Famous Reflects Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Although we saw this bright garden

by Emile Verhaeren
Although we saw this bright garden, wherein we pass silently, flower before our eyes, it is rather in us that grows the pleasantest and fairest garden in the world.
For we live all the flowers, all the plants and all the grasses in our laughter and our tears of pure and calm happiness.
For we live all the transparencies of the blue...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

At His Grave

by Alfred Austin
 LEAVE me a little while alone, 
Here at his grave that still is strown 
With crumbling flower and wreath; 
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls, 
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls, 
And he lies hush’d beneath. 

With myrtle cross and crown of rose, 
And every lowlier flower that blows, 
His new-made couch is dress’d; 
Primrose and cowslip, hyacinth wild,...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXXVII. Il mio avversario, in cui veder solete. LAURA AT HER LOOKING-GLASS.  My foe, in whom you see your own bright eyes,Adored by Love and Heaven with honour due,With beauties not its own enamours you,Sweeter and happier than in mortal guise.Me, by its counsel, lady, from your breast,My chosen...Read more of this...

Cornflowers

by Victor Hugo
 ("Tandis que l'étoile inodore.") 
 
 {XXXII.} 


 While bright but scentless azure stars 
 Be-gem the golden corn, 
 And spangle with their skyey tint 
 The furrows not yet shorn; 
 While still the pure white tufts of May 
 Ape each a snowy ball,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, and haste 
 To gather ere they...Read more of this...

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle

by Alexander Pope
 Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se 
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: 
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, 
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, 
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ 
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:
Is it less strange, the prodigal should...Read more of this...

Lament (O how all things are far removed)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 O how all things are far removed
and long have passed away.
I do believe the star,
whose light my face reflects,
is dead and has been so
for many thousand years.

I had a vision of a passing boat
and heard some voices saying disquieting things.
I heard a clock strike in some distant house...
but in which house?...

I long to quiet my anxious heart
and stand beneath...Read more of this...

To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 You know there is not much 
that I desire, a few chrysanthemums 
half lying on the grass, yellow 
and brown and white, the 
talk of a few people, the trees, 
an expanse of dried leaves perhaps 
with ditches among them. 
But there comes 
between me and these things 
a letter 
or even a look—well placed, 
you understand, 
so that...Read more of this...

Ernest Hyde

by Edgar Lee Masters
 My mind was a mirror: 
It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. 
In youth my mind was just a mirror 
In a rapidly flying car, 
Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. 
Then in time 
Great scratches were made on the mirror, 
Letting the outside world come in, 
And letting my inner self look out....Read more of this...

Robinson

by Weldon Kees
 The dog stops barking after Robinson has gone.
His act is over. The world is a gray world,
Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano,
The nightmare chase well under way.

The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,
Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.
Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.

Which is all of the room--walls, curtains,
Shelves, bed, the tinted...Read more of this...

The Cathedral of Rheims

by Joyce Kilmer
 (From the French of Emile Verhaeren)

He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed...Read more of this...

To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age

by Robert Southey
 And I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me with...Read more of this...

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

by Robert Frost
 The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be--
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot...Read more of this...

Biography In The First Person

by Stephen Dunn
 This is not the way I am.
Really, I am much taller in person,
the hairline I conceal reaches back
to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife
will not believe in has always been why
I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman.
I've saved his pines, the small acclamations
I used to show my friends. And the billyclub
I keep by my...Read more of this...

February

by Thomas Chatterton
 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, 
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string; 
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, 
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. 
If in the trammels of the doleful line 
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend; 
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine, 
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend. 

Now the rough goat withdraws...Read more of this...

Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly

by Wallace Stevens
Among the more irritating minor ideas 
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home 
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this: 
To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds, 
Not to transform them into other things, 
Is only what the sun does every day, 

Until we say to ourselves that there may be 
A pensive nature, a mechanical...Read more of this...

The Illinois Village

by Vachel Lindsay
 O you who lose the art of hope, 
Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, 
Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, 
Who weep that Liberty must die, 
Turn to the little prairie towns, 
Your higher hope shall yet begin. 
On every side awaits you there 
Some gate where glory enters in. 

Yet when I see the flocks of...Read more of this...

Astræ

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.

I saw men go up and down
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not...Read more of this...

Ode To an Artichoke

by Pablo Neruda
 The artichoke
of delicate heart
erect
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around it,
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise
tendrils and belfries,
the bulb's agitations;
while under the subsoil
the carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereon rise the vines.
The sedulous cabbage
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in a gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.
Till, on a day,
each by the...Read more of this...

Tale Of A Tub

by Sylvia Plath
 The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded?...Read more of this...

A Benediction Of The Air

by John Williams
 In every presence there is absence.

When we're together, the spaces between
Threaten to enclose our bodies
And isolate our spirits.
The mirror reflects what we are not,
And we wonder if our mate
Suspects a fatal misreading
Of our original text,
Not to mention the dreaded subtext.
Reality, we fear, mocks appearance.
Or is trapped in a hall of mirrors
Where infinite regress prevents
A grateful egress. That is,
We can...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Reflects poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace