Famous Lenses Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Faces In A Crowd

by Barry Tebb
 The women are all wearing imitation silk scarves,

Blackpool or Biarritz, sipping Woman, masticating

The morning’s post, new babies and bathrooms, going

To file, snip, fiddle and smile through fish-eyes,

Crinkly green gloss, store it in stocking-tops

For next year abroad, that Pill, so perfect!



Flashing smiles from shiny domes and polished eye-lenses,

The men are glossy all over, snapping mortgages and scores

They slap fellow-souls at...Read more of this...

I Will Sing You One-O

by Robert Frost
 It was long I lay
Awake that night
Wishing that night
Would name the hour
And tell me whether
To call it day
(Though not yet light)
And give up sleep.
The snow fell deep
With the hiss of spray;
Two winds would meet,
One down one street,
One down another,
And fight in a smother
Of dust and feather.
I could not say,
But feared the cold
Had checked the pace
Of the tower clock
By tying...Read more of this...

Visibility

by Robert William Service
 Because my eyes were none to bright
 Strong spectacles I bought,
And lo! there sprang into my sight
 A life beyond my thought:
A world of wonder and delight
 My magic lenses brought.

Aye, sudden leaping in my sight
 The far became the near;
Life unbelievably was bright,
 And vividly was clear.
My heart was lifted with delight,
 Then--then I shrank in fear.

For faces...Read more of this...

Of Consciousness her awful Mate

by Emily Dickinson
 Of Consciousness, her awful Mate
The Soul cannot be rid --
As easy the secreting her
Behind the Eyes of God.

The deepest hid is sighted first
And scant to Him the Crowd --
What triple Lenses burn upon
The Escapade from God --...Read more of this...

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown 
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...

Sinister Sooth

by Robert William Service
 Because my eyes were none to bright
 Strong spectacles I bought,
And lo! there sprang into my sight
 A life beyond my thought:
A world of wonder and delight
 My magic lenses brought.

Aye, sudden leaping in my sight
 The far became the near;
Life unbelievably was bright,
 And vividly was clear.
My heart was lifted with delight,
 Then--then I shrank in fear.

For faces...Read more of this...

Planetarium

by Adrienne Rich
 Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), 
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman 'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the...Read more of this...

The Dilettante: A Modern Type

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
He scribbles some in prose and verse,
And now and then he prints it;
He paints a little,—gathers some
Of Nature's gold and mints it.
He plays a little, sings a song,
Acts tragic roles, or funny;
He does, because his love is strong,
[Pg 50]But not, oh, not for money!
He studies almost everything
From social art to science;
A thirsty mind, a flowing spring,
Demand and swift...Read more of this...

A Hedge Of Rubber Trees

by Amy Clampitt
 The West Village by then was changing; before long
the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge
would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived,
impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of
rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse 
from whose cage kept sifting down and then 
germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around
the saucers on the windowsill—and an inexorable
cohort of roaches she was...Read more of this...

Primrose

by Patrick Kavanagh
 Upon a bank I sat, a child made seer
Of one small primrose flowering in my mind.
Better than wealth it is, I said, to find
One small page of Truth's manuscript made clear.
I looked at Christ transfigured without fear--
The light was very beautiful and kind,
And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed
I read it through the lenses of a tear.
And...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Lenses poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace