Famous Motion Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Motion poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous motion poems. These examples illustrate what a famous motion poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Christopher Smart
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which...Read more of this...
by
Jennifer Reeser
In the upstairs hallway, complacent sunlight
stings the walls with gold and translucent almond
over Turkish runners betraying patterns
faded with travel.
At their raveled edges, my daughter slumbers
in the room from which this lost sun arranges
through a window high on an eastern sill of
drapes and black lacquer.
Past the pillowcase where her blonde head swivels
in a dream of chocolate, or paint and horses,
I...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.
Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
I.
A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.
Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.
It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
"There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Youth's gay springtime scarcely knowing
Went I forth the world to roam--
And the dance of youth, the glowing,
Left I in my father's home,
Of my birthright, glad-believing,
Of my world-gear took I none,
Careless as an infant, cleaving
To my pilgrim staff alone.
For I placed my mighty hope in
Dim and holy words of faith,
"Wander forth--the way is open,
Ever on the upward path--
Till thou gain...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Thou pretty heav'n whose great and lesser spheares
With constant wheelings measure hours and yeares
Soe faithfully that thou couldst solve the doubt
Of erring Time if Nature should be out,
Where's thy intelligence? thy Soule? the Key
That gives thee Life and Motion? must thou stay
Thus cramp'd with rusty Sloth? and shall each wheele
Disorganis'd confess it is but steele?
Art's Living Creature, is thy...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET VI. Sì traviato è 'l folle mio desio. OF HIS FOOLISH PASSION FOR LAURA. So wayward now my will, and so unwise,To follow her who turns from me in flight,And, from love's fetters free herself and light,Before my slow and shackled motion flies,[Pg 6]That less it lists,...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FAIN had I to-day surprised my mistress,
But soon found I that her door was fasten'd.
Yet I had the key safe in my pocket,
And the darling door I open'd softly!
In the parlour found I not the maiden,
Found the maiden not within her closet,
Then her chamber-door I gently open'd,
When I found her wrapp'd in pleasing slumbers,
Fully dress'd, and lying on the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
I am constantly saddened by the motion of this Wheel
of the Heavens. I am in revolt against my vile nature.
I have neither enough knowledge to hide myself and not
return to the world, nor intelligence enough to live there
without preoccupying myself with it....Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.1,2,6
C. M.
A song of praise.
In God's own house pronounce his praise,
His grace he there reveals;
To heav'n your joy and wonder raise,
For there his glory dwells.
Let all your sacred passions move,
While you rehearse his deeds;
But the great work of saving love
Your highest praise exceeds.
All that have motion, life, and breath,
Proclaim your Maker blest;
Yet, when my voice expires in death,
My...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Whenever I am prone to doubt or wonder -
I check myself, and say, 'That mighty One
Who made the solar system cannot blunder -
And for the best all things are being done.'
Who set the stars on their eternal courses
Has fashioned this strange earth by come sure plan.
Bow low, bow low to those majestic forces,
Nor dare to doubt their wisdom...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Said I: "See yon vast heaven shine,--
What earthly sight diviner?
Before such radiant Design
Why doubt Designer?"
Said he: "Design is just a thought
In human cerebration,
And meaningless if Man is not
Part of creation.
"But grant Design,--we may imply
The job took toil aplenty;
Then why one sole designer, why
Not ten or twenty.
"But should there be one Source supreme
Of...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
I
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,--
One old jug without a handle,--
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?.
II
Once, among the Bong-trees walking
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To a little heap...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.
With what a...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful Nokomis,
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines,
When her rival the rejected,
Full of jealousy and hatred,
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
Cut...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The promises of the covenant of grace.
Isa. 55:1,2; Zech. 13:1; Mic. 7:19; Ezek. 36:25, etc.
In vain we lavish out our lives
To gather empty wind;
The choicest blessings earth can yield
Will starve a hungry mind.
Come, and the Lord shall feed our souls
With more substantial meat,
With such as saints in glory love,
With such as angels eat.
Our God will every want supply,
And fill...Read more of this...
by
Edward Hirsch
In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984
A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop,
and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump
perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession
and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling
an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!—
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.
Firefly's your name. You are evanescent.
But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness,
And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always,
Till you are lost,—as a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Oh give it Motion -- deck it sweet
With Artery and Vein --
Upon its fastened Lips lay words --
Affiance it again
To that Pink stranger we call Dust --
Acquainted more with that
Than with this horizontal one
That will not lift its Hat --...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night, and night and day, 5
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track;
Whilst above, the sunless sky
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10
And...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
I
The arts are old, old as the stones
From which man carved the sphinx austere.
Deep are the days the old arts bring:
Ten thousand years of yesteryear.
II
She is madonna in an art
As wild and young as her sweet eyes:
A frail dew flower from this hot lamp
That is today's divine surprise.
Despite raw lights and gloating mobs
She is not seared: a picture still:
Rare...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.
This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
-”Mr Bones, your troubles...Read more of this...
by
Octavio Paz
If you are the amber mare
I am the road of blood
If you are the first snow
I am he who lights the hearth of dawn
If you are the tower of night
...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
A middle-northern March, now as always—
gusts from the South broken against cold winds—
but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide,
it moves—not into April—into a second March,
the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping
upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree
upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere.
So...Read more of this...
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