Famous Statues Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Statues poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous statues poems. These examples illustrate what a famous statues poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Delmore Schwartz
(With much help from Robert Good, William Shakespeare,
John Milton, and little Catherine Schwartz)
Shall I compare her to a summer play?
She is too clever, too devious, too subtle, too dark:
Her lies are rare, but then she paves the way
Beyond the summer's sway, within the jejune park
Where all souls' aspiration to true nobility
Obliges Statues in the Frieze of Death
And...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:
Is it less strange, the prodigal should...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
NOT thine where marble-still and white
Old statues share the tempered light
And mock the uneven modern flight,
But in the stream
Of daily sorrow and delight
To seek a theme.
I too, O friend, have steeled my heart
Boldly to choose the better part,
To leave the beaten ways of art,
And wholly free
To dare, beyond the scanty chart,
The deeper sea.
All vain restrictions left behind,
Frail bark! I...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank
their pools of shadow from an older sky,
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye."
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
49
Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation's nakedness
Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
A light of laughing flowers along the grass...Read more of this...
by
Anais Nin
"Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
.
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
.
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
.
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
.
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
.
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
.
The loud vociferations of the street
.
Become an undistinguishable roar.
.
So, as I...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Beautiful city of Edinburgh, most wonderful to be seen,
With your ancient palace of Holyrood and Queen's Park Green,
And your big, magnificent, elegant New College,
Where people from all nations can be taught knowledge.
The New College of Edinburgh is certainly very grand
Which I consider to be an honour to fair Scotland,
Because it's the biggest in the world, without any doubt,
And...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Oh tell me not of the lands so old
Where the Orient treasures its hills of gold,
And the rivers lie in the sun's bright rays
Forever singing the old world's praise.
Nor proudly boast of the gardens grand
That spring to earth at a king's command;
There are treasures here in the far great West
That rival the hills on the Orient's crest.
Far from the sight...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Pythagoras planned it. Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That...Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,
Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting
Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring...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 sense. 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 panth, hos eni troie
Caught in...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth;...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Matelôts, vous déploirez les voiles.")
{XVI., May 5, 1839.}
Ye mariners! ye mariners! each sail to the breeze unfurled,
In joy or sorrow still pursue your course around the world;
And when the stars next sunset shine, ye anxiously will gaze
Upon the shore, a friend or foe, as the windy quarter lays....Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Amis! ennui nous tue.")
{Bk. IV. xv., March, 1825.}
Aweary unto death, my friends, a mood by wise abhorred,
Come to the novel feast I spread, thrice-consul, Nero, lord,
The Caesar, master of the world, and eke of harmony,
Who plays the harp of many strings, a chief of minstrelsy.
My...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
Ezra Pound
"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
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 sense. Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
O CHIEF director of the growing race,
Of Rome the glory and of Rome the grace,
Me, O Quintilian, may you not forgive
Before from labour I make haste to live?
Some burn to gather wealth, lay hands on rule,
Or with white statues fill the atrium full.
The talking hearth, the rafters sweet with smoke,
Live fountains and rough grass, my line invoke:
A sturdy slave,...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
XII. — EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents...Read more of this...
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
IHe disappeared in the dead of winter:The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,And snow disfigured the public statues;The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.What instruments we have agreeThe day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illnessThe wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;By...Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
Unmanageable as history: these
Followers of Tammuz to the land
That offered no return, where dust
Grew thick on every bolt and door. And so the world
Chilled, and the women wept, tore at their hair.
Yet, in the skies, a goddess governed Sirius, the Dog,
Who shines alike on mothers, lesbians, and whores.
What are we governed by? Dido and Carrie
Chapman Catt arrange themselves as...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass,...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Beautiful city of Edinburgh!
Where the tourist can drown his sorrow
By viewing your monuments and statues fine
During the lovely summer-time.
I'm sure it will his spirits cheer
As Sir Walter Scott's monument he draws near,
That stands in East Prince's Street
Amongst flowery gardens, fine and neat.
And Edinburgh Castle is magnificent to be seen
With its beautiful walks and trees so green,
Which seems like...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth;...Read more of this...
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