Famous Lethe Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lethe poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lethe poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lethe poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...t
poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank
and stood watching the boat disappear on the black
waters of Lethe? ...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...
He must be nothing but a poem when he is writing
Until he is absent-minded as the dead are
Forgetful as the nymphs of Lethe and a lobotomy...
("the fat weed that rots on Lethe wharf")....Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...
let our
common monument be
socialism
built
in battle.
Men of posterity
examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
will bob up
the debris of such words
as “prostitution,”
“tuberculosis,”
“blockade.”
For you,
who are now
healthy and agile,
the poet
with the rough tongue
of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
I begin to resemble
those monsters,
excavated dinosaurs.
Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...lie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes uns...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...confession; and a gleam,
.
As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,
.
Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;
.
Lethe and Euno? -- the remembered dream
.
And the forgotten sorrow -- bring at last
.
That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.
V.Written January 16, 1866.5.
I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
.
With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
.
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
.
And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
.
Christ's Triu...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I’d already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:
A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,
And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.
I felt the vapours of forgetfulness
Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless
Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,
And, stooping over me, for Hen...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...urs of your breast,
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest
Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.
Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs
Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down,
Where men are upright, maids have never grown
Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.
Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,
I see a port where many ships have flown
With sails outwearied of the wandering seas;
While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown,
Fl...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...e, as fallez for to haue.
Vpon a felle of the fayre best fede thay thayr houndes
Wyth the lyuer and the lyyghtez, the lether of the paunchez,
And bred bathed in blod blende theramongez.
Baldely thay blw prys, bayed thayr rachchez,
Sythen fonge thay her flesche, folden to home,
Strakande ful stoutly mony stif motez.
Bi that the daylyyght watz done the douthe watz al wonen
Into the comly castel, ther the knyyght bidez
ful stille,
Wyth blys and bryyght fyr bette.
The ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...are cradles.
And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces
Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...e hope might think to find what hope were worth.VI
Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long
Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe--past the toil
Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil,
The Stygian web of waters--if your song
Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong
As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil;VII
If yet these twain survive your worldly breath,
Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death,
If perfect life possess your life all through
And like your words your so...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...NO no! go not to Lethe neither twist
Wolf's-bane tight-rooted for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries 5
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsi...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10
O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delv¨¨d ear...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ream; fierce Phlegeton,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets--
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of anc...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...o' the Greeks besieged his last abode,
And he his Troy's hope still, her king-at-arms.
But on those gentle meads, which Lethe charms
With weary oblivion, his passion glow'd
Like the cold night-worm's candle, and only show'd
Such mimic flame as neither heats nor harms.
'Twas plain to read, even by those shadows quaint,
How rude catastrophe had dim'd his day,
And blighted all his cheer with stern complaint:
To arms! to arms! what more the voice would say
Was swallow'd in the v...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...t know
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with man
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands--
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,
How shall men grow? but work no more alone!
Our place is much: as far as in us lies
We two will serve them both in aiding her--
Will clear away ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nd faces now apart,
That once were closer than my heart --
In agony, in agony,
And horribly a part of me. . . .
For Lethe is for no man set,
And in Hell may no man forget.)
And there were flowers, and jugs, bright-glancing,
And old Italian swords -- and looks,
A moment's glance of fire, of fire,
Spiring, leaping, flaming higher,
Into the intense, the cloudless blue,
Until two souls were one, and flame,
And very flesh, and yet the same!
As if all springs were cru...Read more of this...
by
Benet, Stephen Vincent
...on the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!
O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in a...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...e.
"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
"To vision profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
"Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...Medusa; a fair pillar thereOf jasp was next, and with a chain (first wetIn Lethe flood) of jewels fitly set,Diamonds, mix'd with topazes (of old'Twas worn by ladies, now 'tis not) first holdShe caught, then bound him fast; then such revengeShe took as might suffice. My thoughts did changeAnd I, who wish'd him victory before...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...amoebas;
The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.
Around our tent the old simplicities sough
Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.
We'll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
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