Famous Lightning Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lightning poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lightning poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lightning poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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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...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!
Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,
So this one, taking up his heart,
Which time and change had made a stone,
Carved out of it with dolorous art,
Laboring yearlong and alone,
The thing there hidden—rose, toad, wing?
A...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear,
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Clorinda met me on the way
As I came from the train;
Her face was anything but gay,
In fact, suggested pain.
"Oh hubby, hubby dear!" she cried,
"I've awful news to tell. . . ."
"What is it, darling?" I replied;
"Your mother -- is she well?"
"Oh no! oh no! it is not that,
It's something else," she wailed,
My heart was beating pit-a-pat,
My ruddy visage paled.
Like...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"BRING me my broken harp," he said;
"We both are wrecks,-- but as ye will,--
Though all its ringing tones have fled,
Their echoes linger round it still;
It had some golden strings, I know,
But that was long-- how long!-- ago.
"I cannot see its tarnished gold,
I cannot hear its vanished tone,
Scarce can my trembling fingers hold
The pillared frame so long their own;
We both...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within....Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The shepherd's brow, fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary
Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori—
What bass is our viol for tragic...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.
The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.
I see the solemn gulls in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Wind begun to rock the Grass
With threatening Tunes and low --
He threw a Menace at the Earth --
A Menace at the Sky.
The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees --
And started all abroad
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands
And threw away the Road.
The Wagons quickened on the Streets
The Thunder hurried slow --
The Lightning showed a Yellow Beak
And then a livid...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Lightning playeth -- all the while --
But when He singeth -- then --
Ourselves are conscious He exist --
And we approach Him -- stern --
With Insulators -- and a Glove --
Whose short -- sepulchral Bass
Alarms us -- tho' His Yellow feet
May pass -- and counterpass --
Upon the Ropes -- above our Head --
Continual -- with the News --
Nor We...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning --
Lightning -- lets away
Power to perceive His Process
With Vitality.
Maimed -- was I -- yet not by Venture --
Stone of stolid Boy --
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure --
Who mine Enemy?
Robbed -- was I -- intact to Bandit --
All my Mansion torn --
Sun -- withdrawn to Recognition --
Furthest shining -- done --
Yet was not the...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life-...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
I view the evening bonfires of the sun
On hills where morning rains have hissed;
The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
The caldrons of...Read more of this...
by
John Davidson
I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth -- I hope, like you --
On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.
But I don't allow it's luck...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The sun is low,
The waters flow,
My boat is dancing to and fro.
The eve is still,
Yet from the hill
The killdeer echoes loud and shrill.
The paddles plash,
The wavelets dash,
We see the summer lightning flash;[Pg 286]
While now and then,
In marsh and fen
Too muddy for the feet of men,
Where neither bird
Nor beast has stirred,
The spotted bullfrog's croak is heard.
The wind is high,
The...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I felt the lurch and halt of her heart
Next my breast, where my own heart was beating;
And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,
And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound
Of the words I kept repeating,
Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood's blindfold art.
Her breath flew warm against my...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
LOQUITUR: En Bertans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell
for that he was a stirrer up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug
him up again? The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his
jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.
I
Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come!...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.
For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
(PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)
``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
``When a man's busy, why, leisure
``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
`` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
``Straightway he wants to be busy.
``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
``Caught thinking war the true pastime.
``Is there a reason in metre?
``Give us your speech, master Peter!''
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by,
As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool dear sky;
Young Albert, in the forest's edge, has heard a rustling sound
An arrow slightly strikes his hand and falls upon the ground.
A lovely woman from the wood comes suddenly in sight;
Her...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery
Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The Apparatus of the Dark
To ignorance revealed....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Fame is the one that does not stay --
Its occupant must die
Or out of sight of estimate
Ascend incessantly --
Or be that most insolvent thing
A Lightning in the Germ --
Electrical the embryo
But we demand the Flame...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
(With apologies to the singer of the "Song of the Banjo".)
I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone,
And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights;
I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you,...Read more of this...
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