Famous Shadowy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shadowy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shadowy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shadowy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...world of words: Quiet we call
"Silence"- which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings-
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky:-
"What tho 'in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Linked to a little system, and one sun-
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the e...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.
Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around.
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
A little shallop floating near the shore
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.
It had been long abandoned, for its sides
Gaped wide with many a rift, ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...red vengeance gleaming in them,
And always that unconscionable sorrow
That would not die behind it. Then I caught
The shadowy glimpse of an uplifted arm,
And a moon-flash of metal. That was all.…
“When I believed I was alive again
I was with Asher and The Admiral,
Whom Asher had brought with him for a day
With nature. They had found me when they came;
And there was not much left of me to find.
I had not moved or known that I was there
Since I had seen his eyes and f...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...planned by the monster since the sun’s light
could be seen, until the night was darkening over all,
and that shape of shadowy night would come scurrying,
dark under a dark sky. The troops all rose. (ll. 642-51)
Then that man hailed the other, Hrothgar
to Beowulf, and bid him fair fortune,
ceding him care of the wine-hall, and speaking these words:
“Never have I before yielded up to any man,
ever since I could control hand and shield,
this majestic hall of the Danes...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...the fiend in that festal hall,
when the sheen of the sun they saw no more,
and dusk of night sank darkling nigh,
and shadowy shapes came striding on,
wan under welkin. The warriors rose.
Man to man, he made harangue,
Hrothgar to Beowulf, bade him hail,
let him wield the wine hall: a word he added: --
“Never to any man erst I trusted,
since I could heave up hand and shield,
this noble Dane-Hall, till now to thee.
Have now and hold this house unpeered;
remember thy ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...eart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
XLVII.
A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.
XLVIII.
The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once a...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...tears
Cold as my fears.
"Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: what enamour'd bride,
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,
But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side?
"And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers: the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
'Twas Bacchus and his ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...es, encamped on its borders.
Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where plumelike
Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current,
Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars
Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their margin,
Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans waded.
Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river,
Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens,
Stood the ...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...n—and they say
That seven souls were the first flames that day.
This banquet hall looks an abyss outlined
With shadowy vagueness, though indeed we find
In the far depth upon the table spread
A sudden, strong, and glaring light is shed,
Striking upon the goldsmith's burnished works,
And on the pheasants killed by traitor hawks.
Loaded the table is with viands cold,
Ewers and flagons, all enough of old
To make a love feast. All the napery
Was Fr...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...sure or the general care;
He did not follow what they all pursued,
With hope still baffled, still to be renew'd;
Nor shadowy honour, nor substantial gain,
Nor beauty's preference, and the rival's pain:
Around him some mysterious circle thrown
Repell'd approach, and showed him still alone;
Upon his eye sate something of reproof,
That kept at least frivolity aloof;
And things more timid that beheld him near,
In silence gazed, or whisper'd mutual fear;
And they the wi...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...lest pair; and O!yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Half way up hill this vast sublunar vault,
And from their ivory port the Cherubim,
Forth issuing at the accustomed hour, stood armed
To their night watches in warlike parade;
When Gabriel to his next in power thus spake.
Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the south
With strictest watch; these other wheel the north;
Our circuit meets ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...hat now awake
'Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns
'Full-orbed the moon, and with more pleasing light
'Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain,
'If none regard; Heaven wakes with all his eyes,
'Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire?
'In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
'Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.'
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not;
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I passed through way...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay, --
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed on the landscape far an...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...steel, and trying the edge with his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle, and sets it firmly in the socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,
The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,
The death-howl, the limpsey tum...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...a—ended the quest of the Holy Graal;
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind—extinct;
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the sunrise;
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone—Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed—vanish’d the turrets that Usk reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights—Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad—all
gone—dissolv’d utterly, like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass’d! for us, for ever pass’d! that once so might...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s with checkered dances hover,
The flowery mead, the sunset's light,--
Thus gleams, life's barren pathway over,
Poesy's shadowy world so bright.
In bridal dress ye led us on
Before the terrible Unknown,
Before the inexorable fate,
As in your urns the bones are laid,
With beauteous magic veil ye shade
The chorus dread that cares create.
Thousands of years I hastened through
The boundless realm of vanished time
How sad it seems when left by you--
But where ye linger, how sublim...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ly-
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-
Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-
Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol the violet and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks giga...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...And in my burning bosom dwell?
And canst Thou die that I may live?
And canst Thou pity and forgive?’
Then roll’d the shadowy Man away
From the limbs of Jesus, to make them His prey,
An ever devouring appetite,
Glittering with festering venoms bright;
Crying ‘Crucify this cause of distress,
Who don’t keep the secrets of holiness!
The mental powers by diseases we bind;
But He heals the deaf, the dumb, and the blind.
Whom God has afflicted for secret ends,
He comfort...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...read!
"I engage with the Snark--every night after dark--
In a dreamy delirious fight:
I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,
And I use it for striking a light:
"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
In a moment (of this I am sure),
I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--
And the notion I cannot endure!"
FIT IV.--THE HUNTING.
Fit the fourth.
THE HUNTING.
The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow.
"If only you'd spoken before!
It's excessive...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ld,—and children know,
Instinctive taught, the friend and foe,—
I shuddered at his brow of gloom,
His shadowy plaid and sable plume;
A maiden grown, I ill could bear
His haughty mien and lordly air:
But, if thou join'st a suitor's claim,
In serious mood, to Roderick's name.
I thrill with anguish! or, if e'er
A Douglas knew the word, with fear.
To change such odious theme were best,—
What think'st thou of our st...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
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