Famous Substance Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Substance poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous substance poems. These examples illustrate what a famous substance poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emma Lazarus
I
As the blind Milton's memory of light,
The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone,
Wroght joys for them surpassing all things known
In our restricted sphere of sound and sight,--
So while the glaring streets of brick and stone
Vix with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night,
I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight
From dismal now...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I. Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn
Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
I like to find
what's not found
at once, but lies
within something of another nature,
in repose, distinct.
Gull feathers of glass, hidden
in white pulp: the bones of squid
which I pull out and lay
blade by blade on the draining board--
tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce
the heart, but fragile, substance
belying design. Or a fruit, mamey,
cased in rough brown peel, the flesh
rose-amber, and the...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather.
But the old fever seizes me to-day,
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather.
I have given up myself to every urge,
With not a care of precious powers spent,
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge,
To soothe...Read more of this...
by
John Williams
In every presence there is absence.
When we're together, the spaces between
Threaten to enclose our bodies
And isolate our spirits.
The mirror reflects what we are not,
And we wonder if our mate
Suspects a fatal misreading
Of our original text,
Not to mention the dreaded subtext.
Reality, we fear, mocks appearance.
Or is trapped in a hall of mirrors
Where infinite regress prevents
A grateful egress. That is,
We can...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
There is substance beyond substance,
A mind beyond matter;
It grows from itself,
Follows its own path
Fed only by the desire to live.
That's how matter is born,
How the first poet sings the shamanic song,
How he romances nothingness
With the flower of the mind
Springing out from its source.
...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year;
The one...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath, everyone, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring and foison of the year,
The one doth...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Every angel is terrifying. And yet alas
I invoked you almost deadly birds of the soul
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
As loving hind that (hartless) wants her deer,
Scuds through the woods and fern with hark'ning ear,
Perplext, in every bush and nook doth pry,
Her dearest deer, might answer ear or eye;
So doth my anxious soul, which now doth miss
A dearer dear (far dearer heart) than this.
Still wait with doubts, and hopes, and failing eye,...Read more of this...
by
Richard Brautigan
La voyageuse qui traverse les Halles à la tombée de l'été
Marchait sur la pointe des pieds
Le désespoir roulait au ciel ses grands arums si beaux
Et dans le sac à main il y avait mon rêve ce flacon de sels
Que seule a respiré la marraine de Dieu
Les torpeurs se déployaient comme la buée
Au Chien qui fume
Ou venaient d'entrer le pour...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
i
i shall die yearning
a hand
reaching out to
a face that isn't there
a face
seeking a hand
a stone
leaving its mountain-
wall in a wind
anxious to be a bird
a bird
crying to be a wall
ii
north wales
the goat pisses
the hawk hangs
the mountain leans forward out of the mist
iii
on this hill
between the stone wind
and the wall of stones
i am a hollow
scooped out by the sun
my substance dropped
over...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHO is that goddess to whom men should pray,
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named with scorn
Calling its holy substance common clay.
Yet from this so despised earth was made
The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed
Their generations with a light caress,
And from some image of...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
QUICKSAND years that whirl me I know not whither,
Your schemes, politics, fail—lines give way—substances mock and elude me;
Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess’d Soul, eludes not;
One’s-self must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all
is
sure;
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life—what at last finally remains?
When shows break up, what...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;
The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;
The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;
Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles
Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:
When I think on this and that here I stand,
The...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
THY bosom is endeared with all hearts
Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead:
And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead!--which now appear
But things removed that hidden in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
There is a pain -- so utter --
It swallows substance up --
Then covers the Abyss with Trance --
So Memory can step
Around -- across -- upon it --
As one within a Swoon --
Goes safely -- where an open eye --
Would drop Him -- Bone by Bone....Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
A Story of Christmas Eve.
Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,
Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --
Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Had I but known yesterday,
Helen, you could discharge the ache
Out of the cloud;
Had I known yesterday you could take
The turgid electric ache away,
Drink it up with your proud
White body, as lovely white lightning
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,
I might have hated you, Helen.
But since my limbs gushed full of fire,
Since from out...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
Man and I are sweethearts
He craves me and I long for him,
But alas! Between us has appeared
A rival who brings us misery.
She is cruel and demanding,
Possessing empty lure.
Her name is Substance.
She follows wherever we go
And watches like a sentinel, bringing
Restlessness to my lover.
I ask for my beloved in the...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.
I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!
Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands,
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased
when...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would...Read more of this...
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