Famous Revealing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Revealing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous revealing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous revealing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...s, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of ...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...Loge (Lodge), meaning thereby
Masonic pieces.)
THE mason's trade
Observe them well,
Resembles life, And
watch them revealing
With all its strife,-- How
solemn feeling
Is like the stir made And
wonderment swell
By man on earth's face. The
hearts of the brave.
Though weal and woe The
voice of the blest,
The future may hide, And
of spirits on high
Unterrified Seems
loudly to cry:
We onward go
"To do what is best,
In ne'er changing race. Unceasing
endeavour!
A...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...sleeps, she is not dead.
But in that sleep contortion showed
The terror of the vision there-
A silent vision unavowed,
Revealing earth's foundation bare,
And Gorgon in her hidden place.
It was a thing of fear to see
So foul a dream upon so fair a face,
And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud.
IV
But from the trance she sudden broke-
The trance, or death into promoted life;
At her feet a shivered yoke,
And in her aspect turned to heaven
No trace of passion or of strife-...Read more of this...
by
Melville, Herman
...o the land of the Danes, going from here.
Now you far-dwellers, sea-sailors,
heed my fixed request: to hurry is best
revealing whence you have come.” (ll. 251b-57)
IIII.
The eldest among them gave him answer,
the leader of the troop unlocking his word-hoard:
“We are of the people of the Geats, their kin,
and hearth-brethren of Hygelac.
My father was well-known to many peoples,
a noble first at the front called Ecgtheow.
He endured a host of winters before ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...What is thy thought of me?
What is thy feeling?
Lov'st thou the veil of sense,
Or its revealing?
Leav'st thou the maiden rose
Drooping and blushing,
Or rend'st its bosom with
Kissing and crushing?
I would be beautiful
That thou should'st woo me,
Gentle, delightsome, but
To draw thee to me.
Yet should thy longing eye
Ever caress me,
And quickened Fantasy
Only, possess me,
Thus thy heart's highest need
Long would I cherish,
Lest its more trivi...Read more of this...
by
Howe, Julia Ward
...alorous squadrons sweep;
The earth, arousing from her long, cold sleep,
Throws from her breast the coverlet of snow,
Revealing Spring's soft charms which lie below.
Suppressed emotions in each heart arise,
The wooer wakens and the warrior dies.
The bird of prey is vanquished by the dove,
And thoughts of bloody strife give place to thoughts of love.
XLIX.
The mighty plains, devoid of whispering trees,
Guard well the secrets of departed seas.
Where once great tides swe...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...He chanted a song of wizardry,
Of piercing, opening, of treachery,
Revealing, uncovering, betraying.
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying,
Resisting, battling against power,
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;
Of changing and of shifting shape
Of snares eluded, broken traps,
The prison opening, the chain that snaps.
Backwards and forwards swayed their s...Read more of this...
by
Tolkien, J R R
...en comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?
We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ed a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not convincing-- that at-best in-
ferred person.
As time's revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person.
The only cure for birth one doesn't love to contemplate.
Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-
curred person.
McHugh, you'll be the death of me -- each self and second studied!
Addressing you like this, I'm halfway to the
third person....Read more of this...
by
McHugh, Heather
...eaking into mist.
A peal of blasting thunder!
The mountains crumbled.
The stone gate of the hollow heaven
Opened wide, revealing
A vasty realm of azure without bottom,
Sun and moon shining together on gold and silver palaces.
Clad in rainbow and riding on the wind,
The ladies of the air descended like flower, flakes;
The faery lords trooping in, they were thick as hemp-stalks in the fields.
Phoenix birds circled their cars, and panthers played upon harps.
Bewilderment fille...Read more of this...
by
Po, Li
...with unblown ample garments from pleasure to pleasure, --
The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, unreeling,
Forever revealing, revealing, revealing,
Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise, -- 'tis done!
Good-morrow, lord Sun!
With several voice, with ascription one,
The woods and the marsh and the sea and my soul
Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of all morrows doth roll,
Cry good and past-good and most heavenly morrow, lord Sun.
O Artisan born in the purple, -- ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...at pain.
Pale with the secret war of feeling,
Sustained with courage, mute, yet high;
The wounds at which she bled, revealing
Only by altered cheek and eye;
She bore in silencebut when passion
Surged in her soul with ceaseless foam,
The storm at last brought desolation,
And drove her exiled from her home.
And silent still, she straight assembled
The wrecks of strength her soul retained;
For though the wasted body trembled,
The unconquered mind, to quail, disda...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...ral climate
I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger
accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back,
revealing a winding staircase with greenish light
somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside
and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions.
At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender,
but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one
his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him
quizz...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...hen the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beam'd in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast--
Flush'd guests, and golden goblets foam'd with wine;
While the deep-burnish'd foliage overhead
Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon.
It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man
Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale shape
Gl...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...an tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The vixen and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak of feint
The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
The raptures of Siena's saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath's surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more hig...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...cks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of heaven and hell....Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...obligation,
checked-off by the fingertips, by the small gust called done that swipes
the unfinishable's gold hem aside, revealing
what might have been, peeling away what should . . .
There are flowerpots at their feet.
There is fortune-telling in the air they breathe.
It filters-in with its flashlight-beam, its holy-water-tinted air,
down into the open eyes, the lampblack open mouth.
Oh listen to these words I'm spitting out for you.
My distance from you makes them louder.
Ar...Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...) are fixed on the shaft
Set in his chest like a column; St. Irene's
Hands are spread in the gesture of the Madonna,
Revealing, accepting, what she does not understand.
Her hands say: "Lo! Behold!"
Beside her a monk's hooded head is bowed, his hands
Are put together in the work of mourning.
It is as if they were still looking at the lance
Piercing the side of Christ, nailed on his cross.
The same nails pierce all their hands and feet, the same
Thin blood, mixed with...Read more of this...
by
Jarrell, Randall
...hades and quavers.
A bed-post, grown colossal, jigs about the ceiling,
And shadows, strangely altered, stain the walls, revealing
Eagles, and rabbits, and weird faces pulled awry,
And hands which fetch and carry things incessantly.
Under the Eastern window, where the morning sun
Must touch it, stands the music-stand, and on each one
Of its broad platforms is a pyramid of stones,
And metals, and dried flowers, and pine and hemlock cones,
An oriole's nest with the four eggs nea...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...s', 'Niggers', even 'Yids'
sprayed on the tombstones here should bear the blame?
What is it that these crude words are revealing?
What is it that this aggro act implies?
Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?
So what's a cri-de-coeur, ****? Can't you speak
the language that yer mam spoke. Think of 'er!
Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
Go and **** yourself with cri-de-coeur!
'She didn't talk like you do for a start!...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
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