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Famous Potion Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...nterest in the Poet’s weal;
Ah! now sma’ heart hae I to speel
 The steep Parnassus,
Surrounded thus by bolus pill,
 And potion glasses.


O what a canty world were it,
Would pain and care and sickness spare it;
And Fortune favour worth and merit
 As they deserve;
And aye rowth o’ roast-beef and claret,
 Syne, wha wad starve?


Dame Life, tho’ fiction out may trick her,
And in paste gems and frippery deck her;
Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker
 I’ve found her still,
Aye wav...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...lege;
It kindles wit, it waukens lear,
 It pangs us fou o’ knowledge:
Be’t whisky-gill or penny wheep,
 Or ony stronger potion,
It never fails, or drinkin deep,
 To kittle up our notion,
 By night or day.


The lads an’ lasses, blythely bent
 To mind baith saul an’ body,
Sit round the table, weel content,
 An’ steer about the toddy:
On this ane’s dress, an’ that ane’s leuk,
 They’re makin observations;
While some are cozie i’ the neuk,
 An’ forming assignations
 To meet some ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert
...oughts o’ ither,
They’re a’ run-deils an’ jads thegither.
Whiles, owre the wee bit cup an’ platie,
They sip the scandal-potion pretty;
Or lee-lang nights, wi’ crabbit leuks
Pore owre the devil’s pictur’d beuks;
Stake on a chance a farmer’s stackyard,
An’ cheat like ony unhanged blackguard.
 There’s some exceptions, man an’ woman;
But this is gentry’s life in common.
 By this, the sun was out of sight,
An’ darker gloamin brought the night;
The bum-clock humm’d wi’ lazy drone;
...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert
...ing at?
13 And thou a child, a Limb, and dost not feel
14 My weak'ned fainting body now to reel?
15 This physic-purging-potion I have taken
16 Will bring Consumption or an Ague quaking,
17 Unless some Cordial thou fetch from high,
18 Which present help may ease my malady.
19 If I decease, dost think thou shalt survive?
20 Or by my wasting state dost think to thrive?
21 Then weigh our case, if 't be not justly sad.
22 Let me lament alone, while thou art glad. 

New England. 

...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...,
To quench the drouth of Phoebus; which as they taste
(For most do taste through fond intemperate thirst),
Soon as the potion works, their human count'nance,
The express resemblance of the gods, is changed
Into some brutish form of wolf or bear,
Or ounce or tiger, hog, or bearded goat,
All other parts remaining as they were.
And they, so perfect is their misery,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement,
But boast themselves more comely than before,
And all their friends an...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...like that of queen!" 
 Queen! And on Mahaud's face a smile was seen. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 AFTER SUPPER. 
 
 But now the potion proved its subtle power, 
 And Mahaud's heavy eyelids 'gan to lower. 
 Zeno, with finger on his lip, looked on— 
 Her head next drooped, and consciousness was gone. 
 Smiling she slept, serene and very fair, 
 He took her hand, which fell all unaware. 
 
 "She sleeps," said Zeno, "now let chance or fate 
 Decide for us which has the marquisate...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...artless doctor sees 
No one hope but of his fees, 
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit comfort me! 

When his potion and his pill, 
Has or none or little skill, 
Meet for nothing, but to kill, 
Sweet Spirit comfort me! 

When the passing-bell doth toll, 
And the Furies in a shoal 
Come to fright a parting soul, 
Sweet Spirit comfort me! 

When the tapers now burn blue, 
And the comforters are few, 
And that number more than true, 
Sweet Spirit comfort me! 

When the...Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert
...shroud.

XXXIV.
And she had died in drowsy ignorance,
But for a thing more deadly dark than all;
It came like a fierce potion, drunk by chance,
Which saves a sick man from the feather'd pall
For some few gasping moments; like a lance,
Waking an Indian from his cloudy hall
With cruel pierce, and bringing him again
Sense of the gnawing fire at heart and brain.

XXXV.
It was a vision.--In the drowsy gloom,
The dull of midnight, at her couch's foot
Lorenzo stood, and wept: the f...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...
I take a good Dose 
Of calomel brisk.'--

'What a praise worthy Notion.' 
Replied Mr. Newnham. 
'You shall have such a potion 
And so will I too Ma'am.'...Read more of this...
by Austen, Jane
...Echoing up from the valley,
Over the mountain side,--
Rally, you hunters, rally,
Rally, and ride!

Drink of the magical potion music has mixed with her wine,
Full of the madness of motion, joyful, exultant, divine!
Leave all your troubles behind you,
Ride where they never can find you,
Into the gladness of morn,
With the long, clear note of the hunting-horn,
Swiftly o'er hillock and hollow,
Sweeping along with the wind,--
Follow, you hunters, follow,
Follow and find!

What wi...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...ou would watch with serenity through the 
winters of your grief. 

Much of your pain is self-chosen. 

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within 
you heals your sick self. 

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy 
in silence and tranquillity: 

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by 
the tender hand of the Unseen, 

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has 
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has 
moistened with His own ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil
...Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.

I lived well, but life was awful.
there were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.

On the pay channel, a man and...Read more of this...
by Simic, Charles
...-morrow,
Wherein he statelily moved to the clink of his chains unregarded,
Nowise abashed but contented to drink of the potion awarded
Saluting aloofly his Fate, he made haste with his story,
And the words of his mouth were as slaves spreading carpets of glory
Embroidered with names of the Djinns--a miraculous weaving--
But the cool and perspicuous eye overbore unbelieving.
So I submitted myself to the limits of rapture--
Bound by this man we had bound, amid captives his capt...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...WITH eagerness he drinks the treach'rous potion,

Nor stops to rest, by the first taste misled;
Sweet is the draught, but soon all power of motion

He finds has from his tender members fled;
No longer has he strength to plume his wing,
No longer strength to raise his head, poor thing!
E'en in enjoyment's hour his life he loses,
His little foot to bear his weight refuses;
So on he sips, and ere his ...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...real.

If this be to have sense, if to be awake

Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,

For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take

And for truth commune with imaginings,

Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,

This common sleep of men, the universe....Read more of this...
by Pessoa, Fernando
...ruined rain,
And from the rain and sunlight spring the rainbow.

The ancient disturber of solitude
Stirs his ancestral potion in the gloom,
And the dark wood
Is stifled with the pungent fume
Of charred earth burnt to the bone
That takes the place of air.
Then sudden I remember when and where, --
The last weird lakelet foul with weedy growths
And slimy viscid things the spirit loathes,
Skin of vile water over viler mud
Where the paddle stirred unutterable stenches,
And the ca...Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.

A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.

Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.

But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:

So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imag...Read more of this...
by Pinsky, Robert
...I 

All night, through the eternity of night, 
Pain was my potion though I could not feel. 
Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel, 
Till I was reft of even my inner light, 
Till reason from my mind had taken flight, 
And all my world went whirling in a reel. 
And all my swarthy strength turned cold like steel, 
A passive mass beneath your puny might. 
Last night I gave you triumph over me, 
So I should be my...Read more of this...
by McKay, Claude
...that I'd plead and weep
And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare,

Or that I'd ask the sorcerers
For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift:
My precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul
Vicarious tears or a single glance.

And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working icon,
And by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you....Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things