Famous Horned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An August Midnight

...I 

A shaded lamp and a waving blind, 
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: 
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined - 
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; 
While 'mid my page there idly stands 
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . . 

II 

Thus meet we five, in this still place, 
At this point of time, at this point in space. 
- My guests parade my new-penned ink, 
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink. 
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why? ...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas


Atalantas Race

...about him sung the birds, 
The spring flowers bloomed along the firm dry road, 
The sleek-skinned mothers of the sharp-horned herds 
Now for the barefoot milking-maidens lowed;
While from the freshness of his blue abode, 
Glad his death-bearing arrows to forget, 
The broad sun blazed, nor scattered plagues as yet.

Through such fair things unto the gates he came, 
And found them open, as though peace were there; 
Wherethrough, unquestioned of his race or name, 
He entered, a...Read more of this...
by Morris, William

Beowulf (Modern English)

...The demon came in the dark night,
a shadow-slider gliding. The bowmen slept,
those who must keep hold over the horned hall,
all except for one. It was a fact plain to men
that the spectral scather was not allowed
to tear them into the shadows, when the Measurer willed it not—
but that one, watching and wakeful, wrathful in his rancor,
swollen-minded awaited the end of this struggle. (ll. 702b-709)

 

XI.

Then he came off the moors under towering mist,
G...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Cain and Abel

...his big bull-goad instead,
But--Cain hit first and dropped him dead!

The Herd-bulls ran when they smelt the blood,
An' horned an' pawed in that Red Mud.
The Calves they bawled, and the Steers they milled,
Because it was the First Man Killed; -
An' the whole Herd broke for the Land of Nod, 
An' Cain was left to be judged by God!

But, seein' all he had had to bear,
I never could call the Judgment fair!...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Charmides

...p,

And the moon hid behind a tawny mask
Of drifting cloud, and from the ocean's marge
Rose the red plume, the huge and horned casque,
The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe!
And clad in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!

To the dull sailors' sight her loosened looks
Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters beat
Against the rolling ship...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Eviradnus

...a rock, 
 Or mountain where we see the hunters flock. 
 Gold fountain-cup, with handles Florentine, 
 Shows Acteons horned, though armed and booted fine, 
 Who fight with sword in hand against the hounds. 
 Roses and gladioles make up bright mounds 
 Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed; 
 While sage, all newly cut for this great need, 
 Covers the Persian carpet that is spread 
 Beneath the table, and so helps to shed 
 Around a perfume of the balmy spring. 
 Bey...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

For The Last Wolverine

...ns around him and shimmers
And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel
With an elk's horned heart in his stomach
Looking straight into the eternal
Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all

My way: at the top of that tree I place

The New World's last eagle
Hunched in mangy feathers giving

Up on the theory of flight.
Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate
To the death in the rotten branches,
Let the tree sway and burst i...Read more of this...
by Dickey, James

Gioconda And Si-Ya-U

...art Three
Gioconda's End


THE CITY OF SHANGHAI


Shanghai is a big port,
an excellent port,
It's ships are taller than
horned mandarin mansions.
My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai...

In the blue river boats
with straw sails float.
In the straw-sailed boats
naked coolies sort rice,
 raving of rice...
My, my!
What a strange place, this Shanghai...

Shanghai is a big port,
The whites' ships are tall,
the yellows' boats are small.
Shanghai is pregnant with a red-headed...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim

Initial Love

...a flower-hunting child,
Buries himself in summer waves,
In trees, with beasts, in mines, and caves,
Loves nature like a horned cow,
Bird, or deer, or cariboo.

Shun him, nymphs, on the fleet horses!
He has a total world of wit,
O how wise are his discourses!
But he is the arch-hypocrite,
And through all science and all art,
Seeks alone his counterpart.
He is a Pundit of the east,
He is an augur and a priest,
And his soul will melt in prayer,
But word and wisdom are a snare;
C...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Investigating Flora

...ombats, 
In their subterranean caves, 
Are a-digging, always digging, 
At those wretched people's graves; 
And the pike-horned Queensland bullock, 
From his shelter in the scrub, 
Has his eye on the proceedings 
Of the Ladies' Science Club....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Jubilate Agno: Fragment B Part 1

...e chicken. 

