Famous Paintings Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Paintings poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous paintings poems. These examples illustrate what a famous paintings poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas, Dylan
...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 just as well,
For you could then write what you please,
And modern verse is done with ease.
Do not forget that 'limpet' rhymes
With 'strumpet' in these troubled times,
And commas are the worst of crimes;
Few understand the works...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...on
A public keen and far from cold.
Then (strange it is beyond the telling),
He saw the people round him press:
His paintings went - they still are selling...
Well, nothing succeeds like success....Read more of this...
by
Jong, Erica
...ng in, cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left stranded
in the unsoiled squares where paintings were,
and something reminding us
this is like all other moving days;
finding the dirty ends of someone else's life,
hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit,
and burned-out matches in the corner;
things not preserved, yet never swept away
like fragments of disturbing dreams
we stumble on all day. . .
in ordering our lives, we will discard t...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...'s best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
--Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top--
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I've gained them--crossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung ins...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...r’s daughter, sat,
Chatting and sewing.
In one, along a suite of noble rooms,
’Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes,
Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics, young and old,
Reading, conversing.
All, all the shows of laboring life,
City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s,
Their wants provided for, hued in the sun, and tinged for once with joy,
Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-ro...Read more of this...
by
Bowers, Edgar
...re east. Magnolia grandiflora
And one druidic live oak guard the view.
Proudly around the walls, she shows her paintings
Of twenty years ago: the great oak’s arm
Extended, Zeuslike, straight and strong, wisteria
Tangled among the branches, amaryllis
Around the base; her cat, UC, at ease
In marigolds; the weeping cherry, pink
And white arms like a blessing to the blue
Bird feeder Mort made; cabin, scarlet sweet gum
Superb when tribes migrated north and south.
Aler...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...days after, while they live ; They find it both so witty, and safe to give. Let them on powders, oils, and paintings spend, Till that no usurer, nor his bawds dare lend Them or their officers ; and no man know,When their own parasites laugh at their fall, May they have nothing left, whereof they can Boast, but how oft they have gone wrong to man, And call it their brave sin : for such there be That do sin only for the infamy ; And nev...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d women, and of all
qualities and processes;
It is greater than wealth—it is greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings,
music.
Great is the English speech—what speech is so great as the English?
Great is the English brood—what brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule;
The new rule shall rule as the Soul rules, and as the love, justice, equality in the Soul
rule.
Great is Law...Read more of this...
by
Zaran, Lisa
...n't
want to stand and pretend you
not dead while the wet, champagne
mouths of the living tell me how wonderful
your paintings are.
As they crook their fingers and strain their necks,
lose their vocabulary inside the artwork's depths
and colors.
Father, I want your reputation to outlive the pursuits
of others with their iron-on reviews after an hour's
worth of browsing at a lifetime of your work.
Father, are you crying?
Stop that sound.
Copyrig...Read more of this...
by
Bly, Robert
...These insects golden
And Arabic sailing in the husks of galleons
Their octagonal heads also
Hold sand paintings of the next life....Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...
deep feeling adrift from its feelers
thought that means everything at once
like a shrugging of cream shoulders
like paintings hung on park mesh
sonore doom soneer illy chesh
they lost the off switch in my lifetime
the world reverberates with Muzak
and Prozac. As it doesn't with poe-zac
(I did meet a Miss Universe named Verstak).
Music to me is like days
I rarely catch who composed them
if one's sublime I think God
my life-signs suspend. I nod
it's li...Read more of this...
by
Berry, Wendell
...is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cezanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he's alive
forever, this instant, and may be....Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...mised
By the portrait's will to endure. It hints at
Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.
We don't need paintings or
Doggerel written by mature poets when
The explosion is so precise, so fine.
Is there any point even in acknowledging
The existence of all that? Does it
Exist? Certainly the leisure to
Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,
Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives
Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,
Indistinguishable. ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...heir 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 hold took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin
His si...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...* * * * *
Then in the towers I placed great bells that swung,
Moved of themselves, with silver sound;
And with choice paintings of wise men I hung
The royal dais round.
For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song,
And somewhat grimly smiled.
And there the Ionian father of the rest;
A million wrinkles carved his skin;
A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast,
From cheek and thro...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...the clergy, who
preyed on the affection and fear of the survivors, through the
ingenious doctrine of purgatory. Old paintings and illuminations
represent the dead as torn by hooks, roasted in fires, boiled in
pots, and subjected to many other physical torments.
4. Qui cum patre: "Who with the father"; the closing words of
the final benediction pronounced at Mass.
5. Askaunce: The word now means sideways or asquint; here it
means "as if;" and its force is...Read more of this...
by
Benet, Stephen Vincent
...er? Hsh, he is asleep in the night's cloak.
Over me too steals sleep.
Sleep like a white mist on the rotting paintings of cupids and gods on the ceiling;
Sleep on the carven shields and knots at the foot of the bed,
Oozing, blurring outlines, obliterating colors,
Death.
Father, Father, I must not sleep!
It does not hear -- that shadow crouched in the corner . . .
Is it a shadow?
One might think so indeed, save for the calm face, yellow as wa...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...zine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos
snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I li...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always ...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...r>
Out of these scatter'd Sibyls Leaves
Strange Prophecies my Phancy weaves:
And in one History consumes,
Like Mexique Paintings, all the Plumes.
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, ere said
I in this light Mosaick read.
Thrice happy he who, not mistook,
Hath read in Natures mystick Book.
And see how Chance's better Wit
Could with a Mask my studies hit!
The Oak-Leaves me embroyder all,
Between which Caterpillars crawl:
And Ivy, with familiar trails,
Me licks, and clas...Read more of this...
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