUS, and the fragrant branch
Of glossy MYRTLE. In his rushy cell,
The...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
Mr Brain was a hermit dwarf who liked to eat shellfish off
the moon. He liked to go into a tree then because there is a
little height to see a little further, which may reveal now the
stone, a pebble--it is a twig, it is nothing under the moon that
you can make sure of.
So Mr Brain...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
In lakeside leafy groves, a friar
Escaped all worries; there he passed
His summer days in constant prayer,
Deep studies and eternal fast.
Already with a humble shovel
The elder dug himself a grave -
As, calling saints to bless his hovel,
Death - nothing other - did he crave.
So once, upon a falling night, he
Was bowing by his wilted shack
With meekest prayer to the Almighty.
The...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
WHAT moves that lonely man is not the boom
Of waves that break agains the cliff so strong;
Nor roar of thunder, when that travelling voice
Is caught by rocks that carry far along.
'Tis not the groan of oak tree i its prime,
When lightning strikes its solid heart to dust;
Nor frozen pond when, melted by the sun,...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's ****, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--
Funny how hard it is to be alone.
I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding...Read more of this...
by
Amy Clampitt
Nothing's certain. Crossing, on this longest day,
the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up
the scree-slope of what at high tide
will be again an island,
to where, a decade since well-being staked
the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us
back, year after year, lugging the
makings of another picnic—
the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified
fig newtons—there's no knowing what the slamming
seas, the gales...Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
The new hath come and now the old retires:
And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
Old longings in fulfilling new desires.
And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense
Expectancy and anguish of suspense,
On the dim chamber-threshold...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
O wonderful! How liquid clear
The molten gold of that ethereal tone,
Floating and falling through the wood alone,
A hermit-hymn poured out for God to hear!
0 holy, holy, holy! Hyaline,
Long light, low light, glory of eventide!
Love far away, far up. -- up, -- love divine!
Little love, too, for ever, ever, near,
Warm love, earth love, tender love of mine,
In the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I haven't worn my evening dress
For nearly twenty years;
Oh I'm unsocial, I confess,
A hermit, it appears.
So much moth-balled it's but away,
And though wee wifie wails,
Never unto my dimmest day
I'll don my tails.
How slim and trim I looked in them,
Though I was sixty old;
And now their sleekness I condemn
To lie in rigid fold.
I have...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
MY Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form,
The frost of hermit Age might warm;
My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.
I love my Peggy’s angel air,
Her face so truly heavenly fair,
Her native grace, so void of art,
But I adore my Peggy’s heart.
The lily’s hue, the rose’s dye,
The kindling lustre of an eye;
Who but owns their magic sway!
Who...Read more of this...
by
Robert Bly
Darkness is falling through darkness
Falling from ledge
To ledge.
There is a man whose body is perfectly whole.
He stands the storm behind him
And the grass blades are leaping in the wind.
Darkness is gathered in folds
About his feet.
He is no one. When we see
Him we grow calm
And sail on into the tunnels of joyful death....Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
The mountains are cold and blue now
And the autumn waters have run all day.
By my thatch door, leaning on my staff,
I listen to cicadas in the evening wind.
Sunset lingers at the ferry,
Supper-smoke floats up from the houses.
...Oh, when shall I pledge the great Hermit again
And sing a wild poem at Five Willows? ...Read more of this...
by
Amy Clampitt
Daily the cortege of crumpled
defunct cars
goes by by the lasagna-
layered flatbed
truckload: hardtop
reverting to tar smudge,
wax shine antiqued to crusted
winepress smear,
windshield battered to
intact ice-tint, a rarity
fresh from the Pleistocene.
I like it; privately
I find esthetic
satisfaction in these
ceremonial removals
from the category of
received ideas
to regions where pigeons'
svelte smoke-velvet
limousines, taxiing
in whirligigs, reclaim...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A storm-beaten old watch-tower,
A blind hermit rings the hour.
All-destroying sword-blade still
Carried by the wandering fool.
Gold-sewn silk on the sword-blade,
Beauty and fool together laid....Read more of this...
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