Homer Poems

A collection of select Homer famous poems that were written by Homer or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.

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Canto I

by Ezra Pound
 And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we...Read more of this...

Homer Clapp

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Often Aner Clute at the gate
Refused me the parting kiss,
Saying we should be engaged before that;
And just with a distant clasp of the hand
She bade me good-night, as I brought her home
From the skating rink or the revival.
No sooner did my departing footsteps die away
Than Lucius Atherton,
(So I learned when Aner went to Peoria)
Stole in at her window, or...Read more of this...

Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

by Ben Jonson
  XII. — EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents...Read more of this...

A Tale of the Miser and the Poet

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A WIT, transported with Inditing, 
Unpay'd, unprais'd, yet ever Writing; 
Who, for all Fights and Fav'rite Friends, 
Had Poems at his Fingers Ends; 
For new Events was still providing; 
Yet now desirous to be riding, 
He pack'd-up ev'ry Ode and Ditty 
And in Vacation left the City; 
So rapt with Figures, and Allusions, 
With secret Passions, sweet Confusions; 
With...Read more of this...

Tears

by Lizette Woodworth Reese
 When I consider Life and its few years --
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street, --
I wonder at the...Read more of this...

179. To Miss Ferrier enclosing Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair

by Robert Burns
 NAE heathen name shall I prefix,
 Frae Pindus or Parnassus;
Auld Reekie dings them a’ to sticks,
 For rhyme-inspiring lasses.


Jove’s tunefu’ dochters three times three
 Made Homer deep their debtor;
But, gien the body half an e’e,
 Nine Ferriers wad done better!


Last day my mind was in a bog,
 Down George’s Street I stoited;
A creeping cauld prosaic fog
 My very sense...Read more of this...

The Iliad

by Homer
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6130/pg6130-images.html...Read more of this...

To Live Merrily And To Trust To Good Verses

by Robert Herrick
 Now is the time for mirth,
Nor cheek or tongue be dumb;
For with the flow'ry earth
The golden pomp is come.

The golden pomp is come;
For now each tree does wear,
Made of her pap and gum,
Rich beads of amber here.

Now reigns the rose, and now
Th' Arabian dew besmears
My uncontrolled brow
And my retorted hairs.

Homer, this health to thee,
In sack of such a kind
That...Read more of this...

Sonnet Suggested By Homer Chaucer Shakespeare Edgar Allan Poe Paul Vakzy James Joyce Et Al

by Delmore Schwartz
 Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or 
 seeming...Read more of this...

Ninth Inning

by David Lehman
 He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he
She went from being an Ivy League professor of French
To...Read more of this...

The Epic Stars

by Robinson Jeffers
 The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
There is the stuff for an epic poem--
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle--
We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking...Read more of this...

The Proud Poet

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Shaemas O Sheel)

One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime.
"Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroidery?" he said,
"For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!"
"You little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to Hell
For...Read more of this...

To Homer

by John Keats
 Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
 Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
 To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind;--but then the veil was rent,
 For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
 And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye on the...Read more of this...

THE ILIAD (excerpt)

by Homer
  Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
  Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
  That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
  The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
  Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
  Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.(41)
  Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
  Such was the sovereign...Read more of this...

Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas

by Osip Mandelstam
 Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas.
Half the catalogue of ships is mine:
that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line,
that once rose, out of Hellas.

To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes –
Foam of the gods on the heads of kings –
Where do you sail? What would the things
of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?

The sea, or Homer – all moves...Read more of this...

The Iliad

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Tear forever the garland of Homer, and number the fathers
Of the immortal work, that through all time will survive!
Yet it has but one mother, and bears that mother's own feature,
'Tis thy features it bears,--Nature,--thy features eterne!...Read more of this...

To Baynard Taylor

by Sidney Lanier
 To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much...Read more of this...

On first looking into Chapmans Homer

by John Keats
MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold  
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5 
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman...Read more of this...

A Woman Homer Sung

by William Butler Yeats
 If any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, 'He holds her dear,'
And shook with hate and fear.
But O! 'twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.

Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being grey,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
'He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.'

For...Read more of this...

Preamble (A Rough Draft For An Ars Poetica)

by Jean Cocteau
 ...Preamble

A rough draft 
for an ars poetica

. . . . . . . 

Let's get our dreams unstuck

The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs

I 

plant

it

It will sprout


But forget about 
the rustic festivities

For the explosive word 
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact generations 

and except for you

 nothing 
 denotates

its sweet-scented dynamite

Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5

by Alexander Pope
 She said: the pitying audience melt in tears, 
But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;
Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties prais'd...Read more of this...

The Crystal

by Sidney Lanier
 At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded...Read more of this...

There was an old Person of Cromer

by Edward Lear
There was an old Person of Cromer,Who stood on one leg to read Homer;When he found he grew stiff, he jumped over the cliff,Which concluded that Person of Cromer. ...Read more of this...

Songs of Battle

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Old as the world--no other things so old; 
Nay, older than the world, else, how had sprung 
Such lusty strength in them when earth was young?-- 
Stand valor and its passion hot and bold, 
Insatiate of battle. How, else, told 
Blind men, born blind, that red was fitting tongue 
Mute, eloquent, to show how trumpets rung 
When armies charged...Read more of this...

Very Like a Whale

by Ogden Nash
 One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it...Read more of this...

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