Famous Looking Glass Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Looking Glass poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous looking glass poems. These examples illustrate what a famous looking glass poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Lewis Carroll
A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear
Pleased a simple tale to hear --
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
He. Opinion is not worth a rush;
In this altar-piece the knight,
Who grips his long spear so to push
That dragon through the fading light,
Loved the lady; and it's plain
The half-dead dragon was her thought,
That every morning rose again
And dug its claws and shrieked and fought.
Could the impossible come to pass
She would have time to turn her eyes,
Her lover thought, upon...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Prior
VENUS, take my votive glass:
Since I am not what I was,
What from this day I shall be,
Venus, let me never see....Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
NO man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.
Nay, let us don the motley cap,
The jester's chastened mien,
If we would woo that looking-glass
And see what should be seen.
O mirror on fair Heaven's wall,
We find there what we bring.
So, let us smile in honest...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let ’em hawk their caw and caw.
Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years
And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
(A Poem Game.)
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
Now orders forth his men.
He says "The time is almost here
When violets bloom again."
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
A down the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
They shiver by the...Read more of this...
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...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Nothing is given which is not taken.
Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
freely, truly and fully.
"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
true of all that is supremely desired and admired...
"An enigma is an animal," said the hurried, harried
schoolboy:
And a horse divided against itself cannot stand;
And a...Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
Methinks I see you, newly risen
From your embroider'd Bed and pissing,
With studied mien and much grimace,
Present yourself before your glass,
To vanish and smooth o'er those graces,
You rubb'd off in your Night Embraces....Read more of this...
by
Alfred Austin
LEAVE me a little while alone,
Here at his grave that still is strown
With crumbling flower and wreath;
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls,
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls,
And he lies hush’d beneath.
With myrtle cross and crown of rose,
And every lowlier flower that blows,
His new-made couch is dress’d;
Primrose and cowslip, hyacinth wild,...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
'Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And make my soul before my pate is bare.-
'And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'
And though I'd...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Smooth it glides upon its travel,
Here a wimple, there a gleam--
O the clean gravel!
O the smooth stream!
Sailing blossoms, silver fishes,
Pave pools as clear as air--
How a child wishes
To live down there!
We can see our colored faces
Floating on the shaken pool
Down in cool places,
Dim and very cool;
Till a...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
When dawn doth silver the dark firmament,
Why shrills the bird of dawning his lament?
It is to show in dawn's bright looking-glass
How of thy careless life a night is spent....Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Oh, Bonnie Dundee! I will sing in thy praise
A few but true simple lays,
Regarding some of your beauties of the present day
And virtually speaking, there's none can them gainsay;
There's no other town I know of with you can compare
For spinning mills and lasses fair,
And for stately buildings there's none can excel
The beautiful Albert Institute or the Queen's Hotel,
For it...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dinah stan' befo' de glass,
Lookin' moughty neat,
An' huh purty shadder sass
At huh haid an' feet.
While she sasshay 'roun' an' bow,
Smilin' den an' poutin' now,
An' de lookin'-glass, I 'low,
Say: "Now, ain't she sweet?"
All she do, de glass it see,
Hit des see, no mo',
Seems to me, hit ought to be
Drappin' on de flo'.
She go w'en huh time git slack,
Kissin' han's an' smilin'...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George—
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time
Made all September a Queen’s Festival;
And they would strive, informally, to make
The...Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
I sat beneath a willow tree,
Where water falls and calls;
While fancies upon fancies solaced me,
Some true, and some were false.
Who set their heart upon a hope
That never comes to pass,
Droop in the end like fading heliotrope
The sun's wan looking-glass.
Who set their will upon a whim
Clung to through good and ill,
Are wrecked alike whether they sink or swim,
Or hit or...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
She was a Philistine spick and span,
He was a bold Bohemian.
She had the mode, and the last at that;
He had a cape and a brigand hat.
She was so riant and chic and trim;
He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim.
On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine;
The rue de la Gaîté was more his line.
She doted on...Read more of this...
by
Craig Raine
The sun rose like a tarnished
looking-glass to catch the sun
and flash His hot message
at the missionaries below--
Isabella and the Rev. Roger Price,
and the Helmores with a broken axle
left, two days behind, at Fever Ponds.
The wilderness was full of home:
a glinting beetle on its back
struggled like an orchestra
with Beethoven. The Hallé,
Isabella thought and hummed.
Makololo, their Zulu guide,
puzzled out the Bible,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
LET down your braids of hair, lady.
Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass
And gaze long on lines under your eyes.
Life writes; men dance.
And you know how men pay women....Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXXVII. Il mio avversario, in cui veder solete. LAURA AT HER LOOKING-GLASS. My foe, in whom you see your own bright eyes,Adored by Love and Heaven with honour due,With beauties not its own enamours you,Sweeter and happier than in mortal guise.Me, by its counsel, lady, from your breast,My chosen...Read more of this...
by
James Joyce
Silently she's combing,
Combing her long hair
Silently and graciously,
With many a pretty air.
The sun is in the willow leaves
And on the dappled grass,
And still she's combing her long hair
Before the looking-glass.
I pray you, cease to comb out,
Comb out your long hair,
For I have heard of witchery
Under a pretty air,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
When at home alone I sit
And am very tired of it,
I have just to shut my eyes
To go sailing through the skies--
To go sailing far away
To the pleasant Land of Play;
To the fairy land afar
Where the Little People are;
Where the clover-tops are trees,
And the rain-pools are the seas,
And the...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Looking Glass poems.