Famous Rayed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Neophyte

by Aleister Crowley
 To-night I tread the unsubstantial way
That looms before me, as the thundering night
Falls on the ocean: I must stop, and pray
One little prayer, and then - what bitter fight
Flames at the end beyond the darkling goal?
These are my passions that my feet must read;
This is my sword, the fervour of my soul;
This is my Will, the crown upon my...Read more of this...

A Child Asleep

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures, to make room for more---
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking:
Throw them earthward where they grew.
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto---
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
From the...Read more of this...

I Have Lived With Shades

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

I have lived with shades so long, 
And talked to them so oft, 
Since forth from cot and croft 
I went mankind among, 
 That sometimes they 
 In their dim style 
 Will pause awhile 
 To hear my say; 

II 

And take me by the hand, 
And lead me through their rooms 
In the To-be, where...Read more of this...

A New World

by George William Russell
 I WHO had sought afar from earth
 The faery land to meet,
Now find content within its girth
 And wonder nigh my feet.


To-day a nearer love I choose
 And seek no distant sphere;
For aureoled by faery dews
 The dear brown breasts appear.


With rainbow radiance come and go
 The airy breaths of day;
And eve is all a pearly glow
 With moonlit...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

by George William Russell
 I WOULD I could weave in
 The colour, the wonder,
 The song I conceive in
 My heart while I ponder,


 And show how it came like
 The magi of old
 Whose chant was a flame like
 The dawn’s voice of gold;


 Whose dreams followed near them
 A murmur of birds,
 And ear still could hear them
 Unchanted in words.


...Read more of this...

Lincoln

by John Gould Fletcher
 I 

Like a gaunt, scraggly pine 
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills; 
And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence, 
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow. 

Ungainly, labouring, huge, 
The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches; 
Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunderclouds ring the horizon, 
A nation of men...Read more of this...

The Glory Of The Heavens

by Emile Verhaeren
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves
And down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves;
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies,


The wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk
Speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er;
And diamond-rayed,...Read more of this...

Night And Day

by Sidney Lanier
The innocent, sweet Day is dead.
Dark Night hath slain her in her bed.
O, Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed!
—Put out the light, said he.

A sweeter light than ever rayed
From star of heaven or eye of maid
Has vanished in the unknown Shade
—She’s dead, she’s dead, said he.

Now, in a wild, sad after-mood
The tawny Night sits still to brood
Upon...Read more of this...

The Sick God

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 In days when men had joy of war, 
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar; 
 The peoples pledged him heart and hand, 
 From Israel's land to isles afar. 

II 

 His crimson form, with clang and chime, 
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time, 
 And kings invoked, for rape and raid, 
 His...Read more of this...

The Dance At The Phoenix

by Thomas Hardy
 To Jenny came a gentle youth 
 From inland leazes lone; 
His love was fresh as apple-blooth 
 By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone. 
And duly he entreated her 
To be his tender minister, 
 And call him aye her own. 

Fair Jenny's life had hardly been 
 A life of modesty; 
At Casterbridge experience keen 
 Of many loves...Read more of this...

The Dream of the Children

by George William Russell
 THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming
 While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
 To the heart-light of the hill.


Its sounds and sights were forsaking
 The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
 Out from the heart-light deep.


It ran where the rill in its flowing
 Under the star-light gay,
With wonderful colour...Read more of this...

A Vision of Beauty

by George William Russell
 WHERE we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted,
We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted.
By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led
Upward to the heaven of heavens—through the star-mists overhead
Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night
Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean...Read more of this...

The Casterbridge Captains

by Thomas Hardy
 THREE captains went to Indian wars,
And only one returned:
Their mate of yore, he singly wore
The laurels all had earned.

At home he sought the ancient aisle
Wherein, untrumped of fame,
The three had sat in pupilage,
And each had carved his name.

The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,
Stood on the panel still;
Unequal since.--"'Twas theirs to aim,
Mine was it to fulfil!"

--"Who saves his life shall...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

St. George

by Emile Verhaeren
Opening the mists on a sudden through,
An Avenue!
Then, all one ferment of varied gold,
With foam of plumes where the chamfrom bends
Round his horse's head, that no bit doth hold,
St. George descends!


The diamond-rayed caparison,
Makes of his flight one declining path
From Heaven's pity down upon
Our waiting earth.


Hero and Lord
Of the joyous, helpful virtues all.
Sonorous, pure and crystalline!
Let his radiance fall
On my heart...Read more of this...

Pollys Tree

by Sylvia Plath
 A dream tree, Polly's tree:
 a thicket of sticks,
 each speckled twig

ending in a thin-paned
 leaf unlike any
 other on it

or in a ghost flower
 flat as paper and
 of a color

vaporish as frost-breath,
 more finical than
 any silk fan

the Chinese ladies use
 to stir robin's egg
 air. The silver-

haired seed of the milkweed
 comes to roost there, frail
...Read more of this...

To Charlotte Cushman

by Sidney Lanier
 Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam
Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream,
Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem
Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream;
So in this night of art thy soul doth show
Her excellent double in the steadfast flow
Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go:
At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below.
E'en when...Read more of this...

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