Famous Innermost Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Punch Song

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Four elements, joined in
Harmonious strife,
Shadow the world forth,
And typify life.

Into the goblet
The lemon's juice pour;
Acid is ever
Life's innermost core.

Now, with the sugar's
All-softening juice,
The strength of the acid
So burning reduce.

The bright sparkling water
Now pour in the bowl;
Water all-gently
Encircles the whole.

Let drops of the spirit
To join them now flow;
Life to the living
Naught else can bestow.

Drain it off quickly
Before it exhales;
Save when...Read more of this...

Dreams Nascent

by D. H. Lawrence
 My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes 
Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; 
An endless tapestry the past has women drapes 
The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform. 

The surface of dreams is broken,
The picture of the past is shaken and scattered. 
Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and...Read more of this...

Mary - A Ballad

by Robert Southey
 Author Note: The story of the following ballad was related to me, when a school boy, as a fact which had really happened in the North of England. I have
adopted the metre of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo and Imogene--a poem deservedly
popular.


I.

Who is she, the poor Maniac, whose wildly-fix'd eyes
Seem a heart overcharged to express?
She weeps not, yet often and deeply...Read more of this...

Innermost One

by Rabindranath Tagore
 He it is, the innermost one, 
who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches. 

He it is who puts his enchantment upon these eyes 
and joyfully plays on the chords of my heart 
in varied cadence of pleasure and pain. 

He it is who weaves the web of this maya 
in evanescent hues of gold and silver, blue...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX

by Alan Seeger
 Amid the florid multitude her face 
Was like the full moon seen behind the lace 
Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part 
When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. 
As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor 
Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, 
So to my being's innermost recess 
Flooded the light of so much...Read more of this...

To Music

by Robert Herrick
 Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what?--: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,--
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside,...Read more of this...

penelope

by Rg Gregory
 name meaning thread weaver or duck
(these may be guesses from obscurity)
ten-year faithful wife whilst her husband
was gallivanting round the islands
deceiving the suitors by her shroud-unpicking 
or maybe not such a savoury dame having
a high time with those after her favours
allegedly allowing hermes up her skirts
and becoming the mother of pan
or even (when odysseus was killed) 
getting married to her...Read more of this...

Dionysus

by Aleister Crowley
 I bring ye wine from above,
From the vats of the storied sun;
For every one of yer love,
And life for every one.
Ye shall dance on hill and level;
Ye shall sing in hollow and height
In the festal mystical revel,
The rapurous Bacchanal rite!
The rocks and trees are yours,
And the waters under the hill,
By the might of that which endures,
The holy heaven of...Read more of this...

Red Moon-Rise

by D. H. Lawrence
The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier stroke
So even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbroke
Embrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the loose
And littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we
can use
The open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have
shut...Read more of this...

Menelaus and Helen

by Rupert Brooke
 I

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

High sat white Helen, lonely...Read more of this...

Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

Whom We Worship

by George William Russell
 I WOULD not have the love of lips and eyes,
 The ancient ways of love:
But in my heart I built a Paradise,
 A nest there for the dove.


I felt the wings of light that fluttered through
 The gate I held apart:
And all without was shadow, but I knew
 The bird within my heart.


Then, while the innermost with music beat,
...Read more of this...

Celestial Love

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Higher far,
Upward, into the pure realm,
Over sun or star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love,—
Into vision which all form
In one only form dissolves;
In a region where the wheel,
On which all beings ride,
Visibly revolves;
Where the starred eternal worm
Girds the world with bound and term;
Where unlike things are like,
When good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one.
There Past, Present,...Read more of this...

The Mountain Castle

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THERE stands on yonder high mountain

A castle built of yore,
Where once lurked horse and horseman

In rear of gate and of door.

Now door and gate are in ashes,

And all around is so still;
And over the fallen ruins

I clamber just as I will.

Below once lay a cellar,

With costly wines well stor'd;
No more the glad maid with her pitcher

Descends there to draw...Read more of this...

How a Little Girl Danced

by Vachel Lindsay
 DEDICATED TO LUCY BATES

(Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.)


Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain.
I know a dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose soul has no bond with the beasts of the plain:
Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow, and with step like the rain.

Oh, thrice-painted...Read more of this...

The Human Face

by Paul Eluard
 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost...Read more of this...

Rainy Season Love Song

by Gladys May Casely Hayford
Out of the tense awed darkness, my Frangepani comes;
Whilst the blades of Heaven flash round her, and the roll of thunder drums
My young heart leaps and dances, with exquisite joy and pain,
As storms within and storms without I meet my love in the rain.

“The rain is in love with you darling; it’s kissing you everywhere,
Rain pattering over your small brown...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter

by Conrad Aiken
 From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,—
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,—
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,—
That these first words I write seem cold and...Read more of this...

For the Fallen

by Laurence Binyon
 With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, 
England mourns for her dead across the sea. 
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, 
There is music in the midst of desolation 
And a glory that...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Journey Home

by Rabindranath Tagore
 The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long. 

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my 
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet. 

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, 
and that training is...Read more of this...

Rugby Chapel

by Matthew Arnold
 Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn-evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither'd leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent;--hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows;--but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the...Read more of this...

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