Famous Myriad Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Scotland 1941

by Edwin Muir
 We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,
The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,
The green road winding up the ferny brae.
But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms
And bundled all...Read more of this...

The Slaves Dream

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more...Read more of this...

Room 4: The Painter Chap

by Robert William Service
 He gives me such a bold and curious look,
That young American across the way,
As if he'd like to put me in a book
(Fancies himself a poet, so they say.)
Ah well! He'll make no "document" of me.
I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . .

Pictures, just pictures piled from roof to floor,
Each one a bit of...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

The Paper Windmill

by Amy Lowell
 The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane 
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of 
the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and 
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown 
water
of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string 
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses. The little...Read more of this...

Sleeping Out: Full Moon

by Rupert Brooke
 They sleep within. . . .
I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.
High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.

We have slept too long, who can hardly win
The white one flame, and the night-long crying;
The viewless passers; the world's low sighing
With desire, with yearning,
To the fire unburning,
To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy! . ....Read more of this...

A Creature Catechism

by Bliss Carman
 I
Soul, what art thou in the tribes of the sea?


LORD, said a flying fish, 
Below the foundations of storm 
We feel the primal wish 
Of the earth take form. 

Through the dim green water-fire 
We see the red sun loom, 
And the quake of a new desire 
Takes hold on us down in the gloom. 

No more can the...Read more of this...

The very wine a myriad forms sustains,

by Omar Khayyam
The very wine a myriad forms sustains,
And to take shapes of plants and creatures deigns
But deem not that its essence ever dies,
Its forms may perish, but its self remains....Read more of this...

J--K. Huysmans

by Amy Lowell
 A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,
A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,
Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet
Across uneven pavements sunk in slime
To scatter and then quench itself in mist.
And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled
Against the jutting angle of a wall,
And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside
By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past,
A man was groping...Read more of this...

The Fish

by Rupert Brooke
 In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and...Read more of this...

Mohini Chatterjee

by William Butler Yeats
 I asked if I should pray.
But the Brahmin said,
'pray for nothing, say
Every night in bed,
'I have been a king,
I have been a slave,
Nor is there anything.
Fool, rascal, knave,
That I have not been,
And yet upon my breast
A myriad heads have lain.'

That he might Set at rest
A boy's turbulent days
Mohini Chatterjee
Spoke these, or words like these,
I add in commentary,
'Old lovers yet...Read more of this...

Choriambics -- I

by Rupert Brooke
 Ah! not now, when desire burns, and the wind calls, and the suns of spring
Light-foot dance in the woods, whisper of life, woo me to wayfaring;
Ah! not now should you come, now when the road beckons,
and good friends call,
Where are songs to be sung, fights to be fought, yea! and the best of all,
Love, on myriad lips fairer than...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

Song of the Future

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Tis strange that in a land so strong 
So strong and bold in mighty youth, 
We have no poet's voice of truth 
To sing for us a wondrous song. 
Our chiefest singer yet has sung 
In wild, sweet notes a passing strain, 
All carelessly and sadly flung 
To that dull world he thought so vain. 

"I care for nothing,...Read more of this...

A spring poem from bion

by Eugene Field
 One asketh:
"Tell me, Myrson, tell me true:
What's the season pleaseth you?
Is it summer suits you best,
When from harvest toil we rest?
Is it autumn with its glory
Of all surfeited desires?
Is it winter, when with story
And with song we hug our fires?
Or is spring most fair to you--
Come, good Myrson, tell me true!"

Another answereth:
"What the gods in wisdom send
We should question...Read more of this...

A City Remembered

by Vernon Scannell
 Unlovely city, to which few tourists come
With squinting cameras and alien hats;
Left under a cloud by those who love the sun
And can afford to marry – a cloud of bits
Of soot more myriad than gnats, a cloud
Of smoke and rain, an insubstantial threat
Whose colour is the pigment of long wrath,
I think of you, surprised to find my blood
Warmed by...Read more of this...

Come let us drink & deeply drown

by Hafez
Come let us drink & deeply drown
In Heav’n’s pure wine our sorrowing!
Fling ye earth’s faded garlands down,
Scatter away life’s flowering!

Though sorrow’s myriad armies strive
To subjugate & slay us, we,
O proud cup-bearer, will contrive
To overcome their tyranny.

O earth’s sad lover, drink & throw
Unto high heaven thy misery:
So shall perchance bright beauty know
Thy longing need & bend to thee.

Not in this life’s...Read more of this...

The Snow-Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant...Read more of this...

The Solitary Goose

by Du Fu
 Solitary goose not drink peck Fly call sound miss flock Who remember one now shadow Mutual lose myriad layer cloud Look utmost seem as if look Distressed much like become hear Wild duck without state of mind Call voices also numerous and confused The solitary goose does not drink or eat, It flies about and calls,...Read more of this...

Boadicea

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. 

`They that scorn...Read more of this...

St Michaels Chapel

by Emma Lazarus
 When the vexed hubbub of our world of gain 
Roars round about me as I walk the street, 
The myriad noise of Traffic, and the beat 
Of Toil's incessant hammer, the fierce strain 
Of struggle hand to hand and brain to brain, 
Ofttimes a sudden dream my sense will cheat, 
The gaudy shops, the sky-piled roofs retreat, 
And all...Read more of this...

The Parting of Ways

by George William Russell
 THE SKIES from black to pearly grey
 Had veered without a star or sun;
Only a burning opal ray
 Fell on your brow when all was done.


Aye, after victory, the crown;
 Yet through the fight no word of cheer;
And what would win and what go down
 No word could help, no light make clear.


A thousand ages onward led
 Their joys...Read more of this...

Renascence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 01: The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light

by Conrad Aiken
 The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in...Read more of this...

The Heroes

by George William Russell
 BY many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave men when first...Read more of this...

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