Famous Stringed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Echoes

...
With the world's strong-armed warriors and recite 
The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight; 
Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope. 
But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave 
O'erbrowed by rocks, a wild voice wooed and heard, 
Answering at once from heaven and earth and wave, 
Lending elf-music to thy harshest word, 
Misprize thou not these echoes that belong 
To one in love with solitude and song....Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma


Hélas

...To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and fro...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Helas!

...To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which can winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
Surely there was a time I might have trod
The sunlit heights, and from life's ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hold Hard These Ancient Minutes In The Cuckoos Month

...n, to the summer's game.

And now the horns of England, in the sound of shape,
Summon your snowy horsemen, and the four-stringed hill,
Over the sea-gut loudening, sets a rock alive;
Hurdles and guns and railings, as the boulders heave,
Crack like a spring in vice, bone breaking April,
Spill the lank folly's hunter and the hard-held hope.

Down fall four padding weathers on the scarlet lands,
Stalking my children's faces with a tail of blood,
Time, in a rider rising, from the ...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

Hymn on the Morning of Christs Nativity

...sweet 
Their hearts and ears did greet, 
 As never was by mortall finger strook, 
Divinely-warbled voice 
Answering the stringed noise, 
 As all their souls in blisfull rapture took 
The Air such pleasure loth to lose, 
With thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close. 

Nature that heard such sound 
Beneath the hollow round 
 Of Cynthia's seat, the Airy region thrilling, 
Now was almost won 
To think her part was don, 
 And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Life and Art

...bling lips express 
The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. 
Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain 
One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness. 
But when the dream is done, the pulses fail, 
The day's illusion, with the day's sun set, 
He, lonely in the twilight, sees the pale 
Divine Consoler, featured like Regret, 
Enter and clasp his hand and kiss his brow. 
Then his lips ope to sing--as mine do now....Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma

Sonnet 25 - A heavy heart Beloved have I borne

...r to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine do...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Beauty of Death XIV

...of Death has written on my forehead. 


Let me rest in the arms of Slumber, for my open eyes are tired; 
Let the silver-stringed lyre quiver and soothe my spirit; 
Weave from the harp and lute a veil around my withering heart. 


Sing of the past as you behold the dawn of hope in my eyes, for 
It's magic meaning is a soft bed upon which my heart rests. 


Dry your tears, my friends, and raise your heads as the flowers 
Raise their crowns to greet the dawn. 
Look at the bride ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

The House Of Clouds

...showers of summer,
Close, but soundless,---glorified
When the sunbeams come here;
Wandering harpers, harping on
Waters stringed for such,---
Drawing colours, for a tune,
With a vibrant touch.

Bring a shadow green and still
From the chestnut forest,
Bring a purple from the hill,
When the heat is sorest;
Spread them out from wall to wall,
Carpet-wove around,---
Whereupon the foot shall fall
In light instead of sound.

Bring the fantasque cloudlets home
From the noontide zenit...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

The Hymn

...usick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blisfull rapture took:
The Air such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close. 

X

Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
of Cynthia's seat the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don
And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...in bowls they bore
To lips that writhed but drank with eagerness.
And some played curious viols, shaped like hearts
And stringed with loves, to light and ribald tunes,
And other hands slit throats with knives,
And others patted all the painted cheeks
In reach, and others stole what others had
Unseen, or boldly snatched at alien rights,
And some o' the heads did vie in a foolish game
OF WHICH COULD HOLD ITSELF THE HIGHEST, and
OF WHICH ONE'S NECK WAS STIFF THE LONGEST TIME.
An...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon

...n
That the Man in the Moon himself came down
one night to drink his fill.

The ostler has a tipsy cat
that plays a five-stringed fiddle;
And up and down he saws his bow
Now squeaking high, now purring low,
now sawing in the middle.

The landlord keeps a little dog
that is mighty fond of jokes;
When there's good cheer among the guests,
He cocks an ear at all the jests
and laughs until he chokes.

They also keep a hornéd cow
as proud as any queen;
But music turns her head like ...Read more of this...
by Tolkien, J R R

The Old Age Of Queen Maeve

...poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Talked1 of his country and its people, sang
To some stringed instrument none there had seen,
A wall behind his back, over his head
A latticed window. His glance went up at time
As though one listened there, and his voice sank
Or let its meaning mix into the strings.

Maeve the great queen was pacing to and fro,
Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,
In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,
Flick...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer

...,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
That globe itself of hair and bone
That, sewn to me by nerve and brain,
Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib.

My fuses are timed to charge his heart,
He blew like powder to the light
And held a little sabbath with the sun,
But when the stars, assuming shape,
Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep
He drowned his father's magics in a dream.

All issue armoured, of the grave,
The redhaired cancer still alive,
The cataracted eyes t...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan

Yesterday and Today XII

...ored." 

He entered his palace saying, "Everything in life is good; even gold, for it teaches a lesson. Money is like a stringed instrument; he who does not know how to use it properly will hear only discordant music. Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and it enlivens the other who turns it upon his fellow man."...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

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