Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Summon Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Yeats, William Butler
...My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
"Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees
I...Read more of this...



by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...cherubim o'er us,
The ovum was human from which you were hatched.

No will of your own with its puny compulsion
Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre;
It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl's convulsion
And touches the brain with a finger of fire.

So perhaps, after all, it's as well to he quiet
If you've nothing you think is worth saying in prose,
As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet
To the critics, by publishing, as you propose.

But it's all of no us...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...This is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
L...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...ll of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were t...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d I been holpen half as well 
By this King Arthur as by thee today, 
Then beast and man had had their share of me: 
But summon here before us yet once more 
Ulfius, and Brastias, and Bedivere.' 

Then, when they came before him, the King said, 
`I have seen the cuckoo chased by lesser fowl, 
And reason in the chase: but wherefore now 
Do these your lords stir up the heat of war, 
Some calling Arthur born of Gorlos, 
Others of Anton? Tell me, ye yourselves, 
Hold ye this A...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...s us from our homes ethereal;
And what our duties there: to nightly call
Vesper, the beauty-crest of summer weather;
To summon all the downiest clouds together
For the sun's purple couch; to emulate
In ministring the potent rule of fate
With speed of fire-tailed exhalations;
To tint her pallid cheek with bloom, who cons
Sweet poesy by moonlight: besides these,
A world of other unguess'd offices.
Anon they wander'd, by divine converse,
Into Elysium; vieing to rehearse
Each...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave u...Read more of this...

by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...enturies old. 

I lifted my last voice and cried   
I cried to heaven as I died: 
O turn me to the Golden Horde   
Summon all western nations   
Toward the Rising Sun. 

From reeking West whose day is done,   
Who stink and stagger in their dung   
Toward Africa, China, India’s strand   
Where Kenya and Himalaya stand   
And Nile and Yang-tze roll: 
Turn every yearning face of man. 

Come with us, dark America: 
The scum of Europe battened here   
And drowned...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e that, 
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence. 
Through the thick night I hear the trumpet blow: 
They summon me their King to lead mine hosts 
Far down to that great battle in the west, 
Where I must strike against the man they call 
My sister's son--no kin of mine, who leagues 
With Lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights, 
Traitors--and strike him dead, and meet myself 
Death, or I know not what mysterious doom. 
And thou remaining here wilt lea...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...e proud to have beauty named their king; 
Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking, 
Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite! 
The Poet today, when he would convey 
This native grandeur, would not be swept away 
By man free and woman natural, 
But would feel darkness envelop his soul 
Before this black tableau full of loathing. 
O malformed monsters crying for clothing! 
O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise! 
O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size, 
Chi...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...would us kill. 
Tell him our ships unrigged, our forts unmanned, 
Our money spent; else 'twere at his command. 
Summon him therefore of his word and prove 
To move him out of pity, if not love; 
Pray him to make De Witt and Ruyter cease, 
And whip the Dutch unless they'll hold their peace. 
But Louis was of memory but dull 
And to St Albans too undutiful, 
Nor word nor near relation did revere, 
But asked him bluntly for his character. 
The gravelled Count did...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...May-pole of sedition?
Like Babel, rear'd by bawling throngs,
With like confusion too of tongues,
To point at heaven and summon down
The thunders of the British crown?
Say, will this paltry Pole secure
Your forfeit heads from Gage's power?
Attack'd by heroes brave and crafty,
Is this to stand your ark of safety;
Or driven by Scottish laird and laddie,
Think ye to rest beneath its shadow?
When bombs, like fiery serpents, fly,
And balls rush hissing through the sky,
Will this vi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...eemest, 
Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; 
Go in thy native innocence, rely 
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all! 
For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine. 
So spake the patriarch of mankind; but Eve 
Persisted; yet submiss, though last, replied. 
With thy permission then, and thus forewarned 
Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words 
Touched only; that our trial, when least sought, 
May find us both perhaps far less prepared, 
The will...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...>
Hope, like a face reflected on the windowpane,
Remote and dim, fosters a myth or dream,
And in that dream, I speak, I summon all
Who are our friends somehow and thus I say:

"Bid the jewellers come with monocles,
Exclaiming, Pure! Intrinsic! Final!
Summon the children eating ice cream
To speak the chill thrill of immediacy.
Call for the acrobats who tumble
The ecstasy of the somersault.
Bid the self-sufficient stars be piercing
In the sublime and inexhaustible blue....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...s and sings,
Let us cry 'All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'

Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, w...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...If to Agriculture I was ordain'd,
4.52 Great labours, sorrows, crosses I sustain'd.
4.53 The early Cock did summon, but in vain,
4.54 My wakeful thoughts up to my painful gain.
4.55 For restless day and night, I'm robb'd of sleep
4.56 By cankered care, who sentinel doth keep.
4.57 My weary breast rest from his toil can find,
4.58 But if I rest, the more distrest my mind.
4.59 If happiness my sordidness hath found,
4.60 'Twas...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...of you be *evil paid;* *dissatisfied*
A Sompnour is a runner up and down
With mandements* for fornicatioun, *mandates, summonses*
And is y-beat at every towne's end."
Then spake our Host; "Ah, sir, ye should be hend* *civil, gentle
And courteous, as a man of your estate;
In company we will have no debate:
Tell us your tale, and let the Sompnour be."
"Nay," quoth the Sompnour, "let him say by me
What so him list; when it comes to my lot,
By God, I shall him quiten* ev...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...g.

     'No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
          Armor's clang or war-steed champing
     Trump nor pibroch summon here
          Mustering clan or squadron tramping.
     Yet the lark's shrill fife may come
          At the daybreak from the fallow,
     And the bittern sound his drum
          Booming from the sedgy shallow.
     Ruder sounds shall none be near,
     Guards nor warders challenge here,
     Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing,
     ...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, 
The light Frank knows its summons well; 
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer! 

'T is past, -- the 'wildering vision dies 
In darkness on my dreaming eyes! 
The forest vanishes in air, 
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; 
I hear the common tread of men, 
And hum of work-day lif...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...e 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 your drowsy eyes;
And by the virtue of your honeyed word
Restore the liquid language of the moon,
That in gold mines of secrecy you delve.
Awake!...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Summon poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs