Famous Musk Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Passing Time

by Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning....Read more of this...

To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses

by John Keats
 As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its...Read more of this...

Come Into The Garden Maud

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 For the black bat, Night, has flown, 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
 I am here at the gate alone; 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
 And the musk of the roses blown. 

For a breeze of morning moves, 
 And the planet of Love is on high, 
Beginning to faint...Read more of this...

The Old Women

by Arthur Symons
 They pass upon their old, tremulous feet, 
Creeping with little satchels down the street, 
And they remember, many years ago, 
Passing that way in silks. They wander, slow 
And solitary, through the city ways, 
And they alone remember those old days 
Men have forgotten. In their shaking heads 
A dancer of old carnivals yet treads 
The measure of past...Read more of this...

Elegy II: The Anagram

by John Donne
 Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she
Hath all things whereby others beautious be,
For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great,
Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet,
Though they be dim, yet she is light enough,
And though her harsh hair fall, her skin is rough;
What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red;
Give her thine, and she...Read more of this...

Elegy VIII: The Comparison

by John Donne
 As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that which from chafed musk-cats' pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of th' early East,
Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast,
And on her brow her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets.
Rank sweaty froth thy Mistress's brow defiles,
Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils,
Or...Read more of this...

The Man From Athabaska

by Robert William Service
 Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas nothing but the thrumming
 Of a wood-pecker a-rapping on the hollow of a tree;
And she thought that I was fooling when I said it was the drumming
 Of the mustering of legions, and 'twas calling unto me;
 'Twas calling me to pull my freight and hop across the sea.

And...Read more of this...

While the Fates Sleep

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Come, let us to the sunways of the west,
Hasten, while crystal dews the rose-cups fill,
Let us dream dreams again in our blithe quest
O'er whispering wold and hill.
Castles of air yon wimpling valleys keep 
Where milk-white mist steals from the purpling sea,
They shall be ours in the moon's wizardry,
While the fates, wearied, sleep. 

The viewless spirit of the wind will...Read more of this...

The English Flag

by Rudyard Kipling
 Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.


Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro --
And what should they know of England who only England know?...Read more of this...

Ode to a Nightingale

by John Keats
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 
But being too happy in thine happiness, 
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of...Read more of this...

The Nostomaniac

by Robert William Service
 On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam,
And the home of the wolf shall be my home,
And a bunch of bones on the boundless snows
The end of my trail . . . who knows, who knows!

I'm dreaming to-night in the fire-glow, alone in my study tower,
My books battalioned around me, my Kipling flat on my knee;
But I'm not...Read more of this...

A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

by John Keats
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 
Its lovliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 
Spite of despondence, of...Read more of this...

For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry (excerpt Jubilate Agno)

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 this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk,...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

by Elizabeth Bishop
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over...Read more of this...

When Cold December

by Dame Edith Sitwell
 WHEN cold December 
Froze to grisamber 
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees-- 
Then fading slow 
And furred is the snow 
As the almond's sweet husk-- 
And smelling like musk. 
The snow amygdaline 
Under the eglantine 
Where the bristling stars shine 
Like a gilt porcupine-- 
The snow confesses 
The little Princesses 
On their small chioppines 
Dance under the orpines....Read more of this...

Philadelphia

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Brother Square-Toes"--Rewards and Fairies.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
 You mustn't take my stories for a guide.
There's little left, indeed, of the city you will read of,
 And all the folk I write about have died.
Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand,
 Or remember what his cunning and his skill did;
And the cabmen at the wharf...Read more of this...

The Atavist

by Robert William Service
 What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?

Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom...Read more of this...

The Philosophers

by Barry Tebb
 Lavender musk rose from the volume I was reading through,

The college crest impressed in gold, tooled gold lettering on the spine.

It was not mine but my son’s, jammed in the corner of a cardboard box

With dozens more; just one box of a score, stored in a heap

Across my ex-wife’s floor, our son gone far, as far as Samarkand and...Read more of this...

To Earthward

by Robert Frost
 Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air
That crossed me from sweet things,
The scent of -- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?
I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.
I craved sweet things, but those
Seemed strong when I...Read more of this...

Correspondences

by Charles Baudelaire
 Nature is a temple where the living pillars
Let go sometimes a blurred speech—
A Forest of symbols passes through a man's reach
And observes him with a familiar regard.

Like the distant echoes that mingle and confound
In a unity of darkness and quiet
Deep as the night, clear as daylight
The perfumes, the colors, the sounds correspond.

The perfume is as fresh as the flesh...Read more of this...

The Squaw Man

by Robert William Service
 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...

While The Bannock Bakes

by Robert William Service
 Light up your pipe again, old chum, and sit awhile with me;
I've got to watch the bannock bake -- how restful is the air!
You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three,
Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care.
The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side;
The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear;
The midnight...Read more of this...

from Jubilate Agno Fragment B lines 695-768

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...

Epistle To My Brother George

by John Keats
 Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should...Read more of this...

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