Famous Impulses Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Fantasie -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Name, my Laura, name the whirl-compelling
Bodies to unite in one blest whole--
Name, my Laura, name the wondrous magic
By which soul rejoins its kindred soul!

See! it teaches yonder roving planets
Round the sun to fly in endless race;
And as children play around their mother,
Checkered circles round the orb to trace.

Every rolling star, by thirst tormented,
Drinks with joy its bright and golden...Read more of this...

Love

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She...Read more of this...

An Old Man

by Constantine P Cavafy
 At the back of the noisy café
bent over a table sits an old man;
a newspaper in front of him, without company.

And in the scorn of his miserable old age
he ponders how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, and the power of the word, and good looks.

He knows he has aged much; he feels it, he sees it.
And...Read more of this...

Juvenilia An Ode to Natural Beauty

by Alan Seeger
 There is a power whose inspiration fills 
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, 
Like airy dew ere any drop distils, 
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught 
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole 
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. 
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, 
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, 
When...Read more of this...

The Drops Of Nectar

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 Artist, fashion! talk not long!
Be a breath thine only song!

THE DROPS OF NECTAR.

WHEN Minerva, to give pleasure
To Prometheus, her well-loved one,
Brought a brimming bowl of nectar
From the glorious realms of heaven
As a blessing for his creatures,
And to pour into their bosoms
Impulses for arts ennobling,
She with rapid footstep hasten'd,
Fearing Jupiter might see her,
And the golden goblet trembled,
And there fell a...Read more of this...

On The New Year

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ------
What we sing in company
Soon from heart to heart will fly.
-----

THE Gesellige Lieder, which I have angicisled 
as above, as several of them cannot be called convivial songs, are 
separated by Goethe from his other songs, and I have adhered to 
the same arrangement. The Ergo bibamus is a well-known drinking 
song in Germany, where it enjoys vast popularity.

ON...Read more of this...

Myself and Mine

by Walt Whitman
 MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever, 
To stand the cold or heat—to take good aim with a gun—to sail a boat—to
 manage
 horses—to beget superb children, 
To speak readily and clearly—to feel at home among common people, 
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea. 

Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers—I welcome...Read more of this...

Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...

The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students

by Galway Kinnell
 Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, "Being German my hero is Hitler,"
instead of "Sincerely...Read more of this...

So Far and So Far and on Toward the End

by Walt Whitman
 SO far, and so far, and on toward the end, 
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of me; 
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity, 
Whether I shall dart forth the true rays, the ones that wait unfired, 
(Did you think the sun was shining its brightest?
No—it has not yet fully risen;)...Read more of this...

Dangerous Things

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Said Myrtias (a Syrian student
in Alexandria; in the reign of
Augustus Constans and Augustus Constantius;
in part a pagan, and in part a christian);
"Fortified by theory and study,
I shall not fear my passions like a coward.
I shall give my body to sensual delights,
to enjoyments dreamt-of,
to the most daring amorous desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear, for whenever I...Read more of this...

Sestina

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth, 
And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad highway
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal, 
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.

Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love, 
With all the haughty insolence of...Read more of this...

legs rivers and age

by Rg Gregory
 with landbound legs a wish
for the easy flow of a river - not 
the clambering up crags to seek 
more favour from the sun
(or long-haired moon) harped for
since those sparks of who am i 
first clicked through consciousness

how the river sidles round 
rocks blocking the painful straight
seems to brush aside
all snags disrupting its ambition
to be sea - certain from...Read more of this...

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