Famous Melodies Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

For the Moore Centennial Celebration

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I 

ENCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us,
Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim,
Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us 
That blush into life at the sound of thy name.

The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers,--
I hear the old song with its tender refrain,
What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers!
What perfume of youth...Read more of this...

Possibilities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
 A fortnight fully to be missed,
 Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.

His place forgets him; other men
 Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.
 His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,

Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
 Our mundance...Read more of this...

Carillon

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

Then, with deep sonorous clangor
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck...Read more of this...

Storm-Music

by Henry Van Dyke
 O Music hast thou only heard
The laughing river, the singing bird,
The murmuring wind in the poplar-trees,--
Nothing but Nature's melodies?
Nay, thou hearest all her tones, 
As a Queen must hear! 
Sounds of wrath and fear, 
Mutterings, shouts, and moans, 
Madness, tumult, and despair,
All she has that shakes the air 
With voices fierce and wild!
Thou art a Queen and not a...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

The Arsenal at Springfield

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling  
Like a huge organ rise the burnished arms; 
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise how wild and dreary 5 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful...Read more of this...

I Shall Return

by Claude McKay
 I shall return again; I shall return 
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes 
At golden noon the forest fires burn, 
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies. 
I shall return to loiter by the streams 
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses, 
And realize once more my thousand dreams 
Of waters rushing down the mountain...Read more of this...

The Poet VIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 He is a link between this and the coming world. 
He is 
A pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink. 


He is a tree watered by the River of Beauty, bearing 
Fruit which the hungry heart craves; 
He is a nightingale, soothing the depressed 
Spirit with his beautiful melodies; 
He is a white cloud appearing over the...Read more of this...

The Plea of the Simla Dancers

by Rudyard Kipling
  Too late, alas! the song
 To remedy the wrong; --
The rooms are taken from us, swept and
 garnished for their fate.
 But these tear-besprinkled pages
 Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it --
 too late, alas! too late!


"What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"
 Was there no room save only in...Read more of this...

Hanging Fire

by Audre Lorde
 I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without 
still sucks his tumb 
in secret
how come my knees are 
always so ashy
what if I die
before the morning comes
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party 
my room is too small for me
suppose I de...Read more of this...

The livid lightnings flashed in the clouds

by Stephen Crane
 The livid lightnings flashed in the clouds;
The leaden thunders crashed.
A worshipper raised his arm.
"Hearken! Hearken! The voice of God!"

"Not so," said a man.
"The voice of God whispers in the heart
So softly
That the soul pauses,
Making no noise,
And strives for these melodies,
Distant, sighing, like faintest breath,
And all the being is still to hear."...Read more of this...

To a Lady with a Guitar

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ARIEL to Miranda:¡ªTake 
This slave of music for the sake 
Of him who is the slave of thee; 
And teach it all the harmony 
In which thou canst and only thou 5 
Make the delighted spirit glow  
Till joy denies itself again 
And too intense is turn'd to pain.
For by permission and command 
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand 10...Read more of this...

Sappho - A Monodrama

by Robert Southey
 Argument.

To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.


SAPPHO

(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)

This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love...Read more of this...

Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, 
 Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? 
 Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, 
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, 
 Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, 
 Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? 
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,...Read more of this...

Songs Eternity

by John Clare
 What is song's eternity?
Come and see.
Can it noise and bustle be?
Come and see.
Praises sung or praises said
Can it be?
Wait awhile and these are dead— 
Sigh, sigh;
Be they high or lowly bred
They die.

What is song's eternity?
Come and see.
Melodies of earth and sky,
Here they be.
Song once sung to Adam's ears
Can it be?
Ballads of six thousand years
Thrive, thrive;
Songs awaken with the spheres
Alive.

Mighty...Read more of this...

To The Moon

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 BUSH and vale thou fill'st again

With thy misty ray,
And my spirit's heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,

O'er my destiny.

Vanish'd days of bliss and woe

Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,

As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!

Ne'er can I be gay!
Thus have sport and...Read more of this...

The Voices in the Dream (Ryton Firs)

by Lascelles Abercrombie
Follow my heart, my dancing feet,
Dance as blithe as my heart can beat.
Only can dancing understand
What a heavenly way we pass
Treading the green and golden land,
Daffodillies and grass.

I had a song, too, on my road,
But mine was in my eyes;
For Malvern Hills were with me all the way,
Singing loveliest visible melodies
Blue as a south-sea bay;
And ruddy as wine of France
Breadths...Read more of this...

Earendil

by J R R Tolkien
 Earendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan
and light upon her banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm...Read more of this...

The Three Tommies

by Robert William Service
 That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!

To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his...Read more of this...

Secret Music

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I keep such music in my brain 
No din this side of death can quell; 
Glory exulting over pain, 
And beauty, garlanded in hell. 

My dreaming spirit will not heed
The roar of guns that would destroy 
My life that on the gloom can read 
Proud-surging melodies of joy. 

To the world’s end I went, and found 
Death in his...Read more of this...

Written On Sunday Morning

by Robert Southey
 Go thou and seek the House of Prayer!
I to the Woodlands wend, and there
In lovely Nature see the GOD OF LOVE.
The swelling organ's peal
Wakes not my soul to zeal,
Like the wild music of the wind-swept grove.
The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest
Rouse not such ardor in my breast,
As where the noon-tide beam
Flash'd from the broken stream,
Quick vibrates on the...Read more of this...

Angelina

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
When de fiddle gits to singin' out a ol' Vahginny reel,
An' you 'mence to feel a ticklin' in yo' toe an' in yo' heel;
Ef you t'ink you got 'uligion an' you wants to keep it, too,
You jes' bettah tek a hint an' git yo'self clean out o' view.
Case de time is mighty temptin' when de chune is in de swing,
Fu'...Read more of this...

The Palace and the Hut XXIX

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One


As night fell and the light glittered in the great house, the servants stood at the massive door awaiting the coming of the guests; and upon their velvet garments shown golden buttons. 

The magnificent carriages drew into the palace park and the nobles entered, dressed in gorgeous raiment and decorated with jewels. The instruments filled the air with...Read more of this...

Lapis Lazuli

by William Butler Yeats
 (For Harry Clifton)

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet...Read more of this...

Tree and Sky

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Let my soul, a shining tree, 
Silver branches lift towards thee, 
Where on a hallowed winter’s night 
The clear-eyed angels may alight. 

And if there should be tempests in
My spirit, let them surge like din 
Of noble melodies at war; 
With fervour of such blades of triumph as are 
Flashed in white orisons of saints who go 
On shafts...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Melodies poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace