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Famous Runes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...m 
In the meadow by the stream. 

We may lie in grasses cool 
Fringing a pellucid pool, 
We may learn the gay brook-runes 
Sung on amber afternoons, 
And the keen wind-rhyme that fills 
Mossy hollows of the hills. 

Where the wild-wood whisper stirs 
We may talk with lisping firs, 
We may gather honeyed blooms 
In the dappled forest glooms, 
We may eat of berries red 
O'er the emerald upland spread. 

We may linger as we will 
In the sunset valleys still, 
Till th...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...s--
He on his shield not meanly left
 He cherished all thy lays.

Witness the magic coffer stocked
 With convoluted runes
Wherein thy very voice was locked
 And linked to circling tunes.

Witness thy portrait, smoke-defiled,
 That decked his shelter-place.
Life seemed more present, wrote the child,
 Beneath thy well-known face.

And when the grudging days restored
 Him for a breath to home,
He, with fresh crowds of youth, adored
 Thee making mirth in Rome....Read more of this...

by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...hed valleys lie
Cradling the twilight, where the lone winds blow 
And wake among the harps of leafless trees 
Fantastic runes and mournful melodies. 

The chilly purple air is threaded through
With silver from the rising moon afar, 
And from a gulf of clear, unfathomed blue
In the southwest glimmers a great gold star 
Above the darkening druid glens of fir 
Where beckoning boughs and elfin voices stir. 

And so I wander through the shadows still,
And look and listen w...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...Durin's Day.

A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shown for ever fair and bright.

There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote;
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built.
There beryl, pearl, and o...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...er banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm from him;
his bow was made of dragon-horn,
his arrows shorn of ebony;
of silver was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
his sword of steel was valient,
of adamant his helmet tall,
an eagle-plume upon his crest,
upon his breast an emerald.

Beneath the Moon and under star
he wandered far from northern strands,
bewi...Read more of this...



by McKay, Claude
...
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes 
That stir the hidden depths of native life, 
Stray melodies of dim remembered runes. 
I shall return, I shall return again, 
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain....Read more of this...

by Pound, Ezra
...ers half-forgetful of their tunes,
Old painters color-blind come back once more,
Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes,
Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyes
Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse?...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...nds; and we shall read,
With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,
That record of All-Soul whereon God writes
In everlasting runes the truth of Him. 

VII 

The guerdon of new childhood is repose: -- 
Once he has read the primer of right thought,
A man may claim between two smithy strokes
Beatitude enough to realize
God's parallel completeness in the vague
And incommensurable excellence
That equitably uncreates itself
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe. 

VIII 

There i...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...sun,
And thanks was his contrition;
For haircloth and for bloody whips,
Had active hands and smiling lips;
And yet his runes he rightly read,
And to his folk his message sped.
Sunshine in his heart transferred
Lighted each transparent word;
And well could honoring Persia learn
What Saadi wished to say;
For Saadi's nightly stars did burn
Brighter than Dschami's day.

Whispered the muse in Saadi's cot;
O gentle Saadi, listen not,
Tempted by thy praise of wit,
Or by thi...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...despair.

Balder the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun, 
Fairest of all the Gods! 
Light from his forehead beamed, 
Runes were upon his tongue, 
As on the warrior's sword.

All things in earth and air 
Bound were by magic spell 
Never to do him harm; 
Even the plants and stones; 
All save the mistletoe, 
The sacred mistletoe!

Hoeder, the blind old God, 
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast 
With his sharp spear, by fraud,
Made of the m...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...f commingling tunes
The ancient wise bassoons,
Like weird
Gray-beard
Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes,
Chanted runes:
"Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,
The sea of all doth lash and toss,
One wave forward and one across:
But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
And worst doth foam and flash to best,
And curst to blest.

Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west,
Love, Love alone can pore
On thy dissolving score
Of harsh half-phrasings,
Blotted ere writ,
A...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair ; can you miss me ?

See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is the spasm that kills us !

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth fr...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...on his hood? 

The hurrying great ones scorn his Raven's croak, 
And well may mock his mystifying cloak 
Inscribed with runes from tongues he has not read 
To make the ignoramus turn his head. 
The artificial glitter of his eyes 
Has captured half-grown boys. They think him wise. 
Some shallow player-folk esteem him deep, 
Soothed by his steady wand's mesmeric sweep. 

The little lacquered boxes in his hands 
Somehow suggest old times and reverenced lands....Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...e inchauntments cold 
Of the witches wild and old. 

He had crucified a toad 
In the basilisk abode, 
Muttering the Runes averse 
Mad with many a mocking curse. 

He had traced the serpent sigil 
In his ghastly virgin vigil. 
Sursum cor! the elfin hill, 
Where the wind blows deadly chill 
From the world that wails beneath 
Death's black throat and lipless teeth. 
There he had stood - his bosom bare - 
Tracing Life upon the Air 
With the crook and with the flai...Read more of this...

by Wagoner, David
...and retouch it with the point
 Of the fountain he produced at his fingertips
And fill it with his never-before-uttered
 Runes and obbligatos and pellucidly cryptic
 Duets from private pageants, from broken ends
Of fandangos with the amoeba chaos chaos
 Couchant and rampant. Then he would rise
 With an effort as heartfelt as a decision
To get out of bed on Sunday and carefully
 Relocate his center of gravity
 Above and beyond an imaginary axis
Between his feet and carry th...Read more of this...

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