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Famous Reverie Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...decline and fall;
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave,
And wondered what was left for massacre to save....Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler



...eye
To greet the general glow. 

So, resting on a heathy bank,
I took my heart to me;
And we together sadly sank
Into a reverie. 

We thought, "When winter comes again,
Where will these bright things be?
All vanished, like a vision vain,
An unreal mockery! 

The birds that now so blithely sing,
Through deserts, frozen dry,
Poor spectres of the perished spring,
In famished troops, will fly. 

And why should we be glad at all?
The leaf is hardly green,
Before a token of its fal...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily
...In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined;
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wand'rer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heav'ns' mysterious face;...Read more of this...
by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...on the tower,
And-under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimac...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant in grief
Disconsolate linger- grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have Red,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten'd and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clyt...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan



...s be, 
 Whether he wind along the enchanting shore 
 To Portici from fair Parthenope, 
 Or, lingering long in dreamy reverie, 
 O'er loveliest Ischia's od'rous isle he stray, 
 Wooed by whose breath the soft and am'rous sea 
 Seems like some languishing sultana's lay, 
 A voice for very sweets that scarce can win its way. 
 
 Him, whether Paestum's solemn fane detain, 
 Shrouding his soul with meditation's power; 
 Or at Pozzuoli, to the sprightly strain 
 Of tara...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...he battle down the dell, 
And who is happy now. 

But he spoke to re-assure me, 
And he kissed my pallid brow, 
While a reverie came o'er me, 
And to the church-yard bore me, 
And I sighed to him before me, 
Thinking him dead D'Elormie, 
"Oh, I am happy now!" 

And thus the words were spoken, 
And this the plighted vow, 
And, though my faith be broken, 
And, though my heart be broken, 
Here is a ring, as token 
That I am happy now! 

Would God I could awaken! 
For I dream I k...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ature, but enlarged by art, 
Where oft her lute she wont to tune, 
And oft her Koran conn'd apart: 
And oft in youthful reverie 
She dream'd what Paradise might be; 
Where woman's parted soul shall go 
Her Prophet had disdain'd to show; 
But Selim's mansion was secure, 
Nor deem'd she, could he long endure 
His bower in other worlds of bliss, 
Without her, most beloved in this! 
Oh! who so dear with him could dwell? 
What Houri soothe him half so well? 

VIII. 

Since last sh...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...s freshly bleeding, 
How longs it for that time to be, 
When, through the mist of years receding, 
Its woes but live in reverie ! 

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer, 
On evening shade and loneliness; 
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, 
Feel no untold and strange distress­ 
Only a deeper impulse given 
By lonely hour and darkened room, 
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven, 
Seeking a life and world to come...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...ess again. There are enough things here
to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through
the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall
the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard
at school, only louder. Then there are women, clicking
their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads
on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots
and irons of the laundresses call to me.

I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending
and domestic; my schooling ...Read more of this...
by Trethewey, Natasha
...ing sword out of the east. A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.

'Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
'Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading wide
Fo...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...ss moon, on summer night; 
Full oft have I impatience proved 
To see how long, her still delight 
Would find a theme in reverie. 
Out on the lawn, or where the trees 
Let in the lustre fitfully, 
As their boughs parted momently, 
To the soft, languid, summer breeze. 
Alas ! that she should e'er have flung 
Those pure, though lonely joys away­ 
Deceived by false and guileful tongue, 
She gave her hand, then suffered wrong; 
Oppressed, ill-used, she faded young, 
And died of gr...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...r own;
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief--
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie,
A momentary dream, that thou art she.

My mother! when I learn'd that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unseen, a kiss;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss--
Ah that maternal smile! it answers--Yes...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William
...'s depth divine;
The organ carries to our ear
Its accents of another sphere. 

'Fenced early in this cloistral round
Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,
How should we grow in other ground?
How can we flower in foreign air?
--Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;
And leave our desert to its peace!'...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...ature, but enlarged by art, 
Where oft her lute she wont to tune, 
And oft her Koran conn'd apart: 
And oft in youthful reverie 
She dream'd what Paradise might be; 
Where woman's parted soul shall go 
Her Prophet had disdain'd to show; 
But Selim's mansion was secure, 
Nor deem'd she, could he long endure 
His bower in other worlds of bliss, 
Without her, most beloved in this! 
Oh! who so dear with him could dwell? 
What Houri soothe him half so well? 

VIII. 

Since last sh...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...wer - shrivelled, bare of fragrance,
Forgotten on a page - I see,
And instantly my soul awakens,
Filled with an aimless reverie:

When did it bloom? the last spring? earlier?
How long? Where was it plucked? By whom?
By foreign hands? or by familiar?
And why put here, as in a tomb?

To mark a tender meeting by it?
A parting with a precious one?
Or just a walk, alone and quiet,
In forests' shade? in meadows' sun?

Is she alive? Is he still with her?
Where is their haven at this...Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...'Tis said that when 
The hands of men 
Tamed this primeval wood, 
And hoary trees with groans of woe, 
Like warriors by an unknown foe, 
Were in their strength subdued, 
The virgin Earth Gave instant birth 
To springs that ne'er did flow 
That in the sun Did rivulets run, 
And all around rare flowers did blow 
The wild rose pale Perfumed the gale 
And the ...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...world is blank."

39
Through the long sunshine of late afternoon
Max went to her. In the pleached alley, lost
In bitter reverie, he found her soon.
And sitting down beside her, at the cost
Of all his secret, "Dear," said he, "what thing
So suddenly has happened?" Then, in tears,
She told that Grootver, on the following morn,
Would come to marry her, and shuddering:
"I will die rather, death has lesser fears."
Max felt the shackles drop from the oath which he had sworn.

40
"M...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, 
So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 
Perchance upon the future man: the walls 
Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped, 
And gradually the powers of the night, 
That range above the region of the wind, 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 
Through all the silent spaces of the worlds, 
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. 

Last little Lilia, rising quie...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...murmurous dropping, old silence and that one sound;
For no live creatures live there, no weasels move in the dark:
In a reverie forgetful of all things, over the bubbling' ground.

And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey,
Grey sand on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees,
Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away',
Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas.

And the winds made the...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things