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Famous Quietude Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...ere shines the light of moon and star, 
And sweet, low-tinkling music rings 
About the lips of haunted springs. 
In quietude of earth and air 
'Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer....Read more of this...



by Graves, Robert
...hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when travellers pass,
No mount of glass;
No bardic tongues unfold
Satires or charms.
Only, the lawns are soft,
The tree-s...Read more of this...

by Russell, George William
...ng the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietude.
Here in these shades the ancient knows itself, the soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above
Come by me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;
As in the twilight children g...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...ely and durable, and taste them slowly,
One after one, like tasting a sweet food.
I have need to busy my heart with quietude....Read more of this...

by Russell, George William
...e in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother’s breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
 I am one with their hearts at rest.


From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love
Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
 Word or touch from the lips beside.


Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden fountain more than light or peace...Read more of this...



by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...ld 
Of tins and picture-frames. I held my breath. 
He tugged another hard -- and sapphire skies 
Spread in vast quietude, serene as death, 
O'er waves like crackled turquoise -- and my eyes 
Burnt with the blinding brilliance of calm sea! 
"We're selling that lot there out cheap!" said he....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...king his Druids round him ten by ten,
Spake thus: 'Cuchulain will dwell there and brood
For three days more in dreadful quietude,
And then arise, and raving slay us all.
Chaunt in his ear delusions magical,
That he may fight the horses of the sea.'
The Druids took them to their mystery,
And chaunted for three days.
 Cuchulain stirred,
Stared on the horses of the sea, and heard
The cars of battle and his own name cried;
And fought with the invulnerable tide....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...
Has dived to its foundations, gulph'd it down,
And left me tossing safely. But the crown
Of all my life was utmost quietude:
More did I love to lie in cavern rude,
Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice,
And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice!
There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer
My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear
The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep,
Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep:
And never was a day of summer shi...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...n!
For, never since thy griefs and woes began,
Hast thou felt so content: a grievous feud
Hath let thee to this Cave of Quietude.
Aye, his lull'd soul was there, although upborne
With dangerous speed: and so he did not mourn
Because he knew not whither he was going.
So happy was he, not the aerial blowing
Of trumpets at clear parley from the east
Could rouse from that fine relish, that high feast.
They stung the feather'd horse: with fierce alarm
He flapp'd toward...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...nd pains, and each dull passionate mood, --
Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,
Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

So a poor ghost, beside his misty streams,
Is haunted by strange doubts, evasive dreams,
Hints of a pre-Lethean life, of men,
Stars, rocks, and flesh, things unintelligible,
And light on waving grass, he knows not when,
And feet that ran, but where, he cannot tell....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ay alone
 In that abandoned place.
Said I: 'Maybe a Palace stood
 Where now the lizards crawl,
With courts of musky quietude
 And turrets tall.

Maybe where low the vultures wing
 'Mid mosque and minaret,
The proud pavilion of a King
 Was luminously set.
'Mid fairy fountains, alcoves dim,
 Upon a garnet throne
He ruled,--and now all trace of him
 Is just this stone.

Ah well, I've done with wandering,
 But from a blousy bar
I see with drunk imagining
 A Palace...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...h my garden, which I'll have you understand,
Is the neatest and the sweetest little garden in the land;
A span of sunny quietude, with walls so high and stout,
They shut me in from all the world, and shut the whole world out,
So that its sad bewilderment seems less than true to me:
As placid as a pool I live, as tranquil as a tree;
And all its glory I would give for glint of linnet's wings;
My cabbages are more to me than continents and kings.
Dominion have I of my own, w...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...en and learn
Melody shadowed with melody,
Softer than shadow of sea-fern,
In the green-shadowed sea:
Then, nourished by quietude,
And if the world's mood
Change, she may return
Even lovelier than before. --

The white reflection in the mountain lake
Falls from the white stream
Silent in the high distance;
The mirrored mountains guard
The profile of the goddess of the height,
Floating in water with a curve of crystal light;
When the air, envious of the loveliness,
Rushes d...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...d showers and night winds and the northern star. 
Nay, even our salutations seem profane, 
Opposed to their Elysian quietude; 
Our salutations calling from afar, 
From our ignobler plane 
And undistinction of our lesser parts: 
Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts. 
Double your glory is who perished thus, 
For you have died for France and vindicated us....Read more of this...

by Geyer, Bernadette
...,
why do we expect
symmetry from a grain of sand?

*

Praise the oblong beauty
of you, solidified raindrops,
your stony quietude.

*

Let me praise the waters that bestow
your milky luster,
worshipped to ensure a bountiful hunt.

*

Manyoshu poems praised the ama,
female divers, who collected you,
as gently as quail eggs.

*

Let me rub you against my teeth to test
the veracity of you, roll you
around my tongue to weigh your heft.

*

The heart clenches, hides...Read more of this...

by Berry, Wendell
...he grave.

III
White
dogwood flowers
afloat
in leafing woods
untrouble
my mind.

IV
Ask the world to reveal its quietude—
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

V
A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of fr...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...y and durable, and taste them slowly, 
One after one, like tasting a sweet food. 
I have need to busy my heart with quietude....Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...NOW the quietude of earth
Nestles deep my heart within;
Friendships new and strange have birth
Since I left the city’s din.


Here the tempest stays its guile,
Like a big kind brother plays,
Romps and pauses here awhile
From its immemorial ways.


Now the silver light of dawn,
Slipping through the leaves that fleck
My one window, hurries on,
Throws its arms ...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...e own soul, soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand 
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe- 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death- 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses 
That smiled and d...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...will wound your most holy body
And cast dice about your acts of choice."



x x x

That voice, with great quietude arguing,
Had a victory over her.
In me still, like song or woe,
Is last winter before the war.

She was whiter than Smolny Cathedral
More mysterious than summer garden festooned
We didn't know that in parting sadness
We'd be looking back soon.



x x x

To say goodbye we don't know -
It's already nearing night,
We are w...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs