Famous Supreme Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Supreme poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous supreme poems. These examples illustrate what a famous supreme poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emile Verhaeren
I
Oh, splendour of our joy and our delight,
Woven of gold amid the silken air!
See the dear house among its gables light,
And the green garden, and the orchard there!
Here is the bench with apple-trees o'er head
Whence the light spring is shed.
With touch of petals falling slow and soft;
Here branches luminous take flight aloft,
Hovering, like some bounteous presage, high
Against this landscape's clear...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Oh, you young radicals and dreamers,
You dauntless fledglings
Who pass by my headstone,
Mock not its record of my captaincy in the army
And my faith in God!
They are not denials of each other.
Go by reverently, and read with sober care
How a great people, riding with defiant shouts
The centaur of Revolution,
Spurred and whipped to frenzy,
Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
LO! Victress on the peaks!
Where thou, with mighty brow, regarding the world,
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against thee;)
Out of its countless beleaguering toils, after thwarting them all;
Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee,
Flauntest now unharm’d, in immortal soundness and bloom—lo! in these hours
supreme,
No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee—nor mastery’s...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In this rugged winter when the floating sun founders on the horizon like a heavy wreck, I love to say your name, with its slow, solemn tone, as the clock echoes with the deep strokes of time.
And the more I say it, the more ravished is my voice, so much so that from my lips it descends into my heart...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
O day most calm, most bright
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
Th'endorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time; care's balm and bay:
The week were dark, but for thy light:
Thy torch doth show the way.
The other days and thou
Make up one man; whose face...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
The Baker's Tale
They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice--
They roused him with mustard and cress--
They roused him with jam and judicious advice--
They set him conundrums to guess.
When at length he sat up and was able to speak,
His sad story he offered to tell;
And the Bellman cried "Silence! Not even a shriek!"
And excitedly tingled his bell....Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Supreme my holdings, greater yet my need,
thoughtless I go out. Dawn. Have I my cig's,
my flaskie O,
O crystal cock,-”my kneel has gone to seed,-”
and anybody's blessing? (Blast the MIGs
for making funble so
my tardy readying.) Yes, utter' that.
Anybody's blessing? -”Mr Bones,
you makes too much
démand. I might be 'fording you a hat:
it gonna rain. -”I knew a one of groans
& greed...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
SOFT is the balmy breath of May,
When from the op'ning lids of day
Meek twilight steals; and from its wings
Translucent pearls of ether flings.
MILD is the chaste Moon's languid eye,
When gliding down the dappled sky
She feebly lifts her spangled bow,
Around her glitt'ring darts to throw.
SWEET are the aromatic bowers,
When Night sends...Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there,
a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search
the moral realm and actual conditions for what
needs to be done and to do it: fine, the
best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it
comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then
you see the danger in the effective: better
then an autonomy...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Mother of man's time-travelling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.
Angels and Gods, spirit...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Dainty flowers, like a froth of foam, grew along the borders of our paths; the wind fell and the air seemed to brush your hands and hair with plumes.
The shade was kindly to us as we walked in step beneath the leafage; a child's song reached us from a village, and filled all the infinite.
Our ponds were outspread in their...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THE WINTRY west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXI. Le stelle e 'l cielo e gli elementi a prova. LAURA'S UNPARALLELED BEAUTY AND VIRTUE. The stars, the elements, and Heaven have madeWith blended powers a work beyond compare;All their consenting influence, all their care,To frame one perfect creature lent their aid.Whence Nature views her loveliness display'dWith sun-like...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Il s'est dit tant de fois.")
{III., May, 1830.}
How often have the people said: "What's power?"
Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour
Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream,
Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme—
Austere but just, they contemplate the end
To which the current...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
There is no reason to suppose
Our earth the only one.
'Mid countless constellations cast
A million worlds may be,
With each a God to bless or blast
And steer to destiny.
Just think! A million gods or so
To guide each vital stream,
With over all to boss the show
A Deity...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
A Life Tragedy
A pistol shot rings round and round the world;
In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
Eyes that could smile at death -- could not face shame.
Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
In the bright...Read more of this...
by
Charles Simic
As an ant is powerless
Against a raised boot,
And only has an instant
To have a bright idea or two.
The black boot so polished,
He can see himself
Reflected in it, distorted,
Perhaps made larger
Into a huge monster ant
Shaking his arms and legs
Threateningly?
The boot may be hesitating,
Demurring, having misgivings,
Gathering cobwebs,
Dew?...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.
But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
Well-nigh two thousand years hath Israel
Suffered the scorn of man for love of God;
Endured the outlaw's ban, the yoke, the rod,
With perfect patience. Empires rose and fell,
Around him Nebo was adored and Bel;
Edom was drunk with victory, and trod
On his high places, while the sacred sod
Was desecrated by the infidel.
His faith...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
At the chill high tide of the night,
At the turn of the fluctuant hours,
When the waters of time are at height,
In a vision arose on my sight
The kingdoms of earth and the powers.
In a dream without lightening of eyes
I saw them, children of earth,
Nations and races arise,
Each one after his wise,
Signed with the sign of his birth.
Sound was none...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XII. Quando fra l' altre donne ad ora ad ora. THE BEAUTY OF LAURA LEADS HIM TO THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE SUPREME GOOD. Throned on her angel brow, when Love displaysHis radiant form among all other fair,Far as eclipsed their choicest charms appear,I feel beyond its wont my passion blaze.And...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
To the Almighty on his radiant Throne,
Let endless Hallelujas rise!
Praise Him, ye wondrous Heights to us unknown,
Praise Him, ye Heavens unreach'd by mortal Eyes,
Praise Him, in your degree, ye sublunary Skies!
Praise Him, you Angels that before him bow,
You Creatures of Celestial frame,
Our Guests of old, our wakeful Guardians now,
Praise Him, and...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
NOR judge me light, tho' light at times I seem,
And lightly in the stress of fortune bear
The innumerable flaws of changeful care -
Nor judge me light for this, nor rashly deem
(Office forbid to mortals, kept supreme
And separate the prerogative of God!)
That seaman idle who is borne abroad
To the far haven by the favouring stream.
Not he alone that to contrarious...Read more of this...
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