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Famous Syllables Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...s,
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something, too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charmed,
Finding the elements of rage disarmed,
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in th' inferior world, and thinks it like her own:
In such a night let me abroad remain,
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again;
Our cares, our toils, our clamors are renewed,
Or pleasures, seldom r...Read more of this...



by Poe, Edgar Allan
...y hold a treasure
Divine- a talisman- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
The words- the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets- as...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...their Ear,
Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.
These Equal Syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,
While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,
And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line,
While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expected Rhymes.
Where-e'er you find the cooling Western Breeze,
In the next Line, it whispers thro' the Trees;
If Chrystal Stre...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...tation
playing hour upon hour in the apartment 

the picking up and picking up
and again picking up the telephone 

The syllables uttering
the old script over and over 

The loneliness of the liar
living in the formal network of the lie 

twisting the dials to drown the terror
beneath the unsaid word 


3.

The technology of silence
The rituals, etiquette 

the blurring of terms
silence not absence 

of words or music or even
raw sounds 

Silence can be a plan
rigorously ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...d."

First thought, best thought.

Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.

Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.

Syntax condensed, sound is solid.

Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.

Consonants around vowels make sense.

Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.

Subject is known by what she sees.

Others can measure their vision by what we see.

Candor ends paranoia.


 Kral Majales
 June 25, 1986
 Boulder, Colorado...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...or ardour mute,
Hang in thy vision like a tempting fruit,
O let me pluck it for thee." Thus she link'd
Her charming syllables, till indistinct
Their music came to my o'er-sweeten'd soul;
And then she hover'd over me, and stole
So near, that if no nearer it had been
This furrow'd visage thou hadst never seen.

 "Young man of Latmos! thus particular
Am I, that thou may'st plainly see how far
This fierce temptation went: and thou may'st not
Exclaim, How then, was Scylla ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ntley down to pidling Tibbalds.
Each wight who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher that lives on syllables,
Ev'n such small critics some regard may claim,
Preserv'd in Milton's or in Shakespeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms
Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms;
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there?

Were others angry? I excus'd them too;
Well might they rage; I gave them...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...e sea: but sea it met,
And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice
Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath:
The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves
In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks,
Came booming thus, while still upon his arm
He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt.
"Or shall we listen to the over-wise,
Or to the over-foolish, Giant-Gods?
Not thunderbolt on thunderbolt, till all
That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent,
Not world on world upon these shoul...Read more of this...

by Allingham, William
...his young Soldier heed the snow that fills 
His mouth and open eyes? or mind, in truth, 
To-night, his mother's parting syllables? 
Ha! is't a red coat?--Merely blood. Keep ruth 
For others; this is but an Afghan youth 
Shot by the stranger on his native hills....Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...o more."
There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth
That can for long keep footing under that
When its slack syllables tighten to a thought?
Here, let me write it down! I wish to see
Just how a thing like that will look on paper!

"I had you and I have you now no more."

O little words, how can you run so straight
Across the page, beneath the weight you bear?
How can you fall apart, whom such a theme
Has bound together, and hereafter aid
In trivial expression, ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...amorous of the moon,
And of thy lilies, that do paler grow
Now they can no more hear thy ghittern's tune,
For venturing syllables that ill beseem
The quiet glooms of such a piteous theme.

XX.
Grant thou a pardon here, and then the tale
Shall move on soberly, as it is meet;
There is no other crime, no mad assail
To make old prose in modern rhyme more sweet:
But it is done--succeed the verse or fail--
To honour thee, and thy gone spirit greet;
To stead thee as a verse ...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...pour from your inverted cup
The song we love so well.

'Lift high your happy voice,
And swing your iron tongue
Till syllables of praise rejoice
That never yet were sung.

'Ring in the gleaming dawn
Of Freedom--Toll the knell
Of Tyranny, and then ring on,
O Independence Bell.--

'Ring on, and drown the moan,
Above the patriot slain,
Till sorrow's voice shall catch the tone
And join the glad refrain.

'Ring out the wounds of wrong
And rankle in the breast;
Your ...Read more of this...

by Nemerov, Howard
...ng about form, talking about myth
And the (so help us) need for a modern idiom;
The verseballs among them kept counting syllables.

So there he was, this forty-year-old teen-ager
Dreaming preposterous mergers and divisions
Of vowels like water, consonants like rock
(While everybody kept discussing values
And the need for values), for words that would
Enter the silence and be there as a light.
So much coffee and so many cigarettes
Gone down the drain, gone up in smoke,...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small breasts
of the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed...Read more of this...

by Drinkwater, John
...at one embrace,
And set our courses ever, each from each,
With all our treasure but a fading face
And little ghostly syllables of speech;
Should beauty's moment never be renewed,
And moons on moons look out for us in vain,
And each but whisper from a solitude
To hear but echoes of a lonely pain, —
Still in a world that fortune cannot change
Should walk those two that once were you and I,
Those two that once when moon and stars were strange
Poets above us in an Apri...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
 floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and 
 milk and wine-sweet water
Poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
 barley groats I scatter on the Reactor's core, 
I call your name with hollow vowels, I psalm your Fate
 close by, my breath near deathless ever at your
 side
to Spell your destiny, I set this verse prophetic on your
 mausoleum walls to seal you up Eternally with
 Diamond Truth! O doomed Plutonium.

 II

The Bar surveys Plutonian history fr...Read more of this...

by Borges, Jorge Luis
...and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving hendecasyllables,
and an old love of encyclopedias
and fine handmade maps and smooth ivory,
and an incurable nostalgia for the Latin,
and bits of memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the loss of memory of names and dates,
and the cult of the East, which the varied peoples
of the teeming East do not themselves share,
and evening trembling with hope or expectation,
a...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...reenhorns, now beheld himself, 
28 A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass. 
29 What word split up in clickering syllables 
30 And storming under multitudinous tones 
31 Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt? 
32 Crispin was washed away by magnitude. 
33 The whole of life that still remained in him 
34 Dwindled to one sound strumming in his ear, 
35 Ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh, 
36 Polyphony beyond his baton's thrust. 

37 Could Cri...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...uently 
And that your Christian blood flowed around a buoy that was rhythmical, 

Like the numberless sounds of antique syllables, 
Where reigns in turn the father of songs, 
Phoebus, and the great Pan, the harvest sovereign....Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...oem 
about the death of that dog, 
but while you're writing you 
hear a woman scream 
your name, your first name, 
both syllables, 
and your heart stops. 
after a minute, you continue writing. 
she screams again. 
you wonder how long this can go on....Read more of this...

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