Famous Illumination Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Illumination poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous illumination poems. These examples illustrate what a famous illumination poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Browning, Robert
...to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night--
Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.
In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach th...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts.
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name....Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ss—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quit...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...ospect to escape envy by surmounting it.
For if Pharaoh had known Joseph, he woud have blessed God and me for the illumination of the people.
For I pray God to bless improvements in gardening till London be a city of palm-trees.
For I pray to give his grace to the poor of England, that Charity be not offended and that benevolence may increase.
For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God, God hath sent me to sea for pearls.
For there is a bless...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...the world are the accomplishment of great events, and the consummation of periods.
For ignorance is a sin because illumination is to be obtained by prayer.
For Preferment is not from the East, West or South, but from the North, where Satan has most power.
For the ministers of the Devil set the hewer of wood over the head of God's free Man.
For this inverting God's good order, edifice and edification, and appointing place, where the Lord has not appoint...Read more of this...
by
Gluck, Louise
...auty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.
You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forge the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...highest heron
down to the weightless mangrove island
with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings
like illumination in silver,
and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots
and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower
in an ornamental spray of spray;
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:
it does look like heaven.
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there
in black and whit...Read more of this...
by
Tagore, Rabindranath
...ses.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.
Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,
and all my desires ripen into fruits of love....Read more of this...
by
Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...t knowledge,
therefore not by book nor from tongue.
If knowledge of mysteries come after
emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart. - Rumi ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...things were done.
Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of "Ers" an "Ums,"
Obliquely and by inference, illumination comes,
On some step that they have taken, or some action they approve
Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Remove.
In telegraphic sentences half nodded to their friends,
They hint a matter's inwardness--and there the matter ends.
And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall,
The English--ah, the English!--don't say ...Read more of this...
by
Warton, Thomas
...us of the mystic pile:
Whilst as around the far-retiring aisle,
And fretted shrines, with hoary trophies hung,
Her dark illumination wide she flung,
With new solemnity, the nooks profound,
The caves of death, and the dim arches frown'd.
From bliss long felt unwillingly we part:
Ah, spare the weakness of a lover's heart!
Chase not the phantoms of my fairy dream,
Phantoms that shrink at Reason's painful gleam!
That softer touch, insidious artist, stay,
Nor to new joys my st...Read more of this...
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