Famous Obelisk Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Obelisk poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous obelisk poems. These examples illustrate what a famous obelisk poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk
Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,
Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,
He lingered, poring on memorials
Of the world's youth: through th...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...abler than Bronze --
This Cenotaph
May each that dies --
Reared by itself --
No Deputy suffice --
Gratitude bears
When Obelisk decays...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...liam of Orange first touched English ground,
And as he viewed the beautiful spot his heart with joy did rebound;
And an obelisk marks the spot where he did stand,
And which for long will be remembered throughout England.
Torquay, with its pier and its diadem of white,
Is a moat beautiful and very dazzling sight,
With its white villas glittering on the sides of its green hills,
And as the tourist gases thereon with joy his heart fills.
The heights around Torquay are most b...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...pal
To imitate an old image
And speak old wisdom.
She drew in her chin,
Made her neck and head
The top piece of a Nile obelisk
and said:
Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child,
And be free to keep silence.
Tell no man anything for no man listens,
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak....Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate;
The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
With whistling engines and crunching wheels,
And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
And the crash of cars along the boulevard, --
A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor
Of a great metrop...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...ores by beauty brought to light,
Inventive reason in soft union planned
To blend together 'neath your forming hand.
The obelisk, the pyramid ascended,
The Hermes stood, the column sprang on high,
The reed poured forth the woodland melody,
Immortal song on victor's deeds attended.
The fairest flowers that decked the earth,
Into a nosegay, with wise choice combined,
Thus the first art from Nature had its birth;
Into a garland then were nosegays twined,
And from the works that ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...gs
He views the piles of fallen Persepolis
In deep arrangement hide the darksome plain.
Unbounded waste! the mouldering obelisk
Here, like a blasted oak, ascends the clouds;
Here Parian domes their vaulted halls disclose
Horrid with thorn, where lurks th' unpitying thief,
Whence flits the twilight-loving bat at eve,
And the deaf adder wreaths her spotted train,
The dwellings once of elegance and art.
Here temples rise, amid whose hallow'd bounds
Spires the black pine, while t...Read more of this...
by
Warton, Thomas
...LX. — TO WILLIAM LORD MOUNTEAGLE. Lo, what my country should have done (have raised An obelisk, or column to thy name, Or, if she would but modestly have praised Thy fact, in brass or marble writ the same) I, that am glad of thy great chance, here do ! And proud, my works shall out-last common deeds, Durst think it great, and worthy wonder too, But thine, for which I do't, so much exceeds ! My country's parents I have many known ; ...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...am
by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer.
This graveyard stands above a worked-out pit.
Subsidence makes the obelisks all list.
One leaning left's marked ****, one right's marked ****
sprayed by some peeved supporter who was pissed.
Far-sighted for his family's future dead,
but for his wife, this banker's still alone
on his long obelisk, and doomed to head
a blackened dynasty of unclaimed stone,
now graffitied with a crude four-letter word.
His children and grand...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
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