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Famous Lyres Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brontë, Emily
...etched me on the moor. 

A thousand thousand gleaming fires
Seemed kindling in the air;
A thousand thousand silvery lyres
Resounded far and near: 

Methought, the very breath I breathed
Was full of sparks divine,
And all my heather-couch was wreathed
By that celestial shine! 

And, while the wide earth echoing rung
To their strange minstrelsy,
The little glittering spirits sung,
Or seemed to sing, to me. 

"O mortal! mortal! let them die;
Let time and tears destroy,
T...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...lo
Sings in a man, he may then, if he's able,
Strike unafraid whatever strings he will
Upon the last and wildest of new lyres;
Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn
The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create
A madness or a gloom to shut quite out
A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm
Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms.
He might have given Aristotle creeps,
But surely would have given him his katharsis.

He'll not be going yet. There's too much ye...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...old priest put out the waning fires
Save that one lamp whose restless ruby glowed
For ever in the cell, and the shrill lyres
Came fainter on the wind, as down the road
In joyous dance these country folk did pass,
And with stout hands the warder closed the gates of polished brass.

Long time he lay and hardly dared to breathe,
And heard the cadenced drip of spilt-out wine,
And the rose-petals falling from the wreath
As the night breezes wandered through the shrine,
And se...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...aling round the holy place 
 Of Heaven's white Throne, the voice of angel choirs 
 Intoned the theme of their undying lyres! 
 
 "No longer mourn thy pilgrimage below— 
 O Jacob! let thy tears no longer swell 
 The torrent of the Egyptian river: Lo! 
 Soon on the Jordan's banks thy tents shall dwell; 
 And Goshen shall behold thy people go 
 Despite the power of Egypt's law and brand, 
 From their sad thrall to Canaan's promised land. 
 
 "The King of Plagues, the...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...hes she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...Read more of this...



by Agustini, Delmira
...ut anxiousness.And her songs are like dolorous fairiesJeweled in teardrops…                          The strings of lyres                          Are the souls' fibers.–The blood of bitter vineyards, noble vineyards,In goblets of regal beauty, risesTo her marble hands, to lips carvedLike the blazon of a great lineage.Strange Princes of Fantasy! TheyHave seen her languid head, once erect,And heard her laugh, for her eyesTremble with the flower of aristocracies!And...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...thy continuous rise;
Our ears shall list thy story
From bards who from thy root shall spring,
And proudly tune their lyres to sing
Of Ethiopia's glory.
...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...thout haste
Out of the urgent heat
In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine

. Lift up your lyres! Sing on!
But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone....Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...br> 
Blessed he above others, 
With faltering feet, 
Who past its proud spires 
Intends not nor hears 
The noise of its lyres 
Grow faint in his ears! 
Men reach it through portals of triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. 


It was thither, ambitious, 
We came for Youth's right, 
When our lips yearned for kisses 
As moths for the light, 
When our souls cried for Love 
As for life-giving rain 
Wan leaves of the grove, 
Withered grass of the plain, 
And our flesh a...Read more of this...

by Cavafy, Constantine P
...nd other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival's end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only few of them still recognized.
And so their festival always had a melancholy ending
because they remebered that they too were Greeks,
they too once upon a time were citize...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...ad, 
Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss: 
It stirred me as I stood, in Caesar's house, 
Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led, 

And blended pulsing life with lives long done, 
Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one....Read more of this...

by de la Mare, Walter
...Lyonesse,
When the Sabbath eve shafts down
On the roofs, walls, belfries
Of the foundered town,
The Nereids pluck their lyres
Where the green translucency beats,
And with motionless eyes at gaze
Make ministrely in the streets. 

And the ocean water stirs
In salt-worn casement and porch.
Plies the blunt-nosed fish
With fire in his skull for torch.
And the ringing wires resound;
And the unearthly lovely weep,
In lament of the music they make
In the sullen courts of ...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
....

 II

 Steel chambers, late the pyres
 Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

 III

 Over the mirrors meant
 To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

 IV

 Jewels in joy designed
 To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

 V

 Dim moon-eyed fishes near
 Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down h...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...s made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed to be
     The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
     Seemed fevourless as I...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...to speak. 
 
 The throne, on which at length his eyes came back to rest, 
 Is upheld by rose-crowned Sphinxes, which lyres hold, 
 All cut in whitest marble, with uncovered breast, 
 While their eyes contain that enigma never told. 
 Each figure has its title carved upon its head: 
 Health, and Voluptuousness, Greatness, Joy, and Play, 
 With Victory, Beauty, Happiness, may be read, 
 Adorning brands they wear unblushing in the day. 
 
 ...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...WE count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:--
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story...Read more of this...

by Crashaw, Richard
...Sons of Dust and Sorrow,
A while Dare borrow
The Name of Your Dilights and our Desires,
And fitt it to so farr inferior Lyres.
Our Murmurs have their Musick too,
Ye mighty Orbes, as well as you,
Nor yeilds the noblest Nest
Of warbling Seraphim to the eares of Love,
A choicer Lesson then the joyfull Brest
Of a poor panting Turtle-Dove.
And we, low Wormes have leave to doe
The Same bright Busynes (ye Third Heavens) with you.
Gentle Spirits, doe not complain.
We ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ng down where he belongs.
O you unhappy ones, beware: 
Eutychides will soon be there! 
For he is coming with twelve lyres, 
And with more than twice twelve quires 
Of the stuff that he has done
In the world from which he’s gone. 
Ah, now must you know death indeed, 
For he is coming with all speed; 
And with Eutychides in Hell, 
Where’s a poor tortured soul to dwell?


V
DORICHA
(Posidippus)

So now the very bones of you are gone 
Where they were dust and ashes long a...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...ere night on earth.
Time knows not his from time's own period.
All lutes, all harps, all viols, all flutes, all lyres,
Fall dumb before him ere one string suspires.
All stars are angels; but the sun is God....Read more of this...

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