Famous Hover Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Monologue of a Mother

by D. H. Lawrence
 This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, 
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross, 
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy...Read more of this...

crematorium-return

by Rg Gregory
 (to where the ashes of both
 my parents are strewn)

i)
ok the pair of you lie still
what's disturbing me need pass
no fretful hand over your peace
this world's vicissitudes are stale
fodder for you who feed the grass

some particles of your two dusts
by moon's wish accident or wind
may have leapt that late-life wound
refound in you the rhapsodists
first-married days had twinned

i've come today...Read more of this...

Lady button-eyes

by Eugene Field
 When the busy day is done,
And my weary little one
Rocketh gently to and fro;
When the night winds softly blow,
And the crickets in the glen
Chirp and chirp and chirp again;
When upon the haunted green
Fairies dance around their queen -
Then from yonder misty skies
Cometh Lady Button-Eyes.

Through the murk and mist and gloam
To our quiet, cozy home,
Where to singing, sweet and low,
Rocks...Read more of this...

The Book of Thel

by William Blake
 THEL'S MOTTO 

1 Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? 
2 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?
3 Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
4 Or Love in a golden bowl? 

I 

1.1 The daughters of the Seraphim led round their sunny flocks, 
1.2 All but the youngest: she in paleness sought the secret air,
1.3 To...Read more of this...

Second Best

by Rupert Brooke
 Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom -- the truth! -- "All day the good...Read more of this...

Hare Drummer

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
For cider, after school, in late September?
Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?
For many times with the laughing girls and boys
Played I along the road and over the hills
When the sun was low and the air was cool,
Stopping to club the walnut tree
Standing leafless...Read more of this...

Tempest

by Alexander Pushkin
 You saw perched on a cliff a maid,
Her raiment white above the breakers,
When the mad sea reared up and played
Its whips of spray on coastal acres
And now and then the lightnings flush,
And purple gleams upon her hover,
And fluttering up in swirling rush,
The wind rides in her airy cover?
Fair is the sea in gales arrayed,
The heavens drained of blue and...Read more of this...

Katherine

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 We see you as we see a face
That trembles in a forest place
Upon the mirror of a pool
Forever quiet, clear and cool;
And in the wayward glass, appears
To hover between smiles and tears,
Elfin and human, airy and true,
And backed by the reflected blue....Read more of this...

Devils

by Alexander Pushkin
 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.

-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We...Read more of this...

On First Reading John Goodby's ‘irish Poetry Since 1950'

by Barry Tebb
 Barbarous insult to Yeats’ memory and Claudel’s

Allen, thank God you are dead, you who breathed the air of Apollinaire,

Ghost of Reverdy bear witness to the mendacity of his clamour,

Hart Crane, rise from the estuary of the great river you drowned in,

John Clare, rise from your country churchyard grave,

Gray, from your carv?d tomb and Wilde, cast off your winged shield

In...Read more of this...

St. Winefreds Well

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W....Read more of this...

To drain the cup, to hover round the fair,

by Omar Khayyam
To drain the cup, to hover round the fair,
Can hypocritic arts with these compare?
If all who love and drink are going wrong,
There's many a wight of heaven may well despair!...Read more of this...

Amber

by Nick Flynn
 Hover 
the imagined center, our tongues 
grew long to please it, licking 

the walls, a chamber built of scent, 

a moment followed by a lesser moment 
& a hunger to return. It couldn't last. Resin 

flowed glacially from wounds in the bark 
pinned us in our entering 
as the orchids opened wider. First, 

liquid, so we swam until we...Read more of this...

Love Lies Bleeding

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.

Stately shine his purple plumes, exceeding
Pride of princes: nor shall maid or lover
Find on earth a fairer sign worth heeding.

Yet may love, sore wounded scarce recover
Strength and spirit again, with life receding:
Hope and joy, wind-winged, about him...Read more of this...

Reproach

by D. H. Lawrence
 Had I but known yesterday,
Helen, you could discharge the ache
Out of the cloud; 
Had I known yesterday you could take
The turgid electric ache away,
Drink it up with your proud 
White body, as lovely white lightning 
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,
I might have hated you, Helen. 

But since my limbs gushed full of fire,
Since from out...Read more of this...

Madmen

by Billy Collins
 They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...

The Wanderers Storm-song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe says of this ode, that it is the only 
one remaining out of several strange hymns and dithyrambs composed 
by him at a period of great unhappiness, when the love-affair between 
him and Frederica had been broken off by him. He used to sing them 
while wandering wildly about the country. This particular one was 
caused by his...Read more of this...

An Argument

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THE VOICE OF THE MAN IMPATIENT WITH VISIONS AND UTOPIAS

We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be...Read more of this...

Magica

by Jean Delville
Behold the hour for your clairvoyant eyes to shine,
Intent Pythoness, inert in the silent heart of evening!
Your spirit has departed, lost amid the soul of the world,
Seeking the treasure, as your desire weaves its magic.

The sacred flame, which reabsorbs your fleshly being,
Will soon tranform the chasms of life into blazing pyres,
As the powers summon you to most secret sabbaths,
Reality of...Read more of this...

The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Over the green and yellow rice-fields
sweep the shadows of the autumn
clouds followed by the swift-chasing
sun.
The bees forget to sip their honey;
drunken with light they foolishly hover
and hum.
The ducks in the islands of the river
clamour in joy for mere nothing.
Let none go back home, brothers,
this morning, let none go to work.
Let us take the blue sky by storm
and plunder space...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 02: The Screen Maiden

by Conrad Aiken
 You read—what is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .

. . . The poet—what was his name—? Tokkei—Tokkei—
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like...Read more of this...

Sleeping at last

by Christina Rossetti
 Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over, 
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past, 
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover, 
Sleeping at last.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast, 
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover, 
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. Singing birds...Read more of this...

Remembrance

by Emily Brontë
 Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in...Read more of this...

May

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 LIGHT and silv'ry cloudlets hover

In the air, as yet scarce warm;
Mild, with glimmer soft tinged over,

Peeps the sun through fragrant balm.
Gently rolls and heaves the ocean

As its waves the bank o'erflow.
And with ever restless motion

Moves the verdure to and fro,

Mirror'd brightly far below.

What is now the foliage moving?

Air is still, and hush'd the breeze,
Sultriness, this fullness loving,

Through the thicket,...Read more of this...

Constructions/reconstructions

by Barry Tebb
 I

Living in a land

Where only the dying correspond

I am borne on the wings of love



II

I cannot join in a poem

The interstices of clouds

I watched a lapwing

Hover in the air

Glide in an arc

Veer from the sheer cliff



III

Who shall I meet

On this journey to eternity?

Alone and yet not alone

The dust of immortality

Lies in strangers’ eyes

Girls in all the beauty

Of their youth,...Read more of this...

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