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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A New Song

by Thomas Chatterton
 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...Read more of this...

Runagate Runagate

by Robert Hayden
 Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness 
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror 
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing 
and the night cold and the night long and the river 
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning 
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep on going and never...Read more of this...

Nano-Knowledge

by Heather McHugh
 There, a little right
of Ursus Major, is
the Milky Way:
a man can point it out,
the biggest billionfold of all
predicaments he's in:
his planet's street address.

What gives? What looks
a stripe a hundred 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...Read more of this...

North Atlantic

by Carl Sandburg
 WHEN the sea is everywhere
from horizon to horizon ..
 when the salt and blue
 fill a circle of horizons ..
I swear again how I know
the sea is older than anything else
and the sea younger than anything else.

My first father was a landsman.
My tenth father was a sea-lover,
 a gipsy sea-boy, a singer of chanties.
 (Oh Blow the Man Down!)

The...Read more of this...

Stepping Westward

by Denise Levertov
 What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant,
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...Read more of this...

Bixbys Landing

by Robinson Jeffers
 They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down
 here in an iron car
On a long cable; here the ships warped in
And took their loads from 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...Read more of this...

The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmiths Son

by Vachel Lindsay
 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 
Beholds your...Read more of this...

To Mary Pickford

by Vachel Lindsay
 MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)


Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the movmg-picture play,
You have been my valentine.

Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.
Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless, wooden every way.
Next, a fairy from the sun.

Once you walked a...Read more of this...

The Tree In Pamelas Garden

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Pamela was too gentle to deceive 
Her roses. "Let the men stay where they are," 
She said, "and if Apollo's avatar 
Be one 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...Read more of this...

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