Famous Lift Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Flying Inside Your Own Body

by Margaret Atwood
 Your lungs fill & spread themselves,
wings of pink blood, and your bones
empty themselves and become hollow.
When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloon
and your heart is light too & huge,
beating with pure joy, pure helium.
The sun’s white winds blow through you,
there’s nothing above you,
you see the earth now as an oval jewel,
radiant & seablue with love.
It’s only in...Read more of this...

Her little Parasol to lift

by Emily Dickinson
 Her little Parasol to lift
And once to let it down
Her whole Responsibility --
To imitate be Mine.

A Summer further I must wear,
Content if Nature's Drawer
Present me from sepulchral Crease
As blemishless, as Her....Read more of this...

The Lift

by David Lehman
 The wonderful thing
about being with
you in this hotel
lift in London full
of people is that none
of them knows what you
and I are about to do
in bed or possibly
on the floor in fact not
even you realize yet
how much you're going
to enjoy this act for
which we have no name
not clinical or hideous, just
a double digit number, perfect
as a skater's figure eight...Read more of this...

Sonnets from the Portuguese iii

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life I shall command 
The uses of my soul nor lift my hand 5 
Serenely in the sunshine as before  
Without the sense of that which I forbore¡ª 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest...Read more of this...

Like tulips in the Spring your cups lift up,

by Omar Khayyam
Like tulips in the Spring your cups lift up,
And, with a tulip-cheeked companion, sup
With joy your wine, or e'er this azure wheel
With some unlooked-for blast upset your cup....Read more of this...

Sonnet 05 - I lift my heavy heart up solemnly

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps....Read more of this...

The Bridge

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.

And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.

Among the long,...Read more of this...

Lift it -- with the Feathers

by Emily Dickinson
 Lift it -- with the Feathers
Not alone we fly --
Launch it -- the aquatic
Not the only sea --
Advocate the Azure
To the lower Eyes --
He has obligation
Who has Paradise --...Read more of this...

February

by Thomas Chatterton
 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, 
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string; 
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, 
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. 
If in the trammels of the doleful line 
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend; 
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine, 
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend. 

Now the rough goat withdraws...Read more of this...

Lines to an Indian Air

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I ARISE from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low 
And the stars are shining bright¡ª 
I arise from dreams of thee, 5 
And a spirit in my feet 
Hath led me¡ªwho knows how? 
To thy chamber-window, Sweet! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream; 10 
The...Read more of this...

Hymn of Joy

by Henry Van Dyke
 To the music of Beethoven's ninth symphony 

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, 
God of glory, Lord of love; 
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, 
Praising Thee their sun above. 
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; 
Drive the dark of doubt away; 
Giver of immortal gladness, 
Fill us with the light of day!

All Thy works with joy surround Thee,...Read more of this...

A Childs Grace

by Robert Herrick
 HERE a little child I stand 
Heaving up my either hand; 
Cold as paddocks though they be, 
Here I lift them up to Thee, 
For a benison to fall 
On our meat and on us all. Amen....Read more of this...

Gamajun the Prophetic Bird

by Aleksandr Blok
 On waters, spread without end, 
Dressed with the sunset so purple, 
It sings and prophesies for land, 
Unable to lift the smashed wings' couple... 
The charge of Tartars' hordes it claims, 
And bloody set of executions, 
Earthquake, and hunger and the flames, 
The death of justice, crime’s intrusion... 
And caught with fear, cold and smooth, 
The fair face flames...Read more of this...

The Happy Townland

by William Butler Yeats
 There's many a strong farmer
Whose heart would break in two,
If he could see the townland
That we are riding to;
Boughs have their fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a golden and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

The little fox...Read more of this...

To My Antenor

by Katherine Philips
 My dear Antenor now give o're,
For my sake talk of Graves no more;
Death is not in our power to gain,
And is both wish'd and fear'd in vain
Let's be as angry as wee will,
Grief sooner may distract then kill,
And the unhappy often prove
Death is as coy a thing as Love.
Those whose own sword their death did give,
Afraid were or asham'd...Read more of this...

Psalm 34 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 God's care of the saints; or, Deliverance by prayer.

Lord, I will bless thee all my days,
Thy praise shall dwell upon my tongue
My soul shall glory in thy grace,
While saints rejoice to hear the song.

Come, magnify the Lord with me,
Come, let us all exalt his name;
I sought th' eternal God, and he
Has not exposed my hope to shame.

I told him...Read more of this...

After Many Days

by D. H. Lawrence
 I WONDER if with you, as it is with me, 
If under your slipping words, that easily flow 
About you as a garment, easily, 
 Your violent heart beats to and fro! 

Long have I waited, never once confessed, 
Even to myself, how bitter the separation; 
Now, being come again, how make the best 
 Reparation? 

If I could...Read more of this...

Exhortation: Summer 1919

by Claude McKay
 Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder, 
And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, 
Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: 
Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake! 

In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, 
And its golden glory fills the western skies. 
O...Read more of this...

Face Lift

by Sylvia Plath
 You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as...Read more of this...

Lift Every Voice and Sing

by James Weldon Johnson
 Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new...Read more of this...

The Show

by Wilfred Owen
 My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.

Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as...Read more of this...

gentlemen lift the sea

by Rg Gregory
 on a deformed request in a train lavatory

gentlemen lift the sea
be all of you the modern
muscular mountains
who with a scoop of biceptual crags
swoop down for an armful of ocean
leavening the dreadful pressures
on the valleys of lyonnesse

gentlemen rape air with water
let the submarine nose round the moon
and aeroplane astonished
break wind in the vaults between
the antelope ecstatic on the ocean bed
and...Read more of this...

The Toy Band

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 A Song of the Great Retreat

Dreary lay the long road, dreary lay the town, 
Lights out and never a glint o' moon: 
Weary lay the stragglers, half a thousand down, 
Sad sighed the weary big Dragoon. 
"Oh! if I'd a drum here to make them take the road again, 
Oh! if I'd a fife to wheedle, Come, boys, come!...Read more of this...

Symphonic Studies (After Schumann)

by Emma Lazarus
 Prelude 

Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July 
Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea: 
Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony 
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky. 
Shall we not call im Prospero who held 
In his enchanted hands the fateful key 
Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, 
And with controlling wand our spirits spelled, 
With him...Read more of this...

Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, 
And it but mimic all we would believe 
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear 
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave 
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. 
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought, 
For his lost heart was...Read more of this...

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