Famous Impalpable Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Impalpable poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous impalpable poems. These examples illustrate what a famous impalpable poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...hall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my
meditations, than you might suppose.
2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet
part
of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the
street, and
the passage over the r...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ed by tasting --
As can no other Mouth
Of Savors -- make us conscious --
As did ourselves partake --
Affliction feels impalpable
Until Ourselves are struck --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
....
2
As I wend to the shores I know not,
As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck’d,
As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,
As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,
I, too, but signify, at the utmost, a little wash’d-up drift,
A few sands and dead leaves to gather,
Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,
Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall alr...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...p's dank fumes permit,
The outcome of their beacon shows in view,
Severing the liquid filth."
No shaft can slit
Impalpable air, from any corded bow,
As came that craft towards us, cleaving so,
And with incredible speed, the miry wave.
To where we paused its meteor course it clave,
A steersman rising in the stern, who cried,
"Behold thy doom, lost spirit!" To whom my guide,
"Nay, Phlegyas, Phlegyas, here thy cries are
We need thine aid the further shore t...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
..., or shall
spring.
6
Did you guess anything lived only its moment?
The world does not so exist—no parts palpable or impalpable so exist;
No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation—and that
from
some
other,
Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.
7
Whatever satisfies Souls is true;
Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of Souls;
Itself only finally satisfies the Soul;
The Soul has t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...r
friends;
When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us
and
pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom—I am silent—I require
nothing
further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity beyond the grave;
But I walk or sit indifferent—I am satisfied,
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he must have known, and yet,—she let it stay.
Music of flesh! Music of root and sod!
Leaf touching leaf in the rain!
Impalpable clouds of red ascend,
Red clouds blow over my brain.
Did she await from me some sign of acceptance?
I smoothed my hair with a faltering hand.
I started a feeble smile, but the smile was frozen:
Perhaps, I thought, I misunderstood.
Is it to be conceived that I could attract her—
This dull and futile flesh attract such fire?
I,—with a trowel...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...points, awakening
the tacky soap to blossom and ripe autumn, releasing the squeezed gardens,
smoky valet smoothing your impalpable overnight pyjamas off,
pillar you can step through, force-field absolving love's efforts,
nicest yard of the jogging track, speeding aeroplane minutely
steered with two controls, or trimmed with a knurled wheel.
Some people like to still this energy and lie in it,
stirring circles with their pleasure in it, but my delight's that toga
worn on eithe...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...s what I am;
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary;
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head, curious what will come next;
Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.
5
I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not aba...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.
Farewell, my brethren,
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters;
My time has ended, my term has come.
2
Along the norther...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...m their poet also;
But behold! such swiftly subside—burnt up for Religion’s sake;
For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the
earth,
Any more than such are to Religion.
10What do you seek, so pensive and silent?
What do you need, Camerado?
Dear son! do you think it is love?
Listen, dear son—listen, America, daughter or son!
It is a painful thing to love a man or woman to excess—and yet it
satisfies—it is great;
But there is somet...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...he earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!
VIII
A chang...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...I AM the mist, the impalpable mist,
Back of the thing you seek.
My arms are long,
Long as the reach of time and space.
Some toil and toil, believing,
Looking now and again on my face,
Catching a vital, olden glory.
But no one passes me,
I tangle and snare them all.
I am the cause of the Sphinx,
The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx.
I was at the first of things,
I will be ...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...I cannot take -- is best --
The Color too remote
That I could show it in Bazaar --
A Guinea at a sight --
The fine -- impalpable Array --
That swaggers on the eye
Like Cleopatra's Company --
Repeated -- in the sky --
The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite -- to tell --
The eager look -- on Landscapes --
As if they just repressed
Some Secret -- that was pushing
Like Chariots -- in the Vest --
The Pleading of the Summer...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...the plain of the poems of heroes, to the prairie spreading wide,
To the far-off sea, and the unseen winds, and the same impalpable air;
... And responding, they answer all, (but not in words,)
The average earth, the witness of war and peace, acknowledges mutely;
The prairie draws me close, as the father, to bosom broad, the son;
The Northern ice and rain, that began me, nourish me to the end;
But the hot sun of the South is to ripen my songs....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Impalpable poems.