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Famous North Star Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Chatterton, Thomas
...Ah blame me not, Catcott, if from the right way 
My notions and actions run far. 
How can my ideas do other but stray, 
Deprived of their ruling North-Star? 

A blame me not, Broderip, if mounted aloft, 
I chatter and spoil the dull air; 
How can I imagine thy foppery soft, 
When discord's the voice of my fair? 

If Turner remitted my bluster and rhyme...Read more of this...



by Jeffers, Robinson
...the engine, the water
 is deep to the cliff. The car
Hangs half way over in the gape of the gorge,
Stationed like a north star above the peaks of
 the redwoods, iron perch
For the little red hawks when they cease from
 hovering
When they've struck prey; the spider's fling of a
 cable rust-glued to the pulleys.
The laborers are gone, but what a good multitude
Is here in return: the rich-lichened rock, the
 rose-tipped stone-crop, the constant
Ocean's voices, the cloud-...Read more of this...

by McHugh, Heather
...undred million
miles away from here

is where we live.

*

Let's keep it clear. The Northern Lights
are not the North Star. Being but
a blur, they cannot reassure us.
They keep moving - I think far
too easily. September spills

some glimmers of
the boreals to come:
they're modest pools
of horizontal haze, where later

they'll appear as foldings in the vertical,
a work of curtains, throbbing dim
or bright. (One wonders at
one's eyes.) The very sight...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...omen …

I asked a sure-footed sailor how and he said:
 I have known many women but there is only one sea.
I saw the North Star once
and our old friend, The Big Dipper,
 only the sea between us:
 “Take away the sea
 and I lift The Dipper,
 swing the handle of it,
 drink from the brim of it.”

I saw the North Star one night
and five new stars for me in the rigging ropes,
and seven old stars in the cross of the wireless
 plunging by night,
 plowing by night—
Five new coo...Read more of this...

by Hayden, Robert
...mazes, 
 torn into scorpions when you try to catch them.

And before I'll be a slave 
I'll be buried in my grave

 North star and bonanza gold
 I'm bound for the freedom, freedom-bound 
 and oh Susyanna don't you cry for me

 Runagate

 Runagate


II.
Rises from their anguish and their power,

 Harriet Tubman,

 woman of earth, whipscarred,
 a summoning, a shining

 Mean to be free

 And this was the way of it, brethren brethren, 
 way we journeyed from Can't to Can....Read more of this...



by Levertov, Denise
...,
good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now
is a time of ripening.
If her part
is to be true,
a north star,
good, I hold steady
in the black sky
and vanish by day,
yet burn there
in blue or above
quilts of cloud.
There is no savor
more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be
what, woman,
and who, myself,
I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goo...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...THE North Star whispers: "You are one 
Of those whose course no chance can change. 
You blunder, but are not undone, 
Your spirit-task is fixed and strange. 

"When here you walk, a bloodless shade, 
A singer all men else forget. 
Your chants of hammer, forge and spade 
Will move the prarie-village yet. 

"That young, stiff-necked, reviling town ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...e of them, I shall not have to grieve." 
And so she made all Tilbury Town believe 
She sighed a little more for the North Star 
Than over men, and only in so far 
As she was in a garden was like Eve.

Her neighbors—doing all that neighbors can 
To make romance of reticence meanwhile—
Seeing that she had never loved a man, 
Wished Pamela had a cat, or a small bird, 
And only would have wondered at her smile 
Could they have seen that she had overheard....Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...ure
Lads who murdered on the sand.
But on most days just a child
Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
Cold of kiss as some north star,
Violet from the valleys wild.
Snared as innocence must be,
Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead—
At the end of tortures dread
Roaring Cowboys set you free.

Fly, O song, to her to-day, 
Like a cowboy cross the land. 
Snatch her from Belasco's hand 
And that prison called Broadway. 

All the village swains await
One dear lily-girl...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member North Star poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things