Famous Pinions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Lover's Wish

by Victor Hugo
 ("Si j'étais la feuille.") 
 
 {XXII., September, 1828.} 


 Oh! were I the leaf that the wind of the West, 
 His course through the forest uncaring; 
 To sleep on the gale or the wave's placid breast 
 In a pendulous cradle is bearing. 
 
 All fresh with the morn's balmy kiss would I haste, 
...Read more of this...

Winged Man

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The moon, a sweeping scimitar, dipped in the stormy straits, 
The dawn, a crimson cataract, burst through the eastern gates, 
The cliffs were robed in scarlet, the sands were cinnabar, 
Where first two men spread wings for flight and dared the hawk afar. 

There stands the cunning workman, the crafty past all praise, 
The man who chained the Minotaur,...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXLVII

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 166] SONNET CXLVII. Po, ben puo' tu portartene la scorza. TO THE RIVER PO, ON QUITTING LAURA.  Thou Po to distant realms this frame mayst bear,On thy all-powerful, thy impetuous tide;But the free spirit that within doth bideNor for thy might, nor any might doth care:Not varying...Read more of this...

Ode to Health

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, bright-eyed maid, 
Pure offspring of the tranquil mind,
Haste, my fev'rish temples bind
With olive wreaths of em'rald hue
Steep'd in morn's ethereal dew, 
Where in mild HELVETIA's shade, 
Blushing summer round her flings
Warm gales and sunny show'rs that hang upon her wings. 

I'll seek thee in ITALIA's bow'rs, 
Where supine on beds of flow'rs
Melody's soul-touching throng
Strike the soft lute or...Read more of this...

With Pinions of Disdain

by Emily Dickinson
 With Pinions of Disdain
The soul can farther fly
Than any feather specified
in Ornithology --
It wafts this sordid Flesh
Beyond its dull -- control
And during its electric gale --
The body is a soul --
instructing by the same --
How little work it be --
To put off filaments like this
for immortality...Read more of this...

Smoke

by Henry David Thoreau
 Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this...Read more of this...

Sonnet LVI: When Like an Eaglet

by Michael Drayton
 When like an eaglet I first found my Love, 
For that the virtue I thereof would know, 
Upon the nest I set it forth to prove 
If it were of that kingly kind or no; 
But it no sooner say my Sun appear, 
But on her rays with open eyes it stood, 
To show that I had hatch'd it...Read more of this...

Evening Solace

by Charlotte Bronte
 THE human heart has hidden treasures, 
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, 
Whose charms were broken if revealed. 
And days may pass in gay confusion, 
And nights in rosy riot fly, 
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, 
The memory of the Past may die. 

But, there are hours of lonely musing,...Read more of this...

To The South

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Heart of the Southland, heed me pleading now,
Who bearest, unashamed, upon my brow
The long kiss of the loving tropic sun,
And yet, whose veins with thy red current run.
Borne on the bitter winds from every hand,
Strange tales are flying over all the land,
And Condemnation, with his pinions foul,
Glooms in the place where broods the midnight owl.
What art thou, that the world...Read more of this...

Man I Am and Man Would Be Love

by Robert Browning
 Man I am and man would be, Love--merest man and nothing more. 
Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions--let them soar! 
I may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but not before. 

Now on earth to stand suffices,--nay, if kneeling serves, to kneel: 
Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven that earth can...Read more of this...

My Napoleon

by Victor Hugo
 ("Toujours lui! lui partout!") 
 
 {XL., December, 1828.} 


 Above all others, everywhere I see 
 His image cold or burning! 
 My brain it thrills, and oftentime sets free 
 The thoughts within me yearning. 
 My quivering lips pour forth the words 
 That cluster in his name of glory— 
 The star gigantic with its...Read more of this...

The Convent Threshold

by Christina Rossetti
 There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood,
And blood's a bar I cannot pass.
I choose the stairs that mount above,
Stair after golden sky-ward stair,
To city and to sea of glass.
My lily feet are soiled with mud,
With scarlet mud which tells a tale
Of hope that was, of guilt that was,
Of love that shall not yet avail;
Alas,...Read more of this...

Ode to Psyche

by John Keats
O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, 
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung 
Even into thine own soft-conch¨¨d ear: 
Surely I dream'd to-day, or did I see 5 
The wing¨¨d Psyche with awaken'd eyes? 
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly, 
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, 
Saw two fair creatures, couch¨¨d...Read more of this...

Birds Of Passage

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;

And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelm
The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near;

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I...Read more of this...

On a Hillside

by George William Russell
 A FRIENDLY mountain I know;
As I lie on the green slope there
It sets my heart in a glow
And closes the door on care.


A thought I try to frame—
I was with you long ago;
My soul from your heart out-came;
Mountain, is that not so?


Take me again, dear hills,
Open the door to me
Where the magic murmur thrills
The halls I do not see,


The...Read more of this...

The feet of people walking home

by Emily Dickinson
 The feet of people walking home
With gayer sandals go --
The Crocus -- til she rises
The Vassal of the snow --
The lips at Hallelujah
Long years of practise bore
Til bye and bye these Bargemen
Walked singing on the shore.

Pearls are the Diver's farthings
Extorted from the Sea --
Pinions -- the Seraph's wagon
Pedestrian once -- as we --
Night is the morning's Canvas
Larceny -- legacy...Read more of this...

The Owl

by Ted Hughes
 I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts...Read more of this...

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

by Walt Whitman
 1
AS a strong bird on pinions free, 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, 
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, 
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...

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...

To Canaris, The Greek Patriot

by Victor Hugo
 ("Canaris! nous t'avons oublié.") 
 
 {VIII., October, 1832.} 


 O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song 
 Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long! 
 But when the tragic actor's part is done, 
 When clamor ceases, and the fights are won, 
 When heroes realize what Fate decreed, 
 When chieftains mark no more which thousands...Read more of this...

The Silence of Love

by George William Russell
 I COULD praise you once with beautiful words ere you came
And entered my life with love in a wind of flame.
I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest,
But with pinions drooping together silence is best.


In the land of beautiful silence the winds are laid,
And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade.
I will not...Read more of this...

The Bullfinches

by Thomas Hardy
 Bother Bulleys, let us sing 
 From the dawn till evening! - 
For we know not that we go not 
 When the day's pale pinions fold 
 Unto those who sang of old. 

 When I flew to Blackmoor Vale, 
 Whence the green-gowned faeries hail, 
Roosting near them I could hear them 
 Speak of queenly Nature's...Read more of this...

June

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 SHE behind yon mountain lives,
Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.
Tell me, mount, how this can be!
Very glass thou seem'st to me,
And I seem to be close by,
For I see her drawing nigh;
Now, because I'm absent, sad,
Now, because she sees me, glad!

Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear

Mills and wheels, the surest token
That...Read more of this...

Discord

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Unreconciled by life's fleet years, that fled
With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild,
Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped
Unreconciled;

Though time and change, harsh time's imperious child,
That wed strange hands together, might not wed
High hearts by hope's misprision once beguiled;

Faith, by the light from either's memory shed,
Sees, radiant as their ends were undefiled,
One goal for each--not...Read more of this...

The Greatness Of The World

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Through the world which the Spirit creative and kind
First formed out of chaos, I fly like the wind,
Until on the strand
Of its billows I land,
My anchor cast forth where the breeze blows no more,
And Creation's last boundary stands on the shore.

I saw infant stars into being arise,
For thousands of years to roll on through the skies;
I saw them in...Read more of this...

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