Famous Labyrinth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Labyrinth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous labyrinth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous labyrinth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mary Darby Robinson
Oft have I seen yon Solitary Man
Pacing the upland meadow. On his brow
Sits melancholy, mark'd with decent pride,
As it would fly the busy, taunting world,
And feed upon reflection. Sometimes, near
The foot of an old Tree, he takes his seat
And with the page of legendary lore
Cheats the dull hour, while Evening's sober eye
Looks tearful as it closes. In the dell
By...Read more of this...
by
Rossy Evelin Lima
I have the cadence of a serpent,
I slither,
time caresses me softly
and hides peacefully
in my labyrinth skin.
I...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Delusive Hope! more transient than the ray
That leads pale twilight to her dusky bed,
O'er woodland glen, or breezy mountain's head,
Ling'ring to catch the parting sigh of day.
Hence with thy visionary charms, away!
Nor o'er my path the flow'rs of fancy spread;
Thy airy dreams on peaceful pillows shed,
And weave for thoughtless brows, a garland gay.
Farewell low vallies; dizzy cliffs, farewell!
Small vagrant...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXVI. Voglia mi sprona; Amor mi guida e scorge. HE DESCRIBES HIS STATE, SPECIFYING THE DATE OF HIS ATTACHMENT. Passion impels me, Love escorts and leads,Pleasure attracts me, habits old enchain,Hope with its flatteries comforts me again,And, at my harass'd heart, with fond touch pleads.Poor wretch! it trusts her still,...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Dim vales- and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again- again- again-
Every moment of the night-
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
A tiger comes to mind. The twilight here
Exalts the vast and busy Library
And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
Blessed be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages -
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.
II
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXVIII. S' una fede amorosa, un cor non finto. THE MISERY OF HIS LOVE. If faith most true, a heart that cannot feign,If Love's sweet languishment and chasten'd thought,And wishes pure by nobler feelings taught,If in a labyrinth wanderings long and vain,If on the brow each pang pourtray'd to bear,Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
The mahogany table-top you smashed
Had been the broad plank top
Of my mother's heirloom sideboard-
Mapped with the scars of my whole life.
That came under the hammer.
That high stool you swung that day
Demented by my being
Twenty minutes late for baby-minding.
'Marvellous!' I shouted, 'Go on,
Smash it into kindling.
That's the stuff you're keeping out of your poems!'
And later, considered and calmer,
'Get that shoulder...Read more of this...
by
Anthony Hecht
How simple the pleasures of those childhood days,
Simple but filled with exquisite satisfactions.
The iridescent labyrinth of the spider,
Its tethered tensor nest of polygons
Puffed by the breeze to a little bellying sail --
Merely observing this gave infinite pleasure.
The sound of rain. The gentle graphite veil
Of rain that makes of the world a steel engraving,
Full of soft fadings and faint distances.
The...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.
O friend, shall time take ever this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?
Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight,...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.
And yet, it tops a verdant hill
By Summer gales surrounded:
Beneath its door a shallow rill
Runs brawling to the vale below,
And near it sweetest flowrets grow
By banks of willow...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
What shall I do with this absurdity -
O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible -
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night, and night and day, 5
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above, the sunless sky
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10
And...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
With lingering love she gazed at the dispersed
Colors of dusk. It pleased her utterly
To lose herself in the complex melody
Or in the cunous life to be found in verse.
lt was not the primal red but rather grays
That spun the fine thread of her destiny,
For the nicest distinctions and all spent
In waverings, ambiguities, delays.
Lacking the nerve to tread this treacherous
Labyrinth,...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
He tries to find the exit
From himself
But there is no door.
He walks
Through the inner labyrinth
To deceive his desire.
Perhaps there is an entrance
At the end of the labyrinth
But there is no end.
...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
It is true, our tribe is similar to the bees,
It gathers honey of wisdom, carries it, stores it in honeycombs.
I am able to roam for hours
Through the labyrinth of the main library, floor to floor.
But yesterday, looking for the words of masters and prophets,
I wandered into high regions
That are visited by practically no one.
I would open a book and...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
An old man cocked his car upon a bridge;
He and his friend, their faces to the South,
Had trod the uneven road. Their hoots were soiled,
Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;
They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,
Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon,
Were distant still. An old man cocked his ear.
Aherne....Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
Under the bunker, where the reek of kerosene
Prepared the marriage rite, leader and whore,
Imperfect kindling even in this wind, burn on.
Someone in uniform hums Brahms. Servants prepare
Eyewitness stories as the night comes down, as smoking coals await
Boots on the stone, the occupying troops. Howl ministers.
Deep in Kyffhauser Mountain's underground,
The Holy Roman Emperor snores on, in sleep...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)
No sound of any storm that shakes
Old island walls with older seas
Comes here where now September makes
An island in a sea of trees.
Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;
And if he still remembers here...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
Oh destiny of Borges
to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world
or across that single and solitary sea of diverse
names,
to have been a part of Edinburgh, of Zurich, of the
two Cordobas,
of Colombia and of Texas,
to have returned at the end of changing generations
to the ancient lands of his forebears,
to Andalucia, to Portugal and to those counties
where the Saxon...Read more of this...
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