Famous Medium Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The House Of Dust: Part 04: 02: Death: And A Derisive Chorus

by Conrad Aiken
 The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting
To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,
We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.
She blinks...Read more of this...

Visitation

by Mark Doty
 When I heard he had entered the harbor,
and circled the wharf for days,
I expected the worst: shallow water,

confusion, some accident to bring
the young humpback to grief. 
Don't they depend on a compass

lodged in the salt-flooded folds
of the brain, some delicate
musical mechanism to navigate

their true course? How many ways, 
in our century's late iron hours,
might we have led him to...Read more of this...

The Old And The New Masters

by Randall Jarrell
 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats 
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes 
As the sufferers watch the sufferer. 
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light. 
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps 
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...

The Spirit Medium

by William Butler Yeats
 Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

Or those begotten or unbegotten,
For I would not recall
Some that being unbegotten
Are not individual,
But copy some one action,
Moulding it of dust or...Read more of this...

Thoughts

by Walt Whitman
 1
OF ownership—As if one fit to own things could not at pleasure enter upon all, and
 incorporate
 them into himself or herself. 
2
Of waters, forests, hills; 
Of the earth at large, whispering through medium of me; 
Of vista—Suppose some sight in arriere, through the formative chaos, presuming the
 growth,
 fulness, life, now attain’d on the journey; 
(But I see...Read more of this...

The Three Bares

by Robert William Service
 Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
She knew that it was dangerous to scatter it around,
For Grandpa liked to throw his lighted matches...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLVII: To Fancy

by Charlotte Turner Smith
 Thee, Queen of Shadows! -- shall I still invoke,
Still love the scenes thy sportive pencil drew,
When on mine eyes the early radiance broke
Which shew'd the beauteous rather than the true!
Alas! long since those glowing tints are dead,
And now 'tis thine in darkest hues to dress
The spot where pale Experience hangs her head
O'er the sad grave of murder'd Happiness!
Thro' thy...Read more of this...

Dream Song 38: The Russian grin bellows his condolence

by John Berryman
 The Russian grin bellows his condolence
tó the family: ah but it's Kay,
& Ted, & Chris & Anne,
Henry thinks of: who eased his fearful way
from here, in here, to there. This wants thought.
I won't make it out.

Maybe the source of noble such may come
clearer to dazzled Henry. It may come.
I'd say it will come with pain,
in mystery. I'd rather leave...Read more of this...

Apprehensions

by Sylvia Plath
 There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself --
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or...Read more of this...

The Seance

by Robert William Service
 "The spirits do not like the light,"
The medium said, and turned the switch;
The little lady on my right
Clutched at my hand with nervous twitch.
(She seemed to be a pretty *****.)

The moustached women on my left,
With spirits on hr heavy breath,
Lasciviously leaned her heft
On me as one who languisheth.
The sordid room was still as death.

"A shape I see," the medium...Read more of this...

Sonnet LV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LV. I begli occhi, ond' i' fui percosso in guisa. HE IS NEVER WEARY OF PRAISING THE EYES OF LAURA.  The bright eyes which so struck my fenceless sideThat they alone which harm'd can heal the smart[Pg 79]Beyond or power of herbs or magic art,Or stone which oceans...Read more of this...

Song of Fortune VI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Man and I are sweethearts 
He craves me and I long for him, 
But alas! Between us has appeared 
A rival who brings us misery. 
She is cruel and demanding, 
Possessing empty lure. 
Her name is Substance. 
She follows wherever we go 
And watches like a sentinel, bringing 
Restlessness to my lover. 


I ask for my beloved in the...Read more of this...

Helen In Hollywood

by Judy Grahn
 When she goes to Hollywood
she is an angel.

She writes in red red lipstick
on the window of her body,
long for me, oh need me!
Parts her lips like a lotus.

Opening night she stands, poised
on her carpet, luminescent,
young men humming
all around her. She is flying.
Her high heels are wands, her
furs electric. Her bracelets
flashing. How completely
dazzling her complexion,
how vibrant her hair and eyes,
how...Read more of this...

Identity

by A R Ammons
 1) An individual spider web
identifies a species:

an order of instinct prevails
 through all accidents of circumstance,
  though possibility is
high along the peripheries of
spider
   webs:
   you can go all
  around the fringing attachments

  and find
disorder ripe,
entropy rich, high levels of random,
 numerous occasions of accident:

2) the possible settings
of a web are infinite:

 how...Read more of this...

Sonnet LIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LIX. Se al principio risponde il fine e 'l mezzo. IF HIS PASSION STILL INCREASE, HE MUST SOON DIE.  If, of this fourteenth year wherein I sigh,The end and middle with its opening vie,[Pg 82]Nor air nor shade can give me now release,I feel mine ardent passion so...Read more of this...

A Ballad of John Silver

by John Masefield
 We were schooner-rigged and rakish, 
with a long and lissome hull, 
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; 
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each...Read more of this...

Vanity Fair

by Sylvia Plath
 Through frost-thick weather
This witch sidles, fingers crooked, as if
Caught in a hazardous medium that might 
Merely by its continuing
Attach her to heaven.

At eye's envious corner
Crow's-feet copy veining on a stained leaf;
Cold squint steals sky's color; while bruit
Of bells calls holy ones, her tongue
Backtalks at the raven

Claeving furred air
Over her skull's midden; no knife
Rivals her whetted look, divining what conceit
Waylays...Read more of this...

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