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Famous Painters Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...hey yodel,
A bowler thing with one or two
Feathers to conceal the view;
And then in sandals walk the street
(All modern painters use their feet
For painting, on their canvas strips,
Their wives or mothers, minus hips).

Perhaps it would be best if you
Created something very new,
A dirty novel done in Erse
Or written backwards in Welsh verse,
Or paintings on the backs of vests,
Or Sanskrit psalms on lepers' chests.
But if this proved imposs-i-ble
Perhaps it would be ju...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...out at ev'ry Line;
Pleas'd with a Work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring Chaos and wild Heap of Wit;
Poets like Painters, thus, unskill'd to trace
The naked Nature and the living Grace,
With Gold and Jewels cover ev'ry Part,
And hide with Ornaments their Want of Art.
True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest,
What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest,
Something, whose Truth convinc'd at Sight we find,
That gives us back the Image of our Mind:
As Shades more swee...Read more of this...

by Stein, Gertrude
....
This may astonish you a little but when you realise how
easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American
painters to American millionaires you will recognize that
authorities are constrained to be relieved. Let me tell you a
story. A painter loved a woman. A musician did not sing.
A South African loved books. An American was a woman
and needed help. Are Americans the same as incubators.
But this is the rest of the story. He becam...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...en: 
The same for ever! and describ'd by all 
With Truth and Goodness, as with Crown and Ball. 
Poets heap Virtues, Painters Gems at will, 
And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill. 
'Tis well--but, Artists! who can paint or write, 
To draw the Naked is your true delight. 
That robe of Quality so struts and swells, 
None see what Parts of Nature it conceals: 
Th' exactest traits of Body or of Mind, 
We owe to models of an humble kind. 
If QUEENSBURY t...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...s 
Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work, 
The heads shake still--"It's art's decline, my son! 
You're not of the true painters, great and old; 
Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find; 
Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer: 
*** on at flesh, you'll never make the third!" 
Flower o' the pine, 
You keep your mistr ... manners, and I'll stick to mine! 
I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! 
Don't you think they're the likeliest to know, 
They with th...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...cube.
My head is full of sharp smells
 like the shelf of a medicine cabinet.


20 March

I admire those Flemish painters:
is it easy to give the air of a naked goddess
 to the plump ladies
of milk and sausage merchants?
But
 even if you wear silk panties,
cow + silk panties = cow.

Last night
 a window 
 was left open.
The naked Flemish goddesses caught cold.
All day
today,
 turning their bare
mountain-like pink behinds to the public,
 they coughed and sne...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
(Author of 'The Stones of Venice,'
'Seven Lamps of Architecture,'
'Modern Painters,' and some others);
And perhaps he had not fully
Understood his author's meaning;
But, whatever was the reason,
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure. 

Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little,
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of 'passive beauty.' 

Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squint...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...pin. 
He had learnt it all from Ruskin 
(Author of 'The Stones of Venice,' 
'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' 
'Modern Painters,' and some others); 
And perhaps he had not fully 
Understood his author's meaning; 
But, whatever was the reason 
All was fruitless, as the picture 
Ended in an utter failure....Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...e
And Rossetti still abused.

Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice
When that faun's head of hers
Became a pastime for
Painters and adulterers.

The Burne-Jones cartons
Have preserved her eyes;
Still, at the Tate, they teach
Cophetua to rhapsodize;

Thin like brook-water,
With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born
In those days.

The thin, clear gaze, the same
Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd face,
Questing and passive ....<...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...nto perfection in all bloom and fruit is by colouring. 

For from hence something in the spirit may be taken off by painters. 

For Painting is a species of idolatry, tho' not so gross as statuary. 

For it is not good to look with earning upon any dead work. 

For by so doing something is lost in the spirit and given from life to death. 

For BULL in the first place is the word of Almighty God. 

For he is a creature of infinite magnitude in the heigh...Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...rnate with his elder brothers sung
Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot?

Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes,
Old painters color-blind come back once more,
Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes,
Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyes
Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse?...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...n joy which is crystallized for ever,
Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

XIX.

On which I conclude, that the early painters,
To cries of ``Greek Art and what more wish you?''---
Replied, ``To become now self-acquainters,
``And paint man man, whatever the issue!
``Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
``New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
``To bring the invisible full into play!
``Let the visible go to the dogs---what matters?''

XX.

Give these, I ...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...zans like powdered moths, 
And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths 
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads; 


And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes 
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties; 


And lovers wander two by two, oblivious among the press, 
And making one of them no less, all lovers shall be dear to you: 


All laughing lips you move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what 
Makes life worth while, ha...Read more of this...

by Tzara, Tristan
...LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence 
or appearance

MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS 
BLIND MEN take the stage

THE SYRINGE is only for my understandin...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...od,
And I think very fondly of food.
Through I'm broody at times
When bothered by rhymes,
I brood
On food.
Some painters paint the sapphire sea,
And some the gathering storm.
Others portray young lambs at play,
But most, the female form.
“Twas trite in that primeval dawn
When painting got its start,
That a lady with her garments on
Is Life, but is she Art?
By undraped nymphs
I am not wooed;
I'd rather painters painted food.
Food,
Just food,
Just any old ki...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions:
Here was food for our various ambitions,
As on each case, exactly stated---
To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup,
Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup---
We of the house ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...Sorrow, and Despair
Gild its own thorns, and Pain, like Adon, be
Even in anguish beautiful; - such is the empery

Which Painters hold, and such the heritage
This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess,
Being a better mirror of his age
In all his pity, love, and weariness,
Than those who can but copy common things,
And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings.

But they are few, and all romance has flown,
And men can prophesy about the sun,
And lecture on his arrow...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...re ever endowing you with
beauty from their hearts.
Poets are weaving for you a web
with threads of golden imagery;
painters are giving your form ever
new immortality.
The sea gives its pearls, the mines
their gold, the summer gardens their
flowers to deck you, to cover you, to
make you more precious.
The desire of men's hearts has shed
its glory over your youth.
You are one half woman and one
half dream....Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ready: peace is no longer,
for some reason,precious;
madness drifts like lily pads
on a pond circling senselessly;
the painters paint dipping
their reds and greens and yellows,
poets rhyme their lonliness,
musicians starve as always
and the novelists miss the mark,
but not the pelican , the gull;
pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish from their beaks;
indeed, indeed, the waters wash
the rocks with slime; and on wall st.
the market stagge...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...; 
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits
 intrinsically
 in yourself. 

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; 
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light; 
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d
 light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing
 forever. 

O I could sing ...Read more of this...

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