Famous Hugo Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hugo poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hugo poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hugo poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hugo, Victor
...I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.
Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds i...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Les feuilles qui gisaient.")
The leaves that in the lonely walks were spread,
Starting from off the ground beneath the tread,
Coursed o'er the garden-plain;
Thus, sometimes, 'mid the soul's deep sorrowings,
Our soul a moment mounts on wounded wings,
Then, swiftly, falls again.
...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Tu domines notre âge; ange ou démon, qu'importe!")
{I. vii.}
Angel or demon! thou,—whether of light
The minister, or darkness—still dost sway
This age of ours; thine eagle's soaring flight
Bears us, all breathless, after it away.
The eye that from thy presence fain would stray,
Shuns thee in vain; thy mighty shadow th...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("O Soleil!")
{Bk. II. iv., Anniversary of the Coup d'État, 1852.}
O Sun! thou countenance divine!
Wild flowers of the glen,
Caves swoll'n with shadow, where sunshine
Has pierced not, far from men;
Ye sacred hills and antique rocks,
Ye oaks that worsted time,
Ye limpid lakes which snow-slide shocks
Hurl up in stor...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Le parfum d'un lis.")
{Bk. V. xiii.}
The lily's perfume pure, fame's crown of light,
The latest murmur of departing day,
Fond friendship's plaint, that melts at piteous sight,
The mystic farewell of each hour at flight,
The kiss which beauty grants with coy delay,—
The sevenfold scarf that parting storms bestow
...Read more of this...
by
Cisneros, Sandra
...off the
waxy leaves of a magnolia tree. A lock of straw-colored hair
wedged between the mottled pages of a Victor Hugo novel. A
crescent of soap. A spider the color of a fingernail. The black nets
beneath the sea of olive trees. A skein of blue wool. A tea saucer
wrapped in newspaper. An empty cracker tin. A bowl of blueber-
ries in heavy cream. White wine in a green-stemmed glass.
And when you opened your wings to wind, acro...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Oh, quand je dors.")
{XXVII.}
Oh! when I sleep, come near my resting-place,
As Laura came to bless her poet's heart,
And let thy breath in passing touch my face—
At once a space
My lips will part.
And on my brow where too long weighed supreme
A vision—haply spent now—black as night,
Let thy look as a star ari...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("L'Avarice et l'Envie.")
{LE CONSERVATEUR LITÉRAIRE, 1820.}
Envy and Avarice, one summer day,
Sauntering abroad
In quest of the abode
Of some poor wretch or fool who lived that way—
You—or myself, perhaps—I cannot say—
Along the road, scarce heeding where it tended,
Their way in sullen, sulky silence wended;
F...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...in strongholds were by him
Boldly attacked, and tyrant barons grim.
He freed the towns—confronting in his lair
Hugo the Eagle; boldly did he dare
To break the collar of Saverne, the ring
Of Colmar, and the iron torture thing
Of Schlestadt, and the chain that Haguenau bore.
Such Eviradnus was a wrong before,
Good but most terrible. In the dread scale
Which princes weighted with their horrid tale
Of craft and violence, and blood and ill,
And fir...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Vous êtes singulier.")
{MARION DELORME, Act I., June, 1829, played 1831.}
MARION (smiling.) You're strange, and yet I love you thus.
DIDIER. You love me?
Beware, nor with light lips utter that word.
You love me!—know you what it is to love
With love that is the life-blood in one's veins,
The vital air ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Nous emmenions en esclavage.")
{VIII., March, 1828.}
We're bearing fivescore Christian dogs
To serve the cruel drivers:
Some are fair beauties gently born,
And some rough coral-divers.
We hardy skimmers of the sea
Are lucky in each sally,
And, eighty strong, we send along
The dreaded Pirate Galley.
A nunne...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Roses et Papillons.")
{XXVII., Dec. 7, 1834.}
The grave receives us all:
Ye butterflies and roses gay and sweet
Why do ye linger, say?
Will ye not dwell together as is meet?
Somewhere high in the air
Would thy wing seek a home 'mid sunny skies,
In mead or mossy dell—
If there thy odors longest, sweetest rise.
...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Une terre au flanc maigre.")
{Bk. III. xi., October, 1840.}
A clod with rugged, meagre, rust-stained, weather-worried face,
Where care-filled creatures tug and delve to keep a worthless race;
And glean, begrudgedly, by all their unremitting toil,
Sour, scanty bread and fevered water from the ungrateful soil;
Made harder ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("O vous que votre âge défende")
{IX., February, 1840.}
In youthful spirits wild,
Smile, for all beams on thee;
Sport, sing, be still the child,
The flower, the honey-bee.
Bring not the future near,
For Joy too soon declines—
What is man's mission here?
Toil, where no sunlight shines!
Our lot is hard, we ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Le soleil s'est couché")
{XXXV. vi., April, 1829.}
The sun set this evening in masses of cloud,
The storm comes to-morrow, then calm be the night,
Then the Dawn in her chariot refulgent and proud,
Then more nights, and still days, steps of Time in his flight.
The days shall pass rapid as swifts on the wing.
O'er the f...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Aveugle comme Homère.")
{Improvised at the Café de Paris.}
Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind,
But one weak child to guide his vision dim.
The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind—
He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him.
H.L.C., "London Society."
...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Un lion avait pris un enfant.")
{XIII.}
A Lion in his jaws caught up a child—
Not harming it—and to the woodland, wild
With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey—
The beast, as one might cull a bud in May.
It was a rosy boy, a king's own pride,
A ten-year lad, with bright eyes shining wide,
And save this son ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Il semblait grelotter.")
{XXXVI., December, 1837.}
He seemed to shiver, for the wind was keen.
'Twas a poor statue underneath a mass
Of leafless branches, with a blackened back
And a green foot—an isolated Faun
In old deserted park, who, bending forward,
Half-merged himself in the entangled boughs,
Half in his marb...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...
("Enfants! Oh! revenez!")
{XXII, April, 1837}
Children, come back—come back, I say—
You whom my folly chased away
A moment since, from this my room,
With bristling wrath and words of doom!
What had you done, you bandits small,
With lips as red as roses all?
What crime?—what wild and hapless deed?
What porcelain va...Read more of this...
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