Famous Masks Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Masks poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous masks poems. These examples illustrate what a famous masks poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...e by him here, hardy hearts
from over the sea’s whelming. Now you may come inside
in your battle-wear, under your war masks,
to see Hrothgar—but let battle-boards await here,
and the wooden shafts of slaughter, the outcome of your words.” (ll. 389b-98)
Then the powerful one arose, about him many warriors,
a band of mighty thanes, some of them waiting behind there
to keep watch over the war-weapons, as the hardened one ordered then.
They hastened together, that man gui...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...sed, costumed, an ordinary man
who enters through the kitchen when coming home.
I will not have these half-filled human masks;
better the puppet. It at least is full.
I will endure this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance. Here out front
I wait. Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...O masks and metamorphoses of Ahab, Native Son
I
The icy evil that struck his father down
and ravished his mother into madness
trapped him in violence of a punished self
struggling to break free.
As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red,
he fled his name, became the quarry of
his own obsessed pursuit.
He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped,
zoot-suited jiver, swinging th...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...Like thunder clouds that spake to Babylon,
And set those old Chaldeans to their tasks.--
Are then regalities all gilded masks?
No, there are throned seats unscalable
But by a patient wing, a constant spell,
Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd,
Can make a ladder of the eternal wind,
And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents
To watch the abysm-birth of elements.
Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate
A thousand Powers keep religious state,
In water, fiery realm, and airy ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...
Of them who at the coming dawn of day
Would fade, and from their vision pass away.
A stranger looking in, these masks to see,
Might deem from Death some mandate there might be
At times to burst the tombs—the dead to wear
A human shape, and mustering ranks appear
Of phantoms, each confronting other shade.
Grave-clothes are not more grim and sombre made
Than are these helms; the deaf and sealed-up graves
Are not more icy than these arms; the stav...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ffer, and kill each other
and sometimes fail to walk the air
We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in grey chains in a place
full of winters, when what we want is sun.
We have been captured,
brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new
correspondence with ourselves
and our black family. We read magic
now we need the spells, ...Read more of this...
by
Baraka, Imamu Amiri
...These tales of old disguisings, are they not
Strange myths of souls that found themselves among
Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue,
Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot
The star-span acres of a former lot
Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung,
Or carnate with his elder brothers sung
Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot?
Old sin...Read more of this...
by
Pound, Ezra
...hey grow t' a Congress?
He white-wash'd Hutchinson, and varnish'd
Our Gage, who'd got a little tarnish'd;
Made them new masks, in time no doubt,
For Hutchinson's was quite worn out:
Yet while he muddled all his head,
You did not heed a word he said.
"Did not our grave Judge Sewall hit
The summit of newspaper wit;
Fill every leaf of every paper
Of Mills & Hicks, and mother Draper;
Draw proclamations, works of toil,
In true sublime of scarecrow style,
Write farces too 'gainst...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...s teeth
where our armies arise
fully armed on our killing-fields
with land-mines and missiles,
tanks and artillery,
gas-masks and body-bags,
our air-craft rain down
fire and destruction,
our space-craft broadcast
lies and corruption,
our elected parliaments
parrot their rhetoric
of peace and democracy
while the truth we deny
returns in our dreams
of Armageddon,
the death-wish, the arms-trade,
hatred and slaughter
profitable employment
of our thriving cities,
the arms-race
to ...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...reat piety
When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes
Hand in hand, glance and glance, care and care,
None may wear masks or enigmatic clothes,
For weakness blinds the wounded face enough.
In sense, see my shocking nakedness.
I gave a girl an apple when five years old,
Saying, Will you be sorry when I am gone?
Ravenous for such courtesies, my name
Is fed like a raving fire, insatiate still.
But do not be afraid.
For I forget myself. I do indeed
Before each genuine beauty...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...rm air,
And my own fond and tender care,
And love and smiles; ere I knew yet
That these for it might, as for me,
Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet
To feed it from my faded breast,
Or mark my own heart's restless beat
And watch the growing soul beneath
Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
Half interrupted by calm sighs,
And search the depth of its fair eyes
For long departed memories!
And so I lived till that sweet load
Was ligh...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...height of mighty nature,
And the secret stands revealed
Fraudulent Time in vain concealed,
That blessed gods in servile masks
Plied for thee thy household tasks....Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ends.
For it, the mystic evolution;
Not the right only justified—what we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge, festering trunk—from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge, and joy—joy universal.
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority—the varied, countless frauds of men and States,
Electric, antiseptic yet—cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.
3
Over the mountain growths, ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...himself
214 In his observant progress, lesser things
215 Than the relentless contact he desired;
216 How many sea-masks he ignored; what sounds
217 He shut out from his tempering ear; what thoughts,
218 Like jades affecting the sequestered bride;
219 And what descants, he sent to banishment!
220 Perhaps the Arctic moonlight really gave
221 The liaison, the blissful liaison,
222 Between himself and his environment,
223 Which was, and is, chief motive, first...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...as if I could undo
a life in hours
if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old,
all your fifty-eight years sliding
like masks from your skull;
and at the end
I packed your nightgowns in suitcases,
paid the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
people live in places.
3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this d...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...se:
The Princess Ida seemed a hollow show,
Her gay-furred cats a painted fantasy,
Her college and her maidens, empty masks,
And I myself the shadow of a dream,
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we got, and so
Went forth in long retinue following up
The ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e wanted to see her naked and vulnerable,
to see her in the refuse, the discarded
plots of old dreams, the costumes and masks
of unattainable states.
It was as if he were drawn
irresistably to failure."
It was hard to keep reading.
I was tired and wanted to give up.
The book seemed aware of this.
It hinted at changing the subject.
I waited for you to wake not knowing
how long I waited,
and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs...Read more of this...
by
Strand, Mark
...dukes, prime ministers and earls,
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques,
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose?
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill
Loving against her noble parent's will
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night
Before his regiment goes off to fight;
And see him the next ...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
Tomorrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen Nature's carnival,
The pure shall see by their own will,
Which oveflowing. Love shall fill,
T is not within the force of fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight--where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's trans...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...that's colour-coded Ulster/Eire's
flashed on again as almost every night.
Behind a tiny coffin with two bearers
men in masks with arms show off their might.
The day's last images recede to first a glow
and then a ball that shrinks back to a blank screen.
Turning to love, and sleep's oblivion, I know
what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean.
Hanging my clothes up, from my parka hood
may and apple petals, browned and creased,
fall onto the carpet and bring back the ...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
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