Famous Renaissance Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Renaissance poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous renaissance poems. These examples illustrate what a famous renaissance poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...h you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
or the whore of a Renaissance pop
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in M...Read more of this...
by
Mueller, Lisel
...it.
However fast he should come hurrying now
Over this vast greensward, mopping his brow
Clear of the sweat of the fine Renaissance morning, it would be too late:
The artist will have had his revenge for being made to wait,
A revenge not only necessary but right and clever --
Simply to leave him out of the scene forever....Read more of this...
by
Justice, Donald
...worship their cars.
We do not worship their blondes.
We do not worship their penises.
We do not think much
Of their Renaissance
We are indifferent to England.
We have grave doubts about their brains.
In short, we who write, paint, sculpt, dance
Or sing
Share the intelligence and thus the fate
Of all our people
In this land.
We are not different from them,
Neither above nor below,
Outside nor inside.
We are the same.
And we do not worship them.
We do n...Read more of this...
by
Walker, Alice
...ow Japanese chrysanthemum
on the books..
SLEEP
SI-YA-U
SLEEP...
18 April
I've begun to forget
the names of those Renaissance masters.
I want to see
the black bird-and-flower
watercolors
that slant-eyed Chinese painters
drip
from their long thin bamboo brushes.
NEWS FROM THE PARIS WIRELESS
HALLO
HALLO
HALLO
PARIS
PARIS
PARIS...
Voices race through the air
like the fiery greyhounds.
The wireless in the Eiffel Tower calls out:
HALLO
HALLO
HALLO
PAR...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...It is time after thirty years
We had our Poetry Renaissance
Rise, Children of Albion, rise!
It is time after nightmares of sleep
When we walked the streets of inner cities
Our poems among the burnt-out houses
And cars, whispering compassion
To the addicts shaking and the homeless
Waking and those who have come apart
In the nowhere of today
Begging in stations
Sleeping in boxes.
It is time to fi...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ds,
Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance,
Fairies and phœnixes and friendly gods—
A curious frieze, half Renaissance, half Greek,
Behind which, in revulsion of romance,
I lay and laughed—and wept—till I was weak.
Words were my shelter, words my one escape,
Words were my weapons against everything.
Was I not once the son of Revolution?
Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing
My song of battle: Words like flaming stars
Shot down with power to burn the p...Read more of this...
by
Untermeyer, Louis
...embering
That little Athens was the Muses' home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.
Record it for the grandson of your son —
A city is not builded in a day:
Our little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generations pass away.
Now let each child be joined as to a church
To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained:
Let every street be made a reverent aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.
Let...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...edberg points out,
The surprise, the tension are in the concept
Rather than its realization.
The consonance of the High Renaissance
Is present, though distorted by the mirror.
What is novel is the extreme care in rendering
The velleities of the rounded reflecting surface
(It is the first mirror portrait),
So that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection
Isn't yours. You feel then like one of those
Hoffmann characters who have been deprived
Of a refle...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...faith is all the knowledge that thou hast.Source: Jonson, Ben. "To my mere English censurer." Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660. J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, eds. New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1941. 495. Copyright ©1999 Anniina Jokinen. All Rights Reserved. Created by Anniina Jokinen on May 7, 1999. Last updated on September 4, 1999.
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