Let Hoglah rejoice with Leontophonos who will kill the lion, if he is eaten. 

Let Milcah rejoice with the Horned Beetle who will strike a man in the face. 

Let Noah rejoice with Hibris who is from a wild boar and a tame sow. 

Let Abdon rejoice with the Glede who is very voracious and may not himself be eaten. 

Let Zuph rejoice with Dipsas, whose bite causeth thirst. 

Let Schechem of Manasseh rejoice with the Green Worm whose livery is of the field. 

Let Ger...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Jubilate Agno: Fragment C

...ce with Hsemanthus the Blood Flower. Blessed be the name of the Blood of the Lord Jesus. 

Let Bazlith rejoice with the Horned Poppy. 

Let Hagaba rejoice with the Turnsole. God be gracious to Cutting. 

Let Shalmai rejoice with Lycopersicum Love-apple. God be gracious to Dunn. 

Let Arah rejoice with Fritillaria the Chequer'd Tulip. 

Let Raamiah rejoice with the Double Sweetscented Pione. 

Let Hashub Son of Pahath-moab rejoice with the French Honeysuckle. 

Let Ananiah rej...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Paradise Lost: Book 10

...hall, thick swarming now 
With complicated monsters head and tail, 
Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbaena dire, 
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, 
And Dipsas; (not so thick swarmed once the soil 
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle 
Ophiusa,) but still greatest he the midst, 
Now Dragon grown, larger than whom the sun 
Ingendered in the Pythian vale or slime, 
Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed 
Above the rest still to retain; they all 
Him followed, is...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...Above the highest hills: Then shall this mount 
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved 
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood, 
With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift, 
Down the great river to the opening gulf, 
And there take root an island salt and bare, 
The haunt of seals, and orcs, and sea-mews' clang: 
To teach thee that God attributes to place 
No sanctity, if none be thither brought 
By men who there frequent, or therein dwell. 
And now, what further sh...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Ballad of the White Horse

...nrise and the sea.

Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin
With horned heads, came wading in
Through the long, low sea-mire.

Our towns were shaken of tall kings
With scarlet beards like blood:
The world turned empty where they trod,
They took the kindly cross of God
And cut it up for wood.

Their souls were drifting as the sea,
And all good towns and lands
They only saw with heavy eyes,
And broke with heavy hands,

Thei...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Burden Of Itys

...nd count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo's lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid wi...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Coliseum

...e, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, 
Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, 
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
The swift and silent lizard of the stones! 

But stay! these walls- these ivy-clad arcades- 
These moldering plinths- these sad and blackened shafts- 
These vague entablatures- this crumbling frieze- 
These shattered cornices- this wreck- this ruin- 
These stones- alas! these grey stones- are they all- 
All of the famed, and the colossal left 
...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

The Mermaid

...et silently,
All looking up for the love of me.
And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
All things that are forked, and horned, and soft
Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
All looking down for the love of me....Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Tiresias

...the judgment that should be,
And in his right hand terror for a rod,
And in the breath that made the mountains bow
The horned fire of Moses on his brow.

The strong wind of the coming of the Lord
Had blown as flame upon him, and brought down
On his bare head from heaven fire for a crown,
And fire was girt upon him as a sword
To smite and lighten, and on what ways he trod
There fell from him the shadow of a God.

Pale, with the whole world's judgment in his eyes,
He stood and...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Troilus And Criseyde: Book 05

...to done,
He stood the brighte mone to beholde,
And al his sorwe he to the mone tolde;
And seyde, 'Y-wis, whan thou art horned newe, 
I shal be glad, if al the world be trewe!

'I saugh thyn hornes olde eek by the morwe,
Whan hennes rood my righte lady dere,
That cause is of my torment and my sorwe;
For whiche, O brighte Lucina the clere, 
For love of god, ren faste aboute thy spere!
For whan thyn hornes newe ginne springe,
Than shal she come, that may my blisse bringe!'

The...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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