Famous Spanish Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Spanish Lady's Love

by Victor Hugo
 DONNA SOL to HERNANI. 
 
 ("Nous partirons demain.") 
 
 {HERNANI, ACT I.} 


 To mount the hills or scaffold, we go to-morrow: 
 Hernani, blame me not for this my boldness. 
 Art thou mine evil genius or mine angel? 
 I know not, but I am thy slave. Now hear me: 
 Go where thou wilt,...Read more of this...

Sea Shell

by Amy Lowell
 Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing me a song, O Please!
A song of ships, and sailor men,
And parrots, and tropical trees,
Of islands lost in the Spanish Main
Which no man ever may find again,
Of fishes and corals under the waves,
And seahorses stabled in great green caves.
Sea Shell, Sea Shell,
Sing of the things you know so well....Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

Andy the Night-Watch

by Edgar Lee Masters
 In my Spanish cloak,
And old slouch hat,
And overshoes of felt,
And Tyke, my faithful dog,
And my knotted hickory cane,
I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern
From door to door on the square,
As the midnight stars wheeled round,
And the bell in the steeple murmured
From the blowing of the wind;
And the weary steps of old Doc Hill
Sounded like one who walks in sleep,
And...Read more of this...

Toledo

by Robert William Service
 Three widows of the Middle West
We're grimly chewing gum;
The Lido chef a quail had dressed
With garlic and with rum,
And they were painfully oppressed
For they had eaten some.

Said One: "This famed El Greco guy
Gives me the blessed pip;
Them Saints look like they want to die -
Let's give our guide the slip,
And in some bodega close by
A glass of vino sip."

Said...Read more of this...

Spanish Peasant

by Robert William Service
 We have no aspiration vain
For paradise Utopian,
And here in our sun-happy Spain,
Though man exploit his fellow man,
To high constraint we humbly yield,
And turn from politics to toil,
Content to till a kindly field
And bring forth bounty from the soil.

They tell us wars will never cease;
They sy the world is out of joint.
How well we Know! But peace is peace
Even imposed...Read more of this...

Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister

by Robert Browning
 I.

Gr-r-r---there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims---
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

II.

At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of...Read more of this...

The Revenge - A Ballad of the Fleet

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, 
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 
'Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted' 
Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; 
But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear, 
And the half my men...Read more of this...

After Spanish Proverb

by Dorothy Parker
 Oh, mercifullest one of all,
Oh, generous as dear,
None lived so lowly, none so small,
Thou couldst withhold thy tear:

How swift, in pure compassion,
How meek in charity,
To offer friendship to the one
Who begged but love of thee!

Oh, gentle word, and sweetest said!
Oh, tender hand, and first
To hold the warm, delicious bread
To lips burned black of thirst....Read more of this...

Spanish Women

by Robert William Service
 The Spanish women don't wear slacks
Because their hips are too enormous.
'Tis true each bulbous bosom lacks
No inspiration that should warm us;
But how our ardor seems to freeze
When we behold their bulgy knees!

Their starry eyes and dusky hair,
Their dazzling teeth in smile so gracious,
I love, but oh I wish they were
Not so confoundedly curvacious.
I'm sure I would prefer them willowy,
Instead...Read more of this...

Agincourt

by Michael Drayton
 FAIR stood the wind for France 
When we our sails advance, 
Nor now to prove our chance 
Longer will tarry; 
But putting to the main, 
At Caux, the mouth of Seine, 
With all his martial train 
Landed King Harry. 

And taking many a fort, 
Furnish'd in warlike sort, 
Marcheth tow'rds Agincourt 
In happy hour; 
Skirmishing day by day 
With...Read more of this...

A Ballad of John Silver

by John Masefield
 We were schooner-rigged and rakish, 
with a long and lissome hull, 
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; 
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each...Read more of this...

Spanish

by Carl Sandburg
 FASTEN black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink....Read more of this...

two spanish poems

by Rg Gregory
 (a) orihuela-time

the sun in orihuela calms the dust
and people glide about the streets at ease
(problems left indoors to cool themselves)
time has grown fat and no one cares
to pin each minute to its proper place
the day is long tomorrow's not yet real

doves and old men occupy the squares
nattering to each other in such tongues
that take the clock away from what...Read more of this...

