Famous Purple Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Purple poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous purple poems. These examples illustrate what a famous purple poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Michael Drayton
In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,
From whom that sea did first derive her name,
The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,
Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,
Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,
First unto Athens brought philosophy:
In this fair region on a goodly plain,
Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,
The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,
Smiling to see the ocean billows play:
Latmus,...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
As o'er the vessel's side she leant,
She saw the swimmer in the sea
With eager eyes on her intent,
"Come down, come down and swim with me."
So weary was she of her lot,
Tired of the ship's monotony,
...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Revolution is the Pod
Systems rattle from
When the Winds of Will are stirred
Excellent is Bloom
But except its Russet Base
Every Summer be
The Entomber of itself,
So of Liberty --
Left inactive on the Stalk
All its Purple fled
Revolution shakes it for
Test if it be dead....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Purple -- is fashionable twice --
This season of the year,
And when a soul perceives itself
To be an Emperor....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Hills in Purple syllables
The Day's Adventures tell
To little Groups of Continents
Just going Home from School....Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The world is full of gems to-day,
The world is full of love;
The earth is strewn with star-gemmed flowers
That fall from skies above.
The sunshine is a stream of gold
That flows from flower to flower;
The shadows are but passing thoughts
That mark each shining hour.
The pansy nods her purple head,
And sings a silent...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
O beautiful hills in the purple light,
That shadow the western sky,
I dream of you oft in the silent night,
As the golden days go by.
The river that flows at my longing feet
Is tinged with a deeper glow;
But the song that it sings is as sad to-day
As it was in the long ago.
The far-off...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying her spotted Face to die
Stooping as low as the Otter's Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler of Day is gone...Read more of this...
by
Gelett Burgess
I NEVER SAW A PURPLE COW,
I NEVER HOPE TO SEE ONE;
BUT I CAN TELL YOU, ANYHOW,
I'D RATHER SEE THAN BE ONE!...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary.
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Amended what was told awry
By some peasant gospeller;
Swept the Sawdust from the floor
Of that working-carpenter.
Miracle had its playtime where
In damask clothed and on a seat
Chryselephantine, cedar-boarded,
His majestic Mother sat
Stitching at a purple hoarded
That He might be nobly breeched
In starry towers of Babylon
Noah's freshet never reached.
King Abundance got Him on
Innocence; and Wisdom...Read more of this...
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...
by
Carl Sandburg
IF we were such and so, the same as these,
maybe we too would be slingers and sliders,
tumbling half over in the water mirrors,
tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun,
tumbling our purple numbers.
Twirl on, you and your satin blue.
Be water birds, be air birds.
Be these purple tumblers you are.
Dip and get away
From loops into slip-knots,
Write your...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
"Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Where Ships of Purple -- gently toss --
On Seas of Daffodil --
Fantastic Sailors -- mingle --
And then -- the Wharf is still!...Read more of this...
by
Gelett Burgess
I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!...Read more of this...
by
Hilda Doolittle
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;
stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;
yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set,...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
III. — TO SIR ROBERT WROTH. Art ta'en with neither's vice nor sport : That at great times, art no ambitious guest Of sheriff 's dinner, or mayor's feast. Nor com'st to view the better cloth of state, The richer hangings, or crown-plate ; Nor throng'st (when masquing is) to have a sight There wasted, some not...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,
With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,
Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,
Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet,...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla
The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity....Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .
Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays
Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
O SORROW!
Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?
O Sorrow!
Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
To give the glow-worm light?
Or, on...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat
of life
With something proud on his face, so proud no smash
of the jaws,
No gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end
With anything else than the old proud look:
Even to the finish, dumped in the dust,
Lost among the used-up cinders,
This face, men would say, is a flash,
Is laid...Read more of this...
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