Famous Imagines Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Beowulf (Modern English)

...the sheltering stronghold of mortals,
lending him such authority over his worldly share,
this broad realm, so that he imagines
no end for himself in a lapse of wisdom.
He lives well at the feast. Nothing stands in his way,
not disease or old age, nor do wicked preoccupations
darken his soul, nor does conflict or sword-hate
show itself anywhere—all the world turns
towards his pleasure. He knows not the worst— (ll. 1724b-39)

 

XXV.

“—until some portion of pride...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Brave Coward

...Elisabeth imagines I've
 A yellow streak
She deems I have no dash and drive,
 Jest dogoned weak.
'A man should be a man,' says Liz
 'Trade blow for blow.'
Poor kid! What my position is
 She jest don't know.

She jest don't know my old man killed,
 Yea, slew and slew.
As steamy blood he sweetly spilled,
 So could I too.
And though no wrath of heart I show
 When I see r...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Cold-Blooded Creatures

...Man, the egregious egoist
(In mystery the twig is bent)
Imagines, by some mental twist,
That he alone is sentient

Of the intolerable load
That on all living creatures lies,
Nor stoops to pity in the toad
The speechless sorrow of his eyes.

He asks no questions of the snake,
Nor plumbs the phosphorescent gloom
Where lidless fishes, broad awake,
Swim staring at a nightmare doom....Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor

For The Country

...call Baltimore?" she asks. 
She can, but she knows no one 
in Baltimore, no one in 
St. Louis, Boston, Washington. 
She imagines herself standing 
before the glass wall high 
over Lake Shore Drive, the cars 
below fanning into the city. 
East she can see all the way 
to Gary and the great gray clouds 
of exhaustion rolling over 
the lake where her vision ends. 
This is where her brother lives. 
At such height there's nothing, 
no birds, no growing, no noise. 
She leans her sw...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

somewhere

...

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voic...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)


Spiders

...s strong as a chain or a gun.

There are far more spiders than the man in the street
 supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds of spiders and each one
Differs in kind and in unkindness.
In variety of behavior spiders are unrivalled:
The fat garden spider sits motionless, amidst or at the heart
Of the orb of its web: other kinds run,
Scuttling across the floor, falling into bathtubs,
Trapped in the path of its own wrath, by overc...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

The Future

...
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roamed on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as ...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...lf as
much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the
folly of churches & exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all
are religious. & himself the single [PL 22] One on earth that ever 
broke a net.
Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new
truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incap...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Vision of Judgment

...e not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have 'talked of him; for they have laughed consumedly.' 

I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done more good, in the charities of life, to their fellow-creatures, in any one year, than Mr. Southey has done harm to himself by his absu...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Visitor

...ands on the inside, touching 
the walls as he walks, it is his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country.

There is nothing one man will not do to another....Read more of this...
by Forche, Carolyn

Wild Orphan

...ndly mother 
takes him strolling 
by railroad and by river 
-he's the son of the absconded 
hot rod angel- 
and he imagines cars 
and rides them in his dreams, 

so lonely growing up among 
the imaginary automobiles 
and dead souls of Tarrytown 

to create 
out of his own imagination 
the beauty of his wild 
forebears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will he later hallucinate 
his gods? Waking 
among mysteries with 
an insane gleam 
of recollection? 

...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

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