Famous Marvel Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Moon Song

by Robert William Service
 A child saw in the morning skies
The dissipated-looking moon,
And opened wide her big blue eyes,
And cried: "Look, look, my lost balloon!"
And clapped her rosy hands with glee:
"Quick, mother! Bring it back to me."

A poet in a lilied pond
Espied the moon's reflected charms,
And ravished by that beauty blonde,
Leapt out to clasp her in his arms.
And as he'd never learnt to...Read more of this...

Maidenhair

by Michael Field
Plato of the clear, dreaming eye and brave
Imaginings, conceived, withdrawn from light,
The hollow of man's heart even as a cave.
With century-slow dropping stalactite
My heart was a dripping tedious in despair.
But yesterday, awhile before I slept:
I wake to find it live with maidenhair
And mosses to the spiky pendants crept.
Great prodigies there are--Johovah's flood
Widening the margin of the Red Sea shore,--
Great marvel...Read more of this...

The Wonderer

by Robert William Service
 I wish that I could understand
The moving marvel of my Hand;
I watch my fingers turn and twist,
The supple bending of my wrist,
The dainty touch of finger-tip,
The steel intensity of grip;
A tool of exquisite design,
With pride I think: "It's mine! It's mine!"

Then there's the wonder of my Eyes,
Where hills and houses, seas and skies,
In waves of light converge and pass,
And...Read more of this...

Yet Do I Marvel

by Countee Cullen
 I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIV: Marvel Not Love

by Michael Drayton
 To Admiration

Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, 
Ravish'd a world beyond the farthest thought, 
And knowing more than ever hath been taught, 
That I am only starv'd in my desire. 
Marvel not, Love, though I thy power admire, 
Aiming at things exceeding all perfection, 
To Wisdom's self to minister correction, 
That I am only starv'd in my...Read more of this...

Sonnets 11: As To Some Lovely Temple Tenantless

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 As to some lovely temple, tenantless
Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,
Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass
Grown up between the stones, yet from excess
Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness,
The worshiper returns, and those who pass
Marvel him crying on a name that was,—
So is it now with me in my distress.
Your body was a temple...Read more of this...

The Nightingales Nest

by John Clare
 Up this green woodland-ride let's softly rove,
And list the nightingale— she dwells just here.
Hush ! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love ;
For here I've heard her many a merry year—
At morn, at eve, nay, all the live-long day,
As though she lived on song. This very spot,
Just where that old-man's-beard...Read more of this...

A Swimmers Dream

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Somno mollior unda 

I 
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, 
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. 
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, 
Fair and flawless from face to feet, 
Hailed of all when the world was golden, 
Loved of lovers whose names beholden 
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden 
Days more glad than...Read more of this...

The Poetry Of Life

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "Who would himself with shadows entertain,
Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?--
Though with my dream my heaven should be resigned--
Though the free-pinioned soul that once could dwell
In the large empire of the possible,
This workday life with iron chains may bind,
Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
And...Read more of this...

The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

The Traveller And The Farm~maiden

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HE.

CANST thou give, oh fair and matchless maiden,

'Neath the shadow of the lindens yonder,--

Where I'd fain one moment cease to wander,--
Food and drink to one so heavy laden?

SHE.

Wouldst thou find refreshment, traveller weary,

Bread, ripe fruit and cream to meet thy wishes,--

None but Nature's plain and homely dishes,--
Near the spring may soothe thy wanderings dreary.

HE.

Dreams of old acquaintance now pass...Read more of this...

J. Milton Miles

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Whenever the Presbyterian bell
Was rung by itself, I knew it as the Presbyterian bell.
But when its sound was mingled
With the sound of the Methodist, the Christian,
The Baptist and the Congregational,
I could no longer distinguish it,
Nor any one from the others, or either of them.
And as many voices called to me in life
Marvel not that I could not tell
The true...Read more of this...

Einstein

by Robert William Service
 A little mousey man he was
 With board, and chalk in hand;
And millions were awestruck because
 They couldn't understand.
Said he: 'E equals Mc2:
 I'll prove it true.'

No doubt you can, your marvel man,
 But will it serve our good?
Will it prolong our living span
 And multiply our food?
Will it bring peace between the nations
 To make equations?

Our thanks are...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXLVIII

by William Shakespeare
 O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so...Read more of this...

Nephelidia

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes...Read more of this...

Sonnet On Approaching Italy

by Oscar Wilde
 I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
And when from out the mountain's heart I came
And saw the land for which my life had yearned,
I laughed as one who some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise sky to...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXXIV

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 190] SONNET CLXXIV. I' dolci colli ov' io lasciai me stesso. HE LEAVES VAUCLUSE, BUT HIS SPIRIT REMAINS THERE WITH LAURA.  The loved hills where I left myself behind,Whence ever 'twas so hard my steps to tear,Before me rise; at each remove I bearThe dear load to my...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXII: Love Banishd Heavn

by Michael Drayton
 Love, banish'd Heav'n, on Earth was held in scorn, 
Wand'ring abroad in need and beggary, 
And wanting friends, though of a Goddess born, 
Yet crav'd the alms of such as passed by. 
I, like a man devout and charitable, 
Clothed the naked, lodg'd this wand'ring guest, 
With sighs and tears still furnishing his table 
With what might make the...Read more of this...

The Loss of Love

by Countee Cullen
 All through an empty place I go,
And find her not in any room;
The candles and the lamps I light
Go down before a wind of gloom. 
Thick-spraddled lies the dust about,
A fit, sad place to write her name
Or draw her face the way she looked
That legendary night she came.

The old house crumbles bit by bit;
Each day I hear the ominous...Read more of this...

A Birthday Present

by Sylvia Plath
 What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one,...Read more of this...

Mirth And Mourning

by Anne Bronte
 'O cast away your sorrow; --
A while, at least, be gay!
If grief must come tomorrow,
At least, be glad today! 
'How can you still be sighing
When smiles are everywhere?
The little birds are flying
So blithely through the air;

'The sunshine glows so brightly
O'er all the blooming earth;
And every heart beats lightly, --
Each face is full of mirth.'

'I always feel the deepest gloom
When...Read more of this...

Marvel of Marvels

by Christina Rossetti
 MARVEL of marvels, if I myself shall behold 
With mine own eyes my King in His city of gold; 
Where the least of lambs is spotless white in the fold, 
Where the least and last of saints in spotless white is stoled, 
Where the dimmest head beyond a moon is aureoled. 
O saints, my beloved, now mouldering to mould...Read more of this...

A Gardener-Sage

by Katharine Tynan
 Here in the garden-bed, 
Hoeing the celery, 
Wonders the Lord has made 
Pass ever before me.
I see the young birds build, 
And swallows come and go, 
And summer grow and gild, 
And winter die in snow. 

Many a thing I note,
And store it in my mind, 
For all my ragged coat 
That scarce will stop the wind. 
I light...Read more of this...

The Searched Soul

by Dorothy Parker
 When I consider, pro and con, 
What things my love is built upon -- 
A curly mouth; a sinewed wrist; 
A questioning brow; a pretty twist 
Of words as old and tried as sin; 
A pointed ear; a cloven chin; 
Long, tapered limbs; and slanted eyes 
Not cold nor kind nor darkly wise -- 
When so I ponder, here...Read more of this...

Sunrise on the Coast

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Grey dawn on the sand-hills -- the night wind has drifted 
All night from the rollers a scent of the sea; 
With the dawn the grey fog his battalions has lifted, 
At the call of the morning they scatter and flee. 
Like mariners calling the roll of their number 
The sea-fowl put out to the infinite deep. 
And far...Read more of this...

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