Famous Sealed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Psalm 50 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-6 
C. M.
The last judgment

The Lord, the Judge, before his throne
Bids the whole earth draw nigh,
The nations near the rising sun,
And near the western sky.

No more shall bold blasphemers say,
"Judgment will ne'er begin;"
No more abuse his long delay
To impudence and sin.

Throned on a cloud our God shall come,
Bright flames prepare his way;
Thunder and darkness, fire and storm,
Lead on the...Read more of this...

Recollections

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I.

Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and...Read more of this...

On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating

by Amy Clampitt
 cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod
stove-warmed flatiron slid under
the covers, mornings a damascene-
sealed bizarrerie of fernwork
 decades ago now

waking in northwest London, tea
brought up steaming, a Peak Frean
biscuit alongside to be nibbled
as blue gas leaps up singing
 decades ago now

damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung
habitat of bronchitis, of long
hot soaks in the bathtub, of nothing
quite drying out till next...Read more of this...

Discordants

by Conrad Aiken
 I. (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music, 
And bread I broke with you was more than bread; 
Now that I am without you, all is desolate; 
All that was once so beautiful is dead. 

Your hands once touched this table and this silver, 
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass. 
These things...Read more of this...

Still

by Wislawa Szymborska
 In sealed box cars travel
names across the land,
and how far they will travel so,
and will they ever get out,
don't ask, I won't say, I don't know.

The name Nathan strikes fist against wall,
the name Isaac, demented, sings,
the name Sarah calls out for water for
the name Aaron that's dying of thirst.

Don't jump while it's moving, name David.
You're a name that dooms...Read more of this...

Charity

by Robert William Service
 The Princess was of ancient line,
 Of royal race was she;
Like cameo her face was fine,
 With sad serentiy:
Yet bent she toiled with dimming eye,
 Her rice and milk to buy.

With lacework that for pity plead,
 So out of date it seemed,
She sought to make her daily bread,
 As of her past she dreamed:
And though sometimes I heard her...Read more of this...

On An Old Roundel

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Death, from thy rigour a voice appealed,
And men still hear what the sweet cry saith,
Crying aloud in thine ears fast sealed,
Death.

As a voice in a vision that vanisheth,
Through the grave's gate barred and the portal steeled
The sound of the wail of it travelleth.

Wailing aloud from a heart unhealed,
It woke response of melodious breath
From lips now too by thy kiss...Read more of this...

The Burglar Of Babylon

by Elizabeth Bishop
 On the fair green hills of Rio
 There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
 And can't go home again.

On the hills a million people,
 A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
 That's had to light and rest,

Building its nests, or houses,
 Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
 They perch...Read more of this...

Psalm 89 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 The faithfulness of God.

My never-ceasing songs shall show
The mercies of the Lord;
And make succeeding ages know
How faithful is his word.

The sacred truths his lips pronounce
Shall firm as heav'n endure;
And if he speak a promise once,
Th' eternal grace is sure.

How long the race of David held
The promised Jewish throne!
But there's a nobler cov'nant sealed
To David's greater Son.

His seed for ever...Read more of this...

In Guernsey - To Theodore Watts

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.

O friend, shall time take ever this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?

Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight,...Read more of this...

Spring

by John Gould Fletcher
 At the first hour, it was as if one said, "Arise." 
At the second hour, it was as if one said, "Go forth." 
And the winter constellations that are like patient ox-eyes 
Sank below the white horizon at the north. 

At the third hour, it was as if one said, "I thirst"; 
At the fourth hour, all the earth...Read more of this...

The Strange Music

by G K Chesterton
 Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack, 
But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back, 
Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret, 
Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet. 

In your strings is hid a music that no...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

Healed of My Hurt

by Herman Melville
 Children of my happier prime,
When One yet lived with me, and threw
Her rainbow over life and time,
Even Hope, my bride, and mother to you!
O, nurtured in sweet pastoral air,
And fed on flowers and light and dew
Of morning meadows -spare, ah, spare
Reproach; spare, and upbraid me not
That, yielding scarce to reckless mood,
But jealous of your future lot,
I sealed you in...Read more of this...

Bridge Over The Aire Book 3

by Barry Tebb
 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART





1



The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days

Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two

Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?



I am the mad poet first love

You never got over

You are my blue-eyed

Madonna virgin bride

I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’

On the bark of every 

Wind-bent tree in 

East End Park



2



The park itself will blossom

And...Read more of this...

The Litany Of Nations

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 CHORUS

If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own...Read more of this...

Montreal Maree

by Robert William Service
 You've heard of Belching Billy, likewise known as Windy Bill,
As punk a chunk of Yukon scum as ever robbed a sluice;
A satellite of Soapy Smith, a capper and a shill,
A slimy tribute-taker from the Ladies on the Loose.
But say, you never heard of how he aimed my gore to spill
(That big gorilla gunnin' for a little guy like me,)
A-howlin'...Read more of this...

Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground

by Pablo Neruda
 From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that...Read more of this...

Deer Dancer

by Joy Harjo
 Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the
hardcore.It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but
not us.Of course we noticed when she came in.We were Indian ruins.She
was the end of beauty.No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we
recognized, her family related to deer, if that's who she was, a...Read more of this...

The Couriers

by Sylvia Plath
 The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
It is not mine. Do not accept it.

Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
Do not accept it. It is not genuine.

A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.

Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
Cauldron, talking and crackling

All to itself on the top of each
Of nine black...Read more of this...

With brutus in st. jo

by Eugene Field
 Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack...Read more of this...

After The Quarrel

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
So we, who 've supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged—ah, well,
I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
That cannot stand so slight a test.
I fain would still have been your friend,
[Pg 41]And talked and laughed...Read more of this...

Crow Sickene

by Ted Hughes
His illness was something could not vomit him up. 

Unwinding the world like a ball of wool
Found the last end tied round his own finger. 

Decided to get death, but whatever
Walked into his ambush
Was always his own body. 

Where is this somebody who has me under? 

He dived, he journeyed, challenging, he climbed and with a glare
Of hair on end...Read more of this...

The Dusty Miller

by Mother Goose
Margaret wrote a letter,
Sealed it with her finger,
Threw it in the dam
For the dusty miller.
Dusty was his coat,
Dusty was the siller,
Dusty was the kiss
I'd from the dusty miller.
If I had my pockets
Full of gold and siller,
I would give it all
To my dusty miller....Read more of this...

The Touch

by Anne Sexton
 For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
and that is why they have locked it up.
You could tell time by this, I thought,
like a clock, by its five knuckles
and the thin underground veins.
It lay there like an unconscious woman
fed by tubes she knew not of.

The...Read more of this...

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