Famous Pillars Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Preceptor

by Victor Hugo
 ("Homme chauve et noir.") 
 
 {XIX., May, 1839.} 


 A gruesome man, bald, clad in black, 
 Who kept us youthful drudges in the track, 
 Thinking it good for them to leave home care, 
 And for a while a harsher yoke to bear; 
 Surrender all the careless ease of home, 
 And be forbid from...Read more of this...

To Winter

by William Blake
 O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.'
He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain'd, sheath?d
In ribb?d steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear'd his sceptre o'er the world.

Lo! now the...Read more of this...

Il Penseroso

by John Milton
 Hence, vain deluding Joys,
............The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested
............Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!
Dwell in some idle brain,
............And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
............As the gay motes that people the sun-beams,
Or likest hovering dreams,
............The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train.
But, hail! thou Goddess sage and holy!
Hail, divinest Melancholy!
Whose saintly visage...Read more of this...

Correspondences

by Charles Baudelaire
 Nature is a temple where the living pillars
Let go sometimes a blurred speech—
A Forest of symbols passes through a man's reach
And observes him with a familiar regard.

Like the distant echoes that mingle and confound
In a unity of darkness and quiet
Deep as the night, clear as daylight
The perfumes, the colors, the sounds correspond.

The perfume is as fresh as the flesh...Read more of this...

Transformations

by Rg Gregory
 WHAT miracle was it that made this grey Rathgar
Seem holy earth, a leaping-place from star to star?
I know I strode along grey streets disconsolate,
Seeing nowhere a glimmer of the Glittering Gate,
My vision baffled amid many dreams, for still
The airy walls rose up in fabulous hill on hill.
The stars were fortresses upon the dizzy slope
And one and all were unassailable...Read more of this...

Inside Ayers Rock

by Les Murray
 Inside Ayers Rock is lit
with paired fluorescent lights
on steel pillars supporting the ceiling
of haze-blue marquee cloth
high above the non-slip pavers.
Curving around the cafeteria
throughout vast inner space
is a Milky way of plastic chairs
in foursomes around tables
all the way to the truck drivers' enclave.
Dusted coolabah trees grow to the ceiling,
TVs talk in gassy colours, and
round the walls are Outback shop fronts:
the...Read more of this...

The Warning

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,--

Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those...Read more of this...

The Sharks Parlor

by James Dickey
 Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island 
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first 
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night 
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling 
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...

The Nile

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, 
Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, 
And times and things, as in that vision, seem 
Keeping along it their eternal stands,-- 
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands 
That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme 
Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, 
The laughing queen that caught...Read more of this...

Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

To My Dear Friend Mr. Congreve On His Commedy Calld The Double Dealer

by John Dryden
 Well then; the promis'd hour is come at last;
The present age of wit obscures the past:
Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ,
Conqu'ring with force of arms, and dint of wit;
Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood;
And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood.
Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur'd,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd:
Tam'd...Read more of this...

The Four Ages Of The World

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The goblet is sparkling with purpled-tinged wine,
Bright glistens the eye of each guest,
When into the hall comes the Minstrel divine,
To the good he now brings what is best;
For when from Elysium is absent the lyre,
No joy can the banquet of nectar inspire.

He is blessed by the gods, with an intellect clear,
That mirrors the world as it glides;
He has seen...Read more of this...

Preludium to America

by William Blake
 The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc, 
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown'd with a helmet and dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other...Read more of this...

Any Woman

by Katharine Tynan
 I am the pillars of the house;
The keystone of the arch am I.
Take me away, and roof and wall
Would fall to ruin me utterly.

I am the fire upon the hearth,
I am the light of the good sun,
I am the heat that warms the earth,
Which else were colder than a stone.

At me the children warm their hands;
I am their light...Read more of this...

The Living Temple

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 NOT in the world of light alone, 
Where God has built his blazing throne, 
Nor yet alone in earth below, 
With belted seas that come and go, 
And endless isles of sunlit green, 
Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,--
Eternal wisdom still the same!

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its...Read more of this...

Milton's Appeal To Cromwell

by Victor Hugo
 ("Non! je n'y puis tenir.") 
 
 {CROMWELL, Act III. sc. iv.} 


 Stay! I no longer can contain myself, 
 But cry you: Look on John, who bares his mind 
 To Oliver—to Cromwell, Milton speaks! 
 Despite a kindling eye and marvel deep 
 A voice is lifted up without your leave; 
 For I was never...Read more of this...

Cities

by Hilda Doolittle
 Can we believe -- by an effort 
comfort our hearts: 
it is not waste all this, 
not placed here in disgust, 
street after street, 
each patterned alike, 
no grace to lighten 
a single house of the hundred 
crowded into one garden-space. 

Crowded -- can we believe, 
not in utter disgust, 
in ironical play -- 
but the maker of cities...Read more of this...

The Organ-Blower

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops,...Read more of this...

Under

by Carl Sandburg
 I
I AM the undertow
Washing tides of power
Battering the pillars
Under your things of high law.

II
I am a sleepless
Slowfaring eater,
Maker of rust and rot
In your bastioned fastenings,
Caissons deep.

III
I am the Law
Older than you
And your builders proud.

I am deaf
In all days
Whether you
Say "Yes" or "No".

I am the crumbler:
To-morrow....Read more of this...

Mutability

by Edmund Spenser
 When I bethink me on that speech whilere,
Of Mutability, and well it weigh:
Me seems,that though she all unworthy were
Of the Heav'ns Rule; yet very sooth to say,
In all things else she bears the greatest sway.
Which makes me loathe this state of life so tickle,
And love of things so vain to cast away;
Whose flow'ring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short...Read more of this...

Autumn Meditations (6)

by Du Fu
 Qutang gorge mouth bend river bank 10,000 li wind mist join pale autumn Calyx secret wall through imperial energy Lotus little park enter border sorrow Pearl curtain embroider pillar surround yellow crane Brocade hawser ivory mast rise white gull Turn head can regret sing dance place Qin middle from old emperor place The mouth of the...Read more of this...

Conversation Among The Ruins

by Sylvia Plath
 Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured...Read more of this...

The Songs of the Lathes

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow
The fans and the beltings they roar round me.
The power is shaking the floor round me
Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over.
 It is good for me to be here!

Guns in Flanders--Flanders guns!
(I had a man that worked 'em once!)
Shells...Read more of this...

A Fairy Tale

by Amy Lowell
 On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a...Read more of this...

Come down O Maid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), 
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? 
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease 
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine, 5 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; 
And come, for Love is of the valley,...Read more of this...

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