Famous Medieval Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Medieval poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous medieval poems. These examples illustrate what a famous medieval poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crane, Stephen
...oised quivering,
Rushed upon the youth.
"Sir," said this latter,
"I am enchanted, believe me,
To die, thus,
In this medieval fashion,
According to the best legends;
Ah, what joy!"
Then took he the wound, smiling,
And died, content....Read more of this...
by
Lumsden, Roddy
...t I'd been tired of life
for fourteen years; Scotland, never thoroughly enlightened,
was gathering back its clutch of medieval wonts
and lately there had been what my doctors called a pica
(like a pregnant woman's craving to eat Twix with piccalilli
or chunks of crunchy sea-coal): I'd been guzzling vinegar,
tipping it on everything, falling for women who were
beautifully unsuitable, and hiding up wynds off the Cowgate
with a pokeful of hot chips drenched in the sacred st...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...lass bulb and a flame wire.
The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks....Read more of this...
by
Hirsch, Edward
...yes,
and Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head.
Lay these words on the dead man's eyelids
like eyebrights, like medieval trumpet flowers
that will flourish, this time, in the shade.
Let the beheaded tulips glisten with rain.
Lay these words on his drowned eyelids
like coins or stars, ancillary eyes.
Canopy the swollen sky with sunspots
while thunder addresses the ground.
Syllable by syllable, clawed and handled,
the words have united in grief.
It...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...and Trade
Be slaves of her, and make her all in all,
Building against our blatant, restless time
An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.
Let every citizen be rich toward God.
Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.
Let no man rule who holds his money dear.
Let this, our city, be our luxury.
We should build parks that students from afar
Would choose to starve in, rather than go home,
Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament,
Food for the spirit, mi...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...he lawn. "
"Thanks, maram, " he'd said and went out and promptly
cut three fingers off his right hand with that medieval mach-
ine.
I was always very careful with that lawnmower, knowing
that somewhere on that place, the ghosts of three fingers
were living it up in the grand spook manner. They needed no
company from my fingers. My fingers looked just great, rigl:
there on my hands.
I cleaned out her rock garden and deported snakes when-
...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...l’d,
The foot of man unstay’d, the hands never at rest,
Thyself, O soul, that will not brook a challenge.
9
The medieval navigators rise before me,
The world of 1492, with its awaken’d enterprise;
Something swelling in humanity now like the sap of the earth in spring,
The sunset splendor of chivalry declining.
And who art thou, sad shade?
Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary,
With majestic limbs, and pious, beaming eyes,
Spreading around, with every look...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...of flames—the blacken’d ruins—the embers of cities,
The dirge and desolation of mankind.)
4
Now airs antique and medieval fill me!
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals:
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love,
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages.
5
Now the great organ sounds,
Tremulous—while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,
On which arising, rest, and leaping forth, depend,
All s...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...pivot;
yes, and there Peter's tears
run down our chanticleer's
sides and gem his spurs.
Tear-encrusted thick
as a medieval relic
he waits. Poor Peter, heart-sick,
still cannot guess
those cock-a-doodles yet might bless,
his dreadful rooster come to mean forgiveness,
a new weathervane
on basilica and barn,
and that outside the Lateran
there would always be
a bronze cock on a porphyry
pillar so the people and the Pope might see
that event the Prince
of the Apostle...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...tear in pieces the birds on which they prey; the
thorn on which they do this was said to become poisonous.
8. Medieval legends located hell in the North.
9. The Pythoness: the witch, or woman, possesed with a
prophesying spirit; from the Greek, "Pythia." Chaucer of
course refers to the raising of Samuel's spirit by the witch of
Endor.
10. Dante and Virgil were both poets who had in fancy visited
Hell.
11. Tholed: suffered, endured; "th...Read more of this...
by
Tagore, Rabindranath
...Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down
A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out
To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling.
But far up the mountain, behind the town,
We too were swept out, out by the wind,
Alone with the Tuscan grass.
Wind had been blowing across the hills
For days, and everything now was graying gold
With dust, everything we saw, even
Some small ch...Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for guns. Bruna is teaching me
to cut a pattern.
Saturdays we buy the cloth.
She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain, the built-in
limits. It's only as an afterthought she asks
and do ...Read more of this...
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