Famous Liquid Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...oughs above,
And each depending leaf, and every speck 
Of azure sky darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star,
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings
Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld
Their own wan light through the reflecte...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe


Custer

...ehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet, 
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet; 
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.

X.

And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Endymion: Book IV

...wy morning: hie
 Away! fly, fly!--
Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven,
Aquarius! to whom king Jove has given
Two liquid pulse streams 'stead of feather'd wings,
Two fan-like fountains,--thine illuminings
 For Dian play:
Dissolve the frozen purity of air;
Let thy white shoulders silvery and bare
Shew cold through watery pinions; make more bright
The Star-Queen's crescent on her marriage night:
 Haste, haste away!--
Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see!
And of the Bear ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Hurry Up Please Its Time

...the oxygens of death, 
Good morning life, we say when we wake, 
hail mary coffee toast 
and we Americans take juice, 
a liquid sun going down. 
Good morning life. 
To wake up is to be born. 
To brush your teeth is to be alive. 
To make a bowel movement is also desireable. 
La de dah, 
it's all routine. 
Often there are wars 
yet the shops keep open 
and sausages are still fried. 
People rub someone. 
People copulate 
entering each other's blood, 
tying each other's tendons in...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Inferno (English)

...things knew, 
 "Already, if the swamp's dank fumes permit, 
 The outcome of their beacon shows in view, 
 Severing the liquid filth." 
 No shaft can slit 
 Impalpable air, from any corded bow, 
 As came that craft towards us, cleaving so, 
 And with incredible speed, the miry wave. 
 To where we paused its meteor course it clave, 
 A steersman rising in the stern, who cried, 
 "Behold thy doom, lost spirit!" To whom my guide, 
 "Nay, Phlegyas, Phlegyas, here thy cries are 
 ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante


Last Instructions to a Painter

...arch and guide to Sheppey Isle. 

So I have seen in April's bud arise 
A fleet of clouds, sailing along the skies; 
The liquid region with their squadrons filled, 
Their airy sterns the sun behind does gild; 
And gentle gales them steer, and heaven drives, 
When, all on sudden, their calm bosom rives 
With thunder and lightning from each arm?d cloud; 
Shepherds themselves in vain in bushes shroud. 
Such up the stream the Belgic navy glides 
And at Sheerness unloads its stormy...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

Love

...ow of snow;
The roses on thy cheek that come and go,
When in thy azure eyes the smiles awake,

No passing winds the liquid mirror wake,
The cool refreshing airs so softly blow.
But hidden currents in the depths below
The angry surface in an instant shake.

Gaze then in safety from the emerald shore;
Nor launch thy shallop on the treacherous wave.
Even the gentle touch of thy light oar
May rouse the slumbering peril from its grave.
Thy fragile bark is on rough wat...Read more of this...
by Irisarri, Hermogénes

Love Sonnet XI

...Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and ...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

Paradise Lost: Book 04

...ther brought, and how. 
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound 
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread 
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved 
Pure as the expanse of Heaven; I thither went 
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down 
On the green bank, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky. 
As I bent down to look, just opposite 
A shape within the watery gleam appeared, 
Bending to look on me: I started back, 
It started back; but pl...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...hat drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, 
How nature paints her colours, how the bee 
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet. 
Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye 
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake. 
O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, 
My glory, my perfection! glad I see 
Thy face, and morn returned; for I this night 
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed, 
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee, 
Works of day past, or morr...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Poem of Joys

...forging iron!
Foundry casting—the foundry itself—the rude high roof—the ample and
 shadow’d space, 
The furnace—the hot liquid pour’d out and running. 

8
O to resume the joys of the soldier: 
To feel the presence of a brave general! to feel his sympathy! 
To behold his calmness! to be warm’d in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle! to hear the bugles play, and the drums beat! 
To hear the crash of artillery! to see the glittering of the bayonets and musket-barrels
 in the
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Samson Agonistes

...en God with these forbid'n made choice to rear
His mighty Champion, strong above compare,
Whose drink was only from the liquid brook.

 Sam. But what avail'd this temperance, not compleat
Against another object more enticing?
What boots it at one gate to make defence, 
And at another to let in the foe
Effeminatly vanquish't? by which means,
Now blind, disheartn'd, sham'd, dishonour'd, quell'd,
To what can I be useful, wherein serve
My Nation, and the work from Heav'n impos'd,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Snowbound a Winter Idyl

...man life and thought outside. 
We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, -- 
The oaken lo...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Song of Myself

...l, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night. 

Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath’d earth! 
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees; 
Earth of departed sunset! earth of the mountains, misty-topt! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with blue!
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my sake! 
Far-swooping elbow’d earth! rich, apple-blossom’d earth! 
Smile, for your lover...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bells

...s!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

The Bride of Abydos

...ll shape and syllable its sound 
Into Zuleika's name. [43] 
'Tis from her cypress' summit heard, 
That melts in air the liquid word; 
'Tis from her lowly virgin earth 
That white rose takes its tender birth. 
There late was laid a marble stone; 
Eve saw it placed — the Morrow gone! 
It was no mortal arm that bore 
That deep fixed pillar to the shore; 
For there, as Helle's legends tell, 
Next morn 'twas found where Selim fell; 
Lash'd by the tumbling tide, whose wave 
Denied ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Growth of Love

...the world as those,--
Dan Chaucer, mighty Shakespeare, then for third
The classic Milton, and to us arose
Shelley with liquid music in the world. 

5
The poets were good teachers, for they taught
Earth had this joy; but that 'twould ever be
That fortune should be perfected in me,
My heart of hope dared not engage the thought.
So I stood low, and now but to be caught
By any self-styled lords of the age with thee
Vexes my modesty, lest they should see
I hold them owls and peac...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Waste Land

...ofusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended 
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The White Cliffs

...! 
As song of thrushes is to other birds, 
So English voices are to other speech; 
Those pure round 'o's '—those lovely liquid 'l's' 
Ring in the ears like sound of Sabbath bells.

Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.

Many years later, I remember when
One evening I overheard two men
In Claridge's— white waistcoats, coats I know
Were built in Bond...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

The Witch Of Atlas

...us expectation lay the boat.

Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love--all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow--
A living image which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.

A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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