Famous Syllable Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Syllable poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous syllable poems. These examples illustrate what a famous syllable poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped Freight
Of a delivered syllable
'Twould crumble with the weight....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
To tell the Beauty would decrease
To state the Spell demean --
There is a syllable-less Sea
Of which it is the sign --
My will endeavors for its word
And fails, but entertains
A Rapture as of Legacies --
Of introspective Mines --...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Words go on travelling from voice
to voice while the phones are still
and the wires hum in the cold. Now
and then dark winter birds settle
slowly on the crossbars, where huddled
they caw out their loneliness. Except
for them the March world is white
and barely alive. The train to Providence
moans somewhere near the end
of...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Patchen
Speak softly; sun going down
Out of sight. Come near me now.
Dear dying fall of wings as birds
complain against the gathering dark...
Exaggerate the green blood in grass;
the music of leaves scraping space;
Multiply the stillness by one sound;
by one syllable of your name...
And all that is little is soon giant,
all that is rare grows in common beauty
To rest with my mouth...Read more of this...
by
Octavio Paz
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
So on the seventh day
The serpent rested,
God came up to him.
"I've invented a new game," he said.
The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper.
But God said: "You see this apple?"
I squeeze it and look-cider."
The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark.
Adam drank and said: "Be my god."
Eve drank and...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Love's stricken "why"
Is all that love can speak --
Built of but just a syllable
The hugest hearts that break....Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
When you were there, and you, and you,
Happiness crowned the night; I too,
Laughing and looking, one of all,
I watched the quivering lamplight fall
On plate and flowers and pouring tea
And cup and cloth; and they and we
Flung all the dancing moments by
With jest and glitter. Lip and eye
Flashed on the glory, shone and...Read more of this...
by
William Bronk
What we are? We say we want to become
what we are or what we have an intent to be.
We read the possibilities, or try.
We get to some. We think we know how to read.
We recognize a word, here and there,
a syllable: male, it says perhaps,
or female, talent -- look what you could do
or love, it says, love is...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.
God who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, "Sit aloof;"
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,—
Ever...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the gray hills with...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
GRANDMOTHER's mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.
On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,--
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Robin for the Crumb
Returns no syllable
But long records the Lady's name
In Silver Chronicle....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Some deem I'm gentle, some I'm kind:
It may be so,--I cannot say.
I know I have a simple mind
And see things in a simple way;
And like a child I love to play.
I love to toy with pretty words
And syllable them into rhyme;
To make them sing like sunny birds
In happy droves with silver chime,
In dulcet groves in summer time.
I pray, with...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.
It means treasury, but it is just a place
where words congregate with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home,...Read more of this...
by
Richard Crashaw
I sing the Name which None can say
But touch’t with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
The Name of All our Lives and Loves.
Hearken, And Help, ye holy Doves!
The high-born Brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissefull Light,
The Heirs Elect of Love; whose Names belong
Unto The everlasting life of Song;
All ye wise...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets
Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail
Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china,
Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool
Of...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
For Jeremy Reed
Rejection doesn’t lead me to dejection
But to inspiration via irritation
Or at least to a bit of naughty new year wit-
Oh isn’t it a shame my poetry’s not tame
Like Rupert’s or Jay’s - I never could
Get into their STRIDE just to much pride
To lick the arses of the poetry-of-earthers
Or the sad lady who runs KATABASIS from the back
Of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Unit, like Death, for Whom?
True, like the Tomb,
Who tells no secret
Told to Him --
The Grave is strict --
Tickets admit
Just two -- the Bearer --
And the Borne --
And seat -- just One --
The Living -- tell --
The Dying -- but a Syllable --
The Coy Dead -- None --
No Chatter -- here -- no tea --
So Babbler, and Bohea -- stay...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
When Memory is full
Put on the perfect Lid --
This Morning's finest syllable
Presumptuous Evening said --...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
Free of memory and of hope,
limitless, abstract, almost future,
the dead man is not a dead man: he is death.
Like the God of the mystics,
of Whom anything that could be said must be denied,
the dead one, alien everywhere,
is but the ruin and absence of the world.
We rob him of everything,
we leave him not so much as a color or syllable:
here,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
I
This is the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
II
This is the Push from Waterloo
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
III
These are the wealthy uncles -- two,
Part of the Push from Waterloo
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
IV
This is the...Read more of this...
by
Edward Hirsch
Lay these words into the dead man's grave
next to the almonds and black cherries---
tiny skulls and flowering blood-drops, eyes,
and Thou, O bitterness that pillows his head.
Lay these words on the dead man's eyelids
like eyebrights, like medieval trumpet flowers
that will flourish, this time, in the shade.
Let the beheaded tulips glisten with rain.
Lay these words on his drowned eyelids
like coins or...Read more of this...
by
John Montague
My love, while we talked
They removed the roof. Then
They started on the walls,
Panes of glass uprooting
From timber, like teeth.
But you spoke calmly on,
Your example of courtesy
Compelling me to reply.
When we reached the last
Syllable, nearly accepting
Our positions, I saw that
The floorboards were gone:
It was clay we stood upon....Read more of this...
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