Famous Patterns Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Patterns poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous patterns poems. These examples illustrate what a famous patterns poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lanier, Sidney
...ulf at play,
Past far-off palms that filmed to nought,
Or in and out the cunning keys
That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought
To edge old broideries,
The sail sighed on all day for joy,
The prow each pouting wave did leave
All smile and song, with sheen and ripple coy,
Till the dusk diver Eve
Brought up from out the brimming East
The oval moon, a perfect pearl.
In that large lustre all our haste surceased,
The sail seemed fain to furl,
The silent steersman l...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...l taste,
Though Reason weep, and cry, 'It is thy last.'
'For further I could say 'This man's untrue,'
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others' orchards grew,
Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;
Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;
Thought characters and words merely but art,
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.
'And long upon these terms I held my city,
Till thus he gan besiege me: 'Gentle maid,
Have of my suff...Read more of this...
by
Stone, Ruth
...
red and silver beer cans.
In bits blown equally everywhere,
the gaiety of flying paper
and the black high flung patterns of flocking birds. ...Read more of this...
by
Harcombe, Dale
...d amethyst meet in harmony,
a selenic mystery.
A melody of stars singing a tune only she
can hear.
Eclectic patterns shiver and shimmer
then splinter,
sparking off at tangents of
tourmaline and jasper.
An image complete in itself.
I had a kaleidoscope once.
Sometimes
I still see oblique patterns.
Slowly my daughter turns the wheel, finds
a jewelled tapestry
to her liking, and hands the kaleidoscope
to me.
For a time I see the w...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...nd fusing
The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation:
And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.
The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure,
But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,
Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,
Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?
Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:
Eyes where I can watch the swim of ol...Read more of this...
by
Ammons, A R
...distance till
they broke across the local bush and
trees: it was a sight of bountiful
majesty and integrity: the having
patterns and routes, breaking
from them to explore other patterns or
better ways to routes, and then the
return: a dance sacred as the sap in
the trees, permanent in its descriptions
as the ripples round the brook’s
ripplestone: fresh as this particular
flood of burn breaking across us now
from the sun....Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...ney
poems to siva (to name a few)
can surface in a side-attempt
to show unexpected lineage from
the source to present patterns
of the poet - but at the core
of every poem read and comment made
it's not the poem or the poet
being sifted to the seed but
poetry itself given the works
the most despised belittled
enervated creative cowcake
of them all in the public eye
prestigious when it doesn't matter
to the clapped-out powers and turned
away from when too awkward and
impoli...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...can’t get my head round the manifold virtues
Of Geraldine Monk or either Riley
Poetry has to have a meaning, not just patterns on a page,
Vertical words and snips of scores just make me rage.
Is Thom Gunn really the age-old sleaze-weasel Andrew Duncan says?
Is Tim Allen right to give Geraldine Monk an eleven page review?
At least they care for poetry to give their lives to it
As we do, too.
My syntax far from perfect, my writing illegible
But somehow I’ll get...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...tures of conceitin his technique of unsettlement foresawthe fall of princes, the collapse oftheir lucrative patterns of frustration: if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Lifewould become impossible, the monolithof State be broken and preventedthe co-operation of avengers. Of course they called on God, but he went his waydown among the lost people like Dante, downto the stinking fosse where the injuredlead the ugly life of the rejec...Read more of this...
by
Philips, Katherine
...om from above did her secure,
Which as 'twas peaceable, was ever pure.
And if well-order'd Commonwealths must be
Patterns for every private Family,
Her House, rul'd by her hand and by her eye,
Might be a Pattern for a Monarchy.
Solomon's wisest Woman less could do;
She built her house, but this preserv'd hers too.
She was so pious that when she did die,
She scarce chang'd Place, I'm sure not Company.
Her Zeal was primitive and practick too;
She did ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...d
and embroidered stockings in little low-heeled shoes over smooth
grass-plots.
India muslins spangled with silver patterns slide through trees
--
mingle -- separate -- white day fireflies flashing moon-brilliance
in the shade of foliage.
"The kangaroos! I vow, Captain, I must
see the kangaroos."
"As you please, dear Lady, but I recommend the
shady linden alley
and feeding the cockatoos."
"They say that Madame Bonaparte's breed of sheep
is the best in all...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...eir wounds open again.
The ecstatic waters laugh because
Their cries are sweet and strange,
Through their ancestral patterns dance,
And the brute dolphins plunge
Until, in some cliff-sheltered bay
Where wades the choir of love
Proffering its sacred laurel crowns,
They pitch their burdens off.
III
Slim adolescence that a nymph has stripped,
Peleus on Thetis stares.
Her limbs are delicate as an eyelid,
Love has blinded him with tears;
But Thetis' belly listens.<...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...hich injurious time hath quite outworne,
Since of all workmen held in reck'ning best,
Yet these old fragments are for patterns born:
Then also mark, how Rome from day to day,
Repairing her decayéd fashion,
Renews herself with buildings rich and gay;
That one would judge, that the Roman dæmon
Doth yet himself with fatal hand enforce,
Again on foot to rear her pouldred corse.
28
He that hath seen a great oak dry and dead,
Yet clad with relics of some trophies ...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...ep,—his name,—
Or the glittering street superbly hung in wind
Along which, in the dusk, he slowly came?
I devise new patterns for laying stones
And build a stronger wall.
One drop of rain astonishes me
And I let my trowel fall.
The flashing of leaves delights my eyes,
Blue air delights my face;
I will dedicate this stone to god
And tap it into its place.
4
That woman—did she try to attract my attention?
Is it true I saw her smile and nod?
She turned ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...low. Electric
signs gleam out
along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow,
and grow,
and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades
scream
in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab,
snap, that means
a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is
the sidelong
sliver of a watchmaker's sign with its length on another street.
A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall
building,
but the ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...hough to you it may seem funny,
I want none of these.
No, give me Imagination,
And the gift of weaving words
Into patterns of creation,
With the lilt of singing birds;
Passion and the power to show it,
Sense of life with love expressed:
Let my be a bloody poet,--
You can keep the rest....Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...lls of lighted windows.
She lifted her face to the light and danced.
The dancers wreathed and grouped in moving patterns,
Clustered, receded, streamed, advanced.
Her dress was purple, her slippers were golden,
Her eyes were blue; and a purple orchid
Opened its golden heart on her breast . . .
She leaned to the surly languor of lazy music,
Leaned on her partner's arm to rest.
The violins were weaving a weft of silver,
The horns were weaving a lustr...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...urpose?
Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children
Who find, upon the sands, beside a sea,
Strange patterns drawn,—circles, arcs, ellipses,
Moulded in sand . . . Who put them there, we wonder?
Did someone draw them here before we came?
Or was it just the sea?—We pore upon them,
But find no answer—only suppositions.
And if these perfect shapes are evidence
Of immanent mind, it is but circumstantial:
We never come upon him at his work,
He n...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...r—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince;...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...-cut, the Shadow on the wall
Gleamed black, and never moved at all.
Paul's watches were like amulets,
Wrought into patterns and rosettes;
The cases were all set with stones,
And wreathing lines, and shining zones.
He knew the beauty in a curve,
And the Shadow tortured every nerve
With its perfect rhythm of outline
Cutting the whitewashed wall. So fine
Was the neck he knew he could have spanned
It about with the fingers of one hand.
The chin rose to a mouth he...Read more of this...
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