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Famous Maria Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...

You think malaria makes me delirious? 

It happened. 
In Odessa it happened. 

¡°I¡¯ll come at four,¡± Maria promised. 

Eight. 
Nine. 
Ten. 

Then the evening 
turned its back on the windows 
and plunged into grim night, 
scowling 
Decemberish. 

At my decrepit back 
the candelabras guffawed and whinnied. 

You would not recognise me now: 
a bulging bulk of sinews, 
groaning, 
and writhing, 
What can such a clod des...Read more of this...



by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...High above he stands, beside the many
saintly figures fronting the cathedral's
gothic tympanum, close by the window
called the rose, and looks astonished at his

own deification which placed him there.
Erect and proud he smiles, and quite enjoys
this feat of his survival, willed by choice.

As labourer in the fields he made his start
and through hi...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...wn,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 
"The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke" (Random House)



Lord, it is time now,
for the summer has gone on
and gone on.
Lay your shadow along the sun-
dials and in the field
let the great wind blow free.
Command the last fruit
be ripe:
let it bow down the vine -- 
with perhaps two sun-warm days
more to force the last
sweetness in the heavy wine. 

He who has no home
will n...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

S...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely --and why?

We're still reminded--: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on

as back then, when...Read more of this...



by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...t, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Dressed in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandaled were;
...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...quietly come to address you?
Or high up some eulogy entrusted you with a mission
as last year on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance
of injustice about their death-which at times
slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.
Of course it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer
to give up customs one barely had time to learn
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human futu...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...and deep was the voice of the priest and the people responded,
Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria
Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated,
Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven.

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children.
Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand
Shie...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...rtichoke field marshals,
close-order conclaves,
commands, detonations,
and voices,
a crashing of crate staves.

And
Maria
come
down
with her hamper
to
make trial
of an artichoke:
she reflects, she examines,
she candles them up to the light like an egg,
never flinching;
she bargains,
she tumbles her prize
in a market bag
among shoes and a
cabbage head,
a bottle
of vinegar; is back
in her kitchen.
The artichoke drowns in a pot.

So you have it:
a vegetable, armed,
a...Read more of this...

by Koch, Kenneth
...istram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
 foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...Costanza
che del secondo vento di Soave
gener? 'l terzo e l'ultima possanza».
 Cos? parlommi, e poi cominci? 'Ave,
Maria' cantando, e cantando vanio
come per acqua cupa cosa grave.
 La vista mia, che tanto lei seguio
quanto possibil fu, poi che la perse,
volsesi al segno di maggior disio,
 e a Beatrice tutta si converse;
ma quella folgor? nel mio sguardo
s? che da prima il viso non sofferse;
 e ci? mi fece a dimandar pi? tardo.



Paradiso: Canto IV

 Intra due c...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...a in tre persone.
 State contenti, umana gente, al quia;
ché se potuto aveste veder tutto,
mestier non era parturir Maria;
 e disiar vedeste sanza frutto
tai che sarebbe lor disio quetato,
ch'etternalmente è dato lor per lutto:
 io dico d'Aristotile e di Plato
e di molt'altri»; e qui chinò la fronte,
e più non disse, e rimase turbato.
 Noi divenimmo intanto a piè del monte;
quivi trovammo la roccia sì erta,
che 'ndarno vi sarien le gambe pronte.
 Tra Lerice e Turb...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...1906


The stamina of an old long-noble race
in the eyebrows' heavy arches. In the mild
blue eyes the solemn anguish of a child
and here and there humility-not a fool's
but feminine: the look of one who serves.
The mouth quite ordinary large and straight
composed yet not willing to speak out
when necessary. The forehead still na?ve
mo...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
t...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...stless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master's hands were on the keys
Of the Maria organ, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to p...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...Gazella Dorcas


Enchanted thing: how can two chosen words
ever attain the harmony of pure rhyme
that pulses through you as your body stirs?
Out of your forehead branch and lyre climb

and all your features pass in simile through
the songs of love whose words as light as rose-
petals rest on the face of someone who
has put his book away and shut ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...g voice attends the strings?
     'Tis Ellen, or an angel, sings.
     XXIX.

     Hymn to the Virgin.

     Ave. Maria! maiden mild!
          Listen to a maiden's prayer!
     Thou canst hear though from the wild,
          Thou canst save amid despair.
     Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
          Though banished, outcast, and reviled—
     Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;
          Mother, hear a suppliant child!
                                         ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...used as counters.

4. Angelus ad virginem: The Angel's salutation to Mary; Luke i.
28. It was the "Ave Maria" of the Catholic Church service.

5. Cato: Though Chaucer may have referred to the famous
Censor, more probably the reference is merely to the "Moral
Distichs," which go under his name, though written after his
time; and in a supplement to which the quoted passage may be
found.

6. Barm-cloth: apron; from Anglo-Saxon "barme," bosom or
l...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Carribean, I blow out the light
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.
Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.

The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory. And as
he moved, his coat shone like...Read more of this...

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