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Famous No Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous No poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous no poems. These examples illustrate what a famous no poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Tagore, Rabindranath
...thou abroad on this stormy night 
on thy journey of love, my friend? 
The sky groans like one in despair. 

I have no sleep tonight. 
Ever and again I open my door and look out on 
the darkness, my friend! 

I can see nothing before me. 
I wonder where lies thy path! 

By what dim shore of the ink-black river, 
by what far edge of the frowning forest, 
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading 
thy course to come to me, my friend?...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...How far is it to Heaven?
As far as Death this way --
Of River or of Ridge beyond
Was no discovery.

How far is it to Hell?
As far as Death this way --
How far left hand the Sepulchre
Defies Topography....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...of mind, 
who chained themselves to subways for the endless 
 ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine 
 until the noise of wheels and children brought 
 them down shuddering mouth-wracked and 
 battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance 
 in the drear light of Zoo, 
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's 
 floated out and sat through the stale beer after 
 noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack 
 of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 
who talk...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pill...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...BOOK I

 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voicel...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...night, when half my life behind me lay, 
 I wandered from the straight lost path afar. 
 Through the great dark was no releasing way; 
 Above that dark was no relieving star. 
 If yet that terrored night I think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot, 
 I turn my tale to that which next befell, 
 When the dawn opened, and the night was not. 
 The ho...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...'d with a flitting Blush,  With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;  For well she knew, I could not choose    But gaze upon her Face.   I told her of the Knight, that wore  Upon his Shield a burning Brand;  And that for ten long Years he woo'd    The Lady of the Land.   I told her, how he pin'd: and, ah!  The low, t...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with
 perfumes; 
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; 
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it
 is odorless; 
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; 
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

2
T...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
Healthy, free, the world before me, 
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune; 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road. 

The earth—that is sufficient; 
I do not want the constellations any nearer; 
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old de...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...l man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings 
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly coloured
As the broidery of Bayeux
The England of that dawn remains,
And this of Alfred and the Danes
Seems like the tales...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power— 
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As are those gentle souls by angels kisst
In pictures seen le...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...r>

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________

PLATE 3

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives.Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...dnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, 
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,¡ª 
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, 
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 
"'T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door; 5 
Only this and nothing more." 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December 
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...ms, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared. ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...as going out to dine. 

"To dine!" she sneered in acid tone.
"To bend thy being to a bone
Clothed in a radiance not its own!" 

The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within. 

"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea." 

And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'" 

He...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...oicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
..., mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.


Unification

I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house -
Let life be empty and with light complete.
I'll sing the glory to you in my verse
Like n...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things