Famous Seeing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Seeing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous seeing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous seeing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edward Thomas
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.
She found the celandines of February
Always before us...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
O show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire...Read more of this...
by
Li Bai
Thousands of feet high towers the Yellow Mountains
With its thirty-two magnificent peaks,
Blooming like golden lotus flowers
Amidst red crags and rock columns.
Once I was on its lofty summit,
Admiring Tianmu Pine below.
The place is still traceable where the immortal
Before ascending to heaven made elixir out of jade.
Now you embark on your journey there alone---
Another Wen Boxue* I happened to meet---
Who've been to...Read more of this...
by
Anne Killigrew
REturn my dearest Lord, at length return,
Let me no longer your sad absence mourn,
Ilium in Dust, does no more Work afford,
No more Employment for your Wit or Sword.
Why did not the fore-seeing Gods destroy,
Helin the Fire-brand both of Greece and Troy,
E're yet the Fatal Youth her Face had seen,
E're lov'd and born...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXVI. Sì tosto come avvien che l' arco scocchi. HE CALLS THE EYES OF LAURA FOES, BECAUSE THEY KEEP HIM IN LIFE ONLY TO TORMENT HIM. Instantly a good archer draws his bowSmall skill it needs, e'en from afar, to seeWhich shaft, less fortunate, despised may be,Which to its destined sign...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Yes, I drink wine, and whoever like me is far-seeing
will find that this act is insignificant in the eyes of the
Divinity. From all eternity God has known that I would
drink wine. If I did not drink it, His prescience would
be pure ignorance....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Thou canst not count to-day on seeing the day after
to-morrow; even to think of this to-morrow would be the
part of folly; if thy heart is awakened, lose not in inaction
this instant of life [which remains to thee] and for
the duration of which I see no warranty....Read more of this...
by
Wang Wei
Weicheng morning rain moisten light dust
Visitor house green green willow colour new
Urge gentleman further finish one cup alcohol
West outside Yang Pass no friend person
At Weicheng morning rain has dampened light dust,
By the hostel, the willows are all fresh and green.
I urge my friend to drink a last cup of wine,
West of Yang...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.
Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
KEMBLE, thou cur’st my unbelief
For Moses and his rod;
At Yarico’s sweet nor of grief
The rock with tears had flow’d....Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
To show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire
To aid...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Not seeing, still we know --
Not knowing, guess --
Not guessing, smile and hide
And half caress --
And quake -- and turn away,
Seraphic fear --
Is Eden's innuendo
"If you dare"?...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
I thought I was growing wings—
it was a cocoon.
I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire—
it was deep water.
Eschatology is a word I learned
as a child: the study of Last Things;
facing my mirror—no longer young,
the news—always of death,
the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling,
nevertheless
I see for a moment
that's not it: it is
the First...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
(From the early Anglo-Saxon text)
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men's sakes whom...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Thought was born blind, but Thought knows what is seeing.
Its careful touch, deciphering forms from shapes,
Still suggests form as aught whose proper being
Mere finding touch with erring darkness drapes.
Yet whence, except from guessed sight, does touch teach
That touch is but a close and empty sense?
How does mere touch, self-uncontented, reach
For some truer sense's whole intelligence?
The thing once touched, if touch...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old scene.Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half-savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
[idmen gar toi pant, hos eni Troiei]
Caught in the unstopped...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This curious imitation of the ternary metre
of Dante was written at the age of 77.]
WITHIN a gloomy charnel-house one day
I view'd the countless skulls, so strangely mated,
And of old times I thought, that now were grey.
Close pack'd they stand, that once so fiercely hated,
And hardy bones, that to the death contended,
Are lying cross'd,--to lie for ever, fated.
What held...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 57] MADRIGALE II. Perchè al viso d' Amor portava insegna. A LOVE JOURNEY—DANGER IN THE PATH—HE TURNS BACK. Bright in whose face Love's conquering ensign stream'd,A foreign fair so won me, young and vain,That of her sex all others worthless seem'd:Her as I follow'd o'er the verdant plain,Read more of this...
by
Hafez
I said, ‘Thou knowest, O all-knowing Friend,
My trouble for thee’. He said ‘Speak not so:
Thy sorrow came; thy sorrow too shall go.’
I said, ‘O light of Truth, when wilt thou spend
Thy radiance?’ Answer heard I, ‘It may be
This will not alway be denied to thee.’
I said, ‘O Merciful, when wilt to me
Show mercy?’ He replied ‘Till that time is
Endure thou...Read more of this...
by
William Matthews
Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
The small dogs look at the big dogs;
They observe unwieldy dimensions
And curious imperfections of odor.
Here is the formal male group:
The young men look upon their seniors,
They consider the elderly mind
And observe its inexplicable correlations.
Said Tsin-Tsu:
It is only in small dogs and the young
That we find minute observation...Read more of this...
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