Famous Symmetry Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Earth Voices

by Bliss Carman
 I
I heard the spring wind whisper
Above the brushwood fire,
"The world is made forever
Of transport and desire.
"I am the breath of being,
The primal urge of things;
I am the whirl of star dust,
I am the lift of wings.
"I am the splendid impulse
That comes before the thought,
The joy and exaltation
Wherein the life is caught.

"Across the sleeping furrows
I call the buried seed,
And blade...Read more of this...

An Invitation

by Thomas Blackburn
 Holding with shaking hands a letter from some
Official – high up he says in the Ministry,
I note that I am invited to Birmingham,
There pedagogues to address for a decent fee.
'We like to meet,' he goes on, 'men eminent
In the field of letters each year,' and that's well put,
Though I find his words not wholly relevant
To this red-eyed fellow whose...Read more of this...

At a Lunar Eclipse

by Thomas Hardy
 Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, 
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine 
In even monochrome and curving line 
Of imperturbable serenity. 

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry 
With the torn troubled form I know as thine, 
That profile, placid as a brow divine, 
With continents of moil and misery? 

And can immense Mortality but...Read more of this...

Before Sleep

by Catherine Anderson
 I was in love with anatomy
the symmetry of my body
poised for flight,
the heights it would take
over parents, lovers, a keen
riding over truth and detail.
I thought growing up would be
this rising from everything
old and earthly,
not these faltering steps out the door
every day, then back again....Read more of this...

157. Prologue spoken by Mr. Woods at Edinburgh

by Robert Burns
 WHEN, by a generous Public’s kind acclaim,
That dearest meed is granted—honest fame;
Waen here your favour is the actor’s lot,
Nor even the man in private life forgot;
What breast so dead to heavenly Virtue’s glow,
But heaves impassion’d with the grateful throe?


Poor is the task to please a barb’rous throng,
It needs no Siddons’ powers in Southern’s song;
But here an ancient nation, fam’d...Read more of this...

The Choir And Music Of Solitude And Silence

by Delmore Schwartz
 Silence is a great blue bell
Swinging and ringing, tinkling and singing, 
In measure's pleasure, and in the supple symmetry
 of the soaring of the immense intense wings
 glinting against
All the blue radiance above us and within us, hidden
Save for the stars sparking, distant and unheard in their
 singing.
And this is the first meaning of the famous saying,
The stars sang....Read more of this...

Lucky

by Tony Hoagland
 If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.

Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin...Read more of this...

Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds Painted Window at New College Oxford

by Thomas Warton
 Ah, stay thy treacherous hand, forbear to trace
Those faultless forms of elegance and grace!
Ah, cease to spread the bright transparent mass,
With Titian's pencil, o'er the speaking glass!
Nor steal, by strokes of art with truth combin'd,
The fond illusions of my wayward mind!
For long, enamour'd of a barbarous age,
A faithless truant to the classic page;
Long have I lov'd to catch the...Read more of this...

The Battle Of The Bulge

by Robert William Service
 This year an ocean trip I took, and as I am a Scot
And like to get my money's worth I never missed a meal.
In spite of Neptune's nastiness I ate an awful lot,
Yet felt as fit as if we sailed upon an even keel.
But now that I am home again I'm stricken with disgust;
How many pounds of fat I've...Read more of this...

The Tyger

by William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread...Read more of this...

Pearls

by Bernadette Geyer
 And so I look back
still thinking of her
with painful heart,
this clench of inner flesh.

 —Kakinomoto Hitomaro
 from Manyoshu



*

Praise the irritant, that genesis,
implanted within the soft
and malleable animal that bore you.

*

Your brethren strung around my neck,
dangling from my earlobes.
The imperfections the jeweler slights, I praise.

*

Artifact of a biological process,
why do we expect
symmetry from a grain of sand?

*

Praise the oblong beauty
of...Read more of this...

Accidents

by Russell Edson
 The barber has accidentally taken off an ear. It lies like 
something newborn on the floor in a nest of hair.
 Oops, says the barber, but it musn't've been a very good 
ear, it came off with very little complaint.
 It wasn't, says the customer, it was always overly waxed. 
I tried putting a wick in it to burn...Read more of this...

To His Honoured and Most Ingenious Friend Mr. Charles Cotton

by Robert Herrick
 For brave comportment, wit without offence,
Words fully flowing, yet of influence:
Thou art that man of men, the man alone,
Worthy the public admiration:
Who with thine own eyes read'st what we do write,
And giv'st our numbers euphony, and weight.
Tell'st when a verse springs high, how understood
To be, or not born of the Royal blood.
What state above, what symmetry below,
Lines have, or...Read more of this...

Russian Cathedral

by Claude McKay
 Bow down my soul in worship very low
And in the holy silences be lost.
Bow down before the marble man of woe,
Bow down before the singing angel host.
What jewelled glory fills my spirit's eye,
What golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
The soaring arches lift me up on high 
Taking my breath with their rare symmetry. 

Bow down my soul and...Read more of this...

Man

by Richard Brautigan
 My God, I heard this day, 
That none doth build a stately habitation, 
But he that means to dwell therein. 
What house more stately hath there been, 
Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation 
All things are in decay. 

For Man is ev'ry thing, 
And more:
He is a tree, yet bears no fruit; 
A beast, yet is,...Read more of this...

Ode To The Lemon

by Pablo Neruda
 From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its plantarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid...Read more of this...

The Search

by Robert William Service
 Happiness, a-roving round
For a sweet abiding place,
In a stately palace found
Symmetry and gilded grace;
Courtliness and table cheer,
All that chimes with evening dress . . .
"I could never stick it here,"
Swift decided Happiness.

Happiness a-seeking still,
In a mansion of the town,
Comfort-crammed to overspill,
Sought in vain to settle down.
Every nook strained to express
Opulent prosperity . . .
But "Alas!" said Happiness,
"This is not...Read more of this...

Man

by George Herbert
          My God, I heard this day
That none doth build a stately habitation,
     But he that means to dwell therein.
     What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation
        ...Read more of this...

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