The Haunted Beach

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Upon a lonely desart Beach
Where the white foam was scatter'd,
A little shed uprear'd its head
Though lofty Barks were shatter'd.
The Sea-weeds gath'ring near the door,
A sombre path display'd;
And, all around, the deaf'ning roar,
Re-echo'd on the chalky shore,
By the green billows made.

Above, a jutting cliff was seen
Where Sea Birds hover'd, craving;
And all around, the craggs were bound
With weeds--for ever waving.
And here...Read more of this...

The Captain

by John McCrae
 Here all the day she swings from tide to tide,
Here all night long she tugs a rusted chain,
A masterless hulk that was a ship of pride,
Yet unashamed: her memories remain.

It was Nelson in the `Captain', Cape St. Vincent far alee,
With the `Vanguard' leading s'uth'ard in the haze --
Little Jervis and the Spaniards and the fight that was to be,
Twenty-seven...Read more of this...

Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

by Robert Browning
 An imaginary composer.]

I.

Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---

II.

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up...Read more of this...

Spanish Dancer

by Rainer Maria Rilke
As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
flickering tongues before it bursts into flame:
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,
her dance begins to flicker in the dark room.

And all at once it is completely fire.

One upward glance and she ignites her hair
and, whirling faster and faster, fans her dress
into passionate flames, till it becomes a furnace
from which, like startled...Read more of this...

The Capture of Havana

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1762 that France and Spain
Resolved, allied together, to crush Britain;
But the British Army sailed from England in May,
And arrived off Havana without any delay. 

And the British Army resolved to operate on land,
And the appearance of the British troops were really grand;
And by the Earl of Albemarle the British troops were commanded,
All eager for to...Read more of this...

The Turkish Captive

by Victor Hugo
 ("Si je n'était captive.") 
 
 {IX., July, 1828.} 


 Oh! were I not a captive, 
 I should love this fair countree; 
 Those fields with maize abounding, 
 This ever-plaintive sea: 
 I'd love those stars unnumbered, 
 If, passing in the shade, 
 Beneath our walls I saw not 
 The spahi's sparkling blade. 
 
...Read more of this...

Raising The Flag

by Robert William Service
 Behold! the Spanish flag they're raising
Before the Palace courtyard gate;
To watch its progress bold and blazing
Two hundred patient people wait.
Though bandsmen play the anthem bravely
The silken emblem seems to lag;
Two hundred people watch it gravely -
But only two salute the flag.

Fine-clad and arrogant of manner
The twain are like dark dons of old,
And to that high and haughty banner
Uplifted palms...Read more of this...

The Letter

by Charlotte Bronte
 What is she writing? Watch her now, 
How fast her fingers move !
How eagerly her youthful brow 
Is bent in thought above !
Her long curls, drooping, shade the light, 
She puts them quick aside,
Nor knows, that band of crystals bright, 
Her hasty touch untied.
It slips adown her silken dress, 
Falls glittering at her feet;
Unmarked it falls, for she no...Read more of this...

Spanish Men

by Robert William Service
 The Men of Seville are, they say,
The laziest of Spain.
Consummate artists in delay,
Allergical to strain;
Fr if you have a job for them,
And beg them to be spry,
They only look at you with phlegm:
"Mañana," they reply.

The Men of gay Madrid, I'm told,
Siesta's law revere;
The custom is so ages old,
And to tradition dear;
So if you want a job done soon,
And shyly...Read more of this...

The Spanish Needle

by Claude McKay
 Lovely dainty Spanish needle 
With your yellow flower and white, 
Dew bedecked and softly sleeping, 
Do you think of me to-night? 

Shadowed by the spreading mango, 
Nodding o'er the rippling stream, 
Tell me, dear plant of my childhood, 
Do you of the exile dream? 

Do you see me by the brook's side 
Catching crayfish 'neath the stone, 
As you...Read more of this...

Intima (Intimate)

by Delmira Agustini
Spanish    Yo te diré los sueños de mi vidaEn lo más hondo de la noche azul…Mi alma desnuda temblará en tus manos,Sobre tus hombros pesará mi cruz.Las cumbres de la vida son tan solas,Tan solas y tan frías! Y encerréMis ansias en mí misma, y toda enteraComo una torre de marfil me alcé.Hoy abriré a tu alma el gran misterio;Tu alma...Read more of this...

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