Famous Obeys Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Triumph Of Love

by Friedrich von Schiller
 By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!

In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang--
Mankind from lifeless stone.

Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCX. Chi vuol veder quantunque può Natura. WHOEVER BEHOLDS HER MUST ADMIT THAT HIS PRAISES CANNOT REACH HER PERFECTION.  Who wishes to behold the utmost mightOf Heaven and Nature, on her let him gaze,Sole sun, not only in my partial lays,But to the dark world, blind to virtue's light!Read more of this...

Sonnet VII: Come Reason

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, Reason, come! each nerve rebellious bind,
Lull the fierce tempest of my fev'rish soul;
Come, with the magic of thy meek controul,
And check the wayward wand'rings of my mind:
Estrang'd from thee, no solace can I find,
O'er my rapt brain, where pensive visions stole,
Now passion reigns and stormy tumults roll--
So the smooth Sea obeys the furious wind!
In vain Philosophy unfolds his...Read more of this...

Begin The Day

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Begin each morning with a talk to God,
And ask for your divine inheritance
Of usefulness, contentment, and success.
Resign all fear, all doubt, and all despair.
The stars doubt not, and they are undismayed,
Though whirled through space for countless centuries,
And told not why or wherefore: and the sea
With everlasting ebb and flow obeys,
And leaves the purpose with the unseen Cause.
The star sheds...Read more of this...

Fridolin (The Walk To The Iron Factory)

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.

From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...

The Taming of the Falcon

by Emma Lazarus
 The bird sits spelled upon the lithe brown wrist 
Of yonder turbaned fowler, who had lamed 
No feather limb, but the winged spirit tamed 
With his compelling eye. He need not trust 
The silken coil, not set the thick-limed snare; 
He lures the wanderer with his steadfast gaze, 
It shrinks, it quails, it trembles yet obeys. 
And, lo! he...Read more of this...

The Living Flame

by Charles Baudelaire
 THEY pass before me, these Eyes full of light, 
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; 
The holy brothers pass before my sight, 
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. 

They keep me from all sin and error grave, 
They set me in the path whence Beauty came; 
They are my servants, and I am their slave,...Read more of this...

The Count Of Hapsburg

by Friedrich von Schiller
 At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.

And...Read more of this...

The Dance

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See how, like lightest waves at play, the airy dancers fleet;
And scarcely feels the floor the wings of those harmonious feet.
Ob, are they flying shadows from their native forms set free?
Or phantoms in the fairy ring that summer moonbeams see?
As, by the gentle zephyr blown, some light mist flees in air,
As skiffs that skim adown the tide, when silver...Read more of this...

Maybe

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The cloud struggled
against the sand
underneath the rain
of “no” and “yes”,
forcefully treading
on the rationale
that obeys
the impasse of “maybe”....Read more of this...

When the Great Ark

by Rudyard Kipling
 When the Great Ark, in Vigo Bay,
 Rode stately through the half-manned fleet,
From every ship about her way 
 She heard the mariners entreat--
Before we take the seas again
Let down your boats and send us men!

"We have no lack of victual here
 With work--God knows!--enough for all,
To hand and reef and watch and steer,
 Because our present strength is...Read more of this...

Painted Head

by John Crowe Ransom
 By dark severance the apparition head 
Smiles from the air a capital on no 
Column or a Platonic perhaps head 
On a canvas sky depending from nothing; 

Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur 
By tickling the instinct of heads to be 
Absolute and to try decapitation 
And to play truant from the body bush; 

But too happy and...Read more of this...

The Man In The Bowler Hat

by A S J Tessimond
 I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man: 
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke. 
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Wooing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 "As unto the bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman; 
Though she bends him, she obeys him, 
Though she draws him, yet she follows; 
Useless each without the other!"
Thus the youthful Hiawatha 
Said within himself and pondered, 
Much perplexed by various feelings, 
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, 
Dreaming still of Minnehaha, 
Of the lovely Laughing Water, 
In...Read more of this...

Canzone II

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE II. Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni al giogo antico. UNLESS LOVE CAN RESTORE HER TO LIFE, HE WILL NEVER AGAIN BE HIS SLAVE.  If thou wouldst have me, Love, thy slave again,One other proof, miraculous and new,Must yet be wrought by you,Ere, conquer'd, I resume my ancient chain—Lift my...Read more of this...

The Wood-Cutter

by Robert William Service
 The sky is like an envelope,
 One of those blue official things;
 And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
 The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
 What shall we find when death gives leave
 To read--our sentence or reprieve?

I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the ***-end of earth;
 O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that...Read more of this...

The Song of Hiawatha: X

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 X. Hiawatha's Wooing

"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"

Thus the youthful Hiawatha
Said within himself and pondered,
Much perplexed by various feelings,
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
Of the lovely Laughing Water,
In the land of the Dacotahs.

"Wed a maiden of...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCVI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCVI. Il mal mi preme, e mi spaventa il peggio. TO A FRIEND, IN LOVE LIKE HIMSELF, HE CAN GIVE NO ADVICE BUT TO RAISE HIS SOUL TO GOD.  Evil oppresses me and worse dismay,To which a plain and ample way I find;Driven like thee by frantic passion, blind,Urged by harsh...Read more of this...

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