Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Reflex Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Strode, William
...in heav'n thou see
Those thankefull soules on earth preserv'd by thee,
Whose russet liv'ryes shall a Robe repay
That by reflex makes white the milky way.
Then shall those feeble limbs which as thine owne
Thou here didst cherish, then indeed bee known
To bee thy fellow limbs, all joyn'd in one;
For temples here renew'd the corner stone
Shall yeild thee thanks, when thou shall wonder at
The churches glory, but so poore of late,
Glad of thy almes! Because thy tender eare
Was...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...letta;—each one 
 Was powerful as a town, and dreaded none. 
 Corbus ranked thus; its precincts seemed to hold 
 The reflex of its mighty kings of old; 
 Their great events had witness in these walls, 
 Their marriages were here and funerals, 
 And mostly here it was that they were born; 
 And here crowned Barons ruled with pride and scorn; 
 Cradle of Scythian majesty this place. 
 Now each new master of this ancient race 
 A duty owed to ancestors which he 
 Was ...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...as air, 
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, 
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, 
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more 
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this ***** 
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world 
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, 
this man, superb in love and logic, this man 
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric, 
not with l...Read more of this...

by Pessoa, Fernando
...If that apparent part of life's delight

Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen

By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,

Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.

Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,

Appearance even as appearance lies,

Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing

Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.

Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.

All is either the irrational world...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...e anguish, one mourning, one string with our own!

To be drunk with the great human battle of wills—
—Pale, fleeting reflex of the monstrous assaults,
Golden movements of planets in heaven's high vaults—
Till one lives in all that which acts, struggles, and thrills,
And avidly opens one's heart to the law
That rules, dread and stern, the whole universe o'er!...Read more of this...



by Raine, Kathleen
...ess accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
pressing buttons, 
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of v...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...rits 'nd his victuals wuz the best;
His face wuz so benevolent, his smile so sweet 'nd kind,
That they seemed to be the reflex uv an honest, healthy mind;
And God had set upon his head a crown uv silver hair
In promise uv the golden crown He meaneth him to wear.
So, uv us boys that met him out'n Denver, there wuz none
But fell in love with Dana uv the Noo York Sun.

But when he came to Denver in that fall uv '83,
His old friend Cantell Whoppers disappeared upon a spre...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...brated part at Table
Part in Memory.

Neither Patriarch nor Pussy
I dissect the Play
Seems it to my Hooded thinking
Reflex Holiday.

Had there been no sharp Subtraction
From the early Sum --
Not an Acre or a Caption
Where was once a Room --

Not a Mention, whose small Pebble
Wrinkled any Sea,
Unto Such, were such Assembly
'Twere Thanksgiving Day....Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...ck one's hand
Out of the globe, but its dimension,
What carries it, will not allow it.
No doubt it is this, not the reflex
To hide something, which makes the hand loom large
As it retreats slightly. There is no way
To build it flat like a section of wall:
It must join the segment of a circle,
Roving back to the body of which it seems
So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face
On which the effort of this condition reads
Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark
Or...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...more it selfe dilate,
and in my darknesse greater doth appeare.
Yet since your light hath once enlumind me,
with my reflex yours shall encreased be....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...etraying ear
 To all the victim's cries.

 Only the Lord can understand
 When those first pangs begin,
 How much is reflex action and
 How much is really sin.

 E'en from good words thyself refrain,
 And tremblingly admit
 There is no anodyne for pain
 Except the shock of it.

 So, when thine own dark hour shall fall,
 Unchallenged canst thou say:
 "I never worried you at all,
 For God's sake go away! "...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ar it and share it.

Who thought at sixty one 

I’d have owned a watch 

Like this one, chased silver cased

Quartz reflex Japanese movement

And all for a fiver at the back of Leeds Market

Where I wander in search of oil pastels

Irish folk and cheap socks.

The TLS mocks our magazine

With its sixties Cadillac pink

Psychedelic cover and every page crimson

Orange or mauve, revolutionary sonnets 

By Brenda Williams from her epic ‘Pain Clinic’

And my lacerating at...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Reflex poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things