Famous Styx Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Adela

...d is I, in the gondola.

They twist, they twine, these white and black canals,
Now stark with lamplight, now a reach of Styx.
Even as out love - raging wild animals
Suddenly hoisted on the crucifix
To radiate seraphic coronals,
Flowers, flowers - O let our light and darkness mix,
Adela,
Goddess and beast with me in the gondola!

Come! though your hair be a cascade of fire,
Your lips twin snakes, your tongue the lightning flash,
Your teeth God's grip on life, your face His lyr...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister


Bacchus

...f the earth to 'scape. 5 

Let its grapes the morn salute 
From a nocturnal root  
Which feels the acrid juice 
Of Styx and Erebus; 
And turns the woe of Night 10 
By its own craft to a more rich delight. 

We buy ashes for bread; 
We buy diluted wine; 
Give me of the true  
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curl'd 15 
Among the silver hills of heaven 
Draw everlasting dew; 
Wine of wine  
Blood of the world  
Form of forms and mould of statures 20 
That I int...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Death and the Maiden

...BARCAROLE ON THE STYX


Fair youth with the rose at your lips, 
A riddle is hid in your eyes; 
Discard conversational quips, 
Give over elaborate disguise.

The rose's funeral breath 
Confirms by intuitive fears; 
To prove your devotion, Sir Death, 
Avaunt for a dozen of years.

But do not forget to array 
Your terror in juvenile charms; 
I shall deeply regret my delay 
If I...Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor

Dithyramb

...ebe, the chalice
Fill full to the brim!
Steep his eyes--steep his eyes in the bath of the dew,
Let him dream, while the Styx is concealed from his view,
That the life of the gods is for him!"

It murmurs, it sparkles,
The fount of delight;
The bosom grows tranquil--
The eye becomes bright....Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

Hero And Leander

...e dull;--
That love which o'er the furrowed land
Bowed--tame beneath young Jason's hand--
The fiery-snorting bull!
Yes, Styx itself, that ninefold flows,
Has love, the fearless, ventured o'er,
And back to daylight borne the bride,
From Pluto's dreary shore!

What marvel then that wind and wave,
Leander doth but burn to brave,
When love, that goads him, guides!
Still when the day, with fainter glimmer,
Wanes pale--he leaps, the daring swimmer,
Amid the darkening tides;
With lu...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von


Hymn to Demeter by Homer

...your heedlessness you have wrought folly past healing; for -- be witness the oath of the gods, the relentless water of Styx -- I would have made your dear son deathless and unaging all his days and would have bestowed on him ever-lasting honour, but now he can in no way escape death and the fates. Yet shall unfailing honour always rest upon him, because he lay upon my knees and slept in my arms. But, as the years move round and when he is in his prime, the sons of the Eleusi...Read more of this...
by Homer,

MFingal - Canto IV

...,
She feels at length with trembling heart,
Her foes have found her mortal part.
As famed Achilles, dipp'd by Thetis
In Styx, as sung in antient ditties,
Grew all case-harden'd o'er, like steel,
Invulnerable, save his heel;
And laugh'd at swords and spears and squibs,
And all diseases, but the kibes;
Yet met at last his deadly wound,
By Paris' arrow nail'd to ground:
So Britain's boasted strength deserts
In these her empire's utmost skirts,
Removed beyond her fierce impressio...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

On John Dawson Butler Of C.C

...our drippings fall
In trickling streams: make waste more prodigal
Than when our drinke is badde, that John may flote
To Styx in beere, and lift upp Charon's boate
With wholesome waves. And as our conduits run
With clarett at a Coronation,
So lett our channells flow with single tiffe,
For John, I hope, is crownde: take off your whiffe,
Yee men of Rosemary: Now drinke off all,
Remembring 'tis a Butler's funeral:
Had he bin master of good double beere,
My life for his, John Daws...Read more of this...
by Strode, William

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...march, along the banks 
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge 
Into the burning lake their baleful streams-- 
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; 
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep; 
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud 
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton, 
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. 
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, 
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks 
Forthwith his former state and...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Ruins of Rome by Bellay

...gns of your premptuous boasts 
Which now their dusty relics do bewray; 
Tell me ye spirits (sith the darksome river 
Of Styx not passable to souls returning, 
Enclosing you in thrice three wards forever, 
Do not restrain your images still mourning) 
Tell me then (for perhaps some one of you 
Yet here above him secretly doth hide) 
Do ye not feel your torments to accrue, 
When ye sometimes behold the ruin'd pride 
Of these old Roman works built with your hands, 
Now to become ...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Sonnet XLV

...SPAN class=i0>But me enshrine where your best joys are placed,So that I fear not the grim bark of Styx,If with such prayer of mine pride do not mix. Macgregor....Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Sonnet XXXIX: Some When in Rhyme

...vocate on Hell, 
And Fates and Furies with their woes acquaint. 
Elysium is too high a seat for me; 
I will not come in Styx or Phlegethon; 
The thrice-three Muses but too wanton be; 
Like they that lust, I care not; I will none. 
Spiteful Erinnys frights me with her looks; 
My manhood dares not with foul Ate mell; 
I quake to look on Hecate's charming books; 
I still fear bugbears in Apollo's cell. 
I pass not for Minerva nor Astraea; 
Only I call on my divine Idea....Read more of this...
by Drayton, Michael

Sonnet XXXVI: Thou Purblind Boy

...whose eyes have wounded me, 
And suffer'd her to glory in my wrack, 
Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee: 
By hellish Styx, by which the Thund'rer swears, 
By thy fair mother's unavoided power, 
By Hecate's names, by Proserpine's sad tears 
When she was rapt to the infernal bower, 
By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires 
Spent on thine alters flaming up to heav'n, 
By all true lovers' sighs, vows, and desires, 
By all the wounds that ever thou hast giv'n: 
I conjure thee b...Read more of this...
by Drayton, Michael

Sonnet XXXVIII

...very sainted traceSeeks, in bright realms above, her parent starFrom grisly Styx and black Avernus far. Macgregor....Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Bistro Styx

...She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,

I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite ...Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita

The Complaint Of Ceres

...rom Vertumnus' lavish horn
I take life's seeds to strew below--
And bid the gold that germs the corn
An offering to the Styx to go!
Sad in the earth the seeds I lay--
Laid at thy heart, my child--to be
The mournful tokens which convey
My sorrow and my love to thee!

But, when the hours, in measured dance,
The happy smile of spring restore,
Rife in the sun-god's golden glance
The buried dead revive once more!
The germs that perished to thine eyes,
Within the cold breast of the...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Eleusinian Festival

...etes
Unto every one his rights,--
Landmarks, too, 'tis hers to fix;
And in witness she invites
All the hidden powers of Styx.

And the forge-god, too, is there,
The inventive son of Zeus;
Fashioner of vessels fair
Skilled in clay and brass's use.
'Tis from him the art man knows
Tongs and bellows how to wield;
'Neath his hammer's heavy blows
Was the ploughshare first revealed.

With projecting, weighty spear,
Front of all, Minerva stands,
Lifts her voice so strong and clear,
A...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time

...ish white. 

Zeus, 
Are the halls of heaven broken up 
That you flake down upon me 
Feather-strips of marble? 

Dis and Styx! 
When I stamp my hoof 
The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft 
So that I reel upon two slippery points ...

Fool, to stand here cursing 
When I might be running!...Read more of this...
by Aldington, Richard

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