Famous Mind's Eye Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Mind's Eye poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous mind's eye poems. These examples illustrate what a famous mind's eye poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Creeley, Robert
...hat's
wrong here? How
reach out to the
other side all
others live on as
now you see the
two doctors, behind
you, in mind's eye,
probe into your anus,
or ass, or bottom,
behind you, the roto-
rooter-like device
sees all up, concludes
"like a worn-out inner tube,"
"old," prose prolapsed, person's
problems won't do, must
cut into, cut out . . .
The world is a round but
diminishing ball, a spherical
ice cube, a dusty
joke, a fading,
faint echo of its
former...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...eath.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And knowing that the future...Read more of this...
by
Fu, Du
...e waters of the Kunming Lake were made in the time of Han, Banners and flags of the martial emperor are still in my mind's eye. The weaver girl's loom and thread are idle beneath the night's moon, The stone whale's scales and armour move in the autumn wind. Waves toss the wild rice seeds, black clouds sink, Dew chills the lotus pod, red powder falls. Between the passes at the end of the sky only birds can travel, Rivers and lakes fill this land; th...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...on of Christendom,
Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself
That he has made that hollow face of his
More plain to the mind's eye than any face
But that of Christ.
Ille. And did he find himself
Or was the hunger that had made it hollow
A hunger for the apple on the bough
Most out of reach? and is that spectral image
The man that Lapo and that Guido knew?
I think he fashioned from his opposite
An image that might have been a stony face
Staring upon a Bedouin's horse-...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'
'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.
So we coul...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...fragments of the mist sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
'Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
'Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because o...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...ay."
XIX
While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old Man's shape, and speech--all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.
XX
And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended,
I c...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...ay."
XIX
While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The old Man's shape, and speech--all troubled me:
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently.
While I these thoughts within myself pursued,
He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.
XX
And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour kind,
But stately in the main; and when he ended,
I c...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly
On the mind's eye erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit these leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That gl...Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...Across the millstream below the bridge
Seven blue swallows divide the air
In shapes invisible and evanescent,
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s
Or memory’s power to keep them there.
“History is where tensions were,”
“Form is the diagram of forces.”
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge,
While gazing down upon those birds—
How strange, to be...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...I
On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's eye
Has called up the cold spirits that are born
When the old moon is vanished from the sky
And the new still hides her horn.
Under blank eyes and fingers never still
The particular is pounded till it is man.
When had I my own will?
O not since life began.
Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent and unbent
By these wire-jointed jaws and li...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...er head.
In gentle silence thou dost fare
Through field and valley dear;
But doth my fleeting image ne'er
To thy mind's eye appear?
His image, who, by grief oppress'd,
Roams through the world forlorn,
And wanders on from east to west,
Because from thee he's torn?
When I would think of none but thee,
Mine eyes the moon survey;
A calm repose then steals o'er me,
But how, 'twere hard to say.
1776,*...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on t...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...n
Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,
Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye
Fixed upon images that once were thought;
For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.
And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice
Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,
His sleepless candle and lahorious pen.
Robartes. And after that the crumbling of the moon....Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ster grave! whose musings lone we trace
Throughout thy works we look on reverently.
Amidst the gloomy umbrage thy mind's eye
Saw clearly, 'mong the shadows soft yet deep,
The web-toed faun, and Pan the green-eyed peep,
Who deck'd with flowers the cave where thou might'st rest,
Leaf-laden dryads, too, in verdure drest.
A strange weird world such forest was to thee,
Where mingled truth and dreams in mystery;
There leaned old ruminating pines, and ther...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!
Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams throu...Read more of this...
by
McHugh, Heather
...e,
in the world at large, black hours are being
pearled and shafted. A tree stands out
spectacularly branched; the mind's eye
grows alert. This thing can hurt.
It had us once, it's having volts
of big idea again—about
thirteen a minute. Do we need
to know more? Are we sure?
Just wait—a brain this insecure
may need another bolt be driven in it....Read more of this...
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