Famous Spectrum Poems by Famous Poets

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

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How To Paint A Water Lily

...To see the colours of these flies

Rainbow their arcs, spark, or settle
Cooling like beads of molten metal

Through the spectrum. Think what worse
is the pond-bed's matter of course;

Prehistoric bedragoned times
Crawl that darkness with Latin names,

Have evolved no improvements there,
Jaws for heads, the set stare,

Ignorant of age as of hour—
Now paint the long-necked lily-flower

Which, deep in both worlds, can be still
As a painting, trembling hardly at all

Though the d...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Ted


Love Is A Parallax

...to drench real sky.' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
 is our life's whole nemesis. 

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
 about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
 implacably from twelve to one. 

We raise our argu...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Marginalia

...lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn 

With the heather beginning to bud blue

Before September purple, yellow ragwort

Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums

And a lazy bee bumbles by.

A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie,

My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better

Than Diazepan for pan...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

...so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it's how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I ...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

...so
I tell them. I like to give them at least several
reasons to be annoyed with me, it's how they exercise
their skinny spectrum of emotions. Because.
That and cribbage. Often when I return from the club
late at night, weary-laden, weary-winged, washed out,
I can actually hear the nematodes working, sucking
the juices from the living cells of my narcissus.
I have mentioned this to Suzie on several occasions.
Each time she has backed away from me, panic-stricken
when really I ...Read more of this...
by Tate, James


The Black Virgin

...race, 
On all that fear thy light and love thy shadow, 
Turn thou the mercy of thy midnight face. 

This also is in thy spectrum; this dark ray; 
Beyond the deepening purples of thy Lent 
Darker than violet vestment; dark and secret 
Clot of old night yet cloud of heaven sent: 
As the black moon of some divine eclipse, 
As the black sun of the Apocalypse, 
As the black flower that blessed Odysseus back 
From witchcraft; and he saw again the ships. 

In all thy thousand images...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

...ed.
Striated, powdered, freckled, long or short.
They bloomed, and seemed strange wonder-moths new-fledged,
Born of the spectrum wedded to a flame.
The shade within the arbour made a port
To o'ertaxed eyes, its still, green twilight rest became.

33
Her knitting-needles clicked and Christine talked,
This child matured to woman unaware,
The first time left alone. Now dreams once balked
Found utterance. Max thought her very fair.
Beneath her cap her ornaments shone gold,
And pu...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Science Of The Night

...stress of
To whom you speed the pleasure of your art?
As through a glass that magnifies my loss
I see the lines of your spectrum shifting red,
The universe expanding, thinning out,
Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast apart.

From hooded powers and from abstract flight
I summon you, your person and your pride.
Fall to me now from outer space,
Still fastened desperately to my side;
Through gulfs of streaming air
Bring me the mornings of the milky ways
Down to my threshold in you...Read more of this...
by Kunitz, Stanley

Victory

...iving to your side
—an intimate collusion—
packed in the trunk my bag of foils for fencing with pain
glasses of varying spectrum for sun or fog or sun-struck
 rain or bitterest night my sack of hidden
poetries, old glue shredding from their spines

my time exposure of the Leonids
 over Joshua Tree

As if we're going to win this O because

•

If you have a sister I am not she
nor your mother nor you my daughter
nor are we lovers or any kind of couple
 except in the intensive c...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

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