Famous Tan Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tan poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tan poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tan poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Shakespeare
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of alt'ring things—
Alas,...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror
in the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks - In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys
of life as they come and use them to the full;...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: 'La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos.'
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces...Read more of this...
by
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Disillusionment (Español)
Ya, desengaño mío,
llegasteis al extremo
que pudo en vuestro ser
verificar el serlo.
Todo los habéis perdido;
mas no todo, pues creo
que aun a costa es de todo
barato el escarmiento.
No envidiaréis de amor
los gustos lisonjeros:
que está un escarmentado
muy remoto del riesgro.
El no esperar alguno
me sirve de consuelo;
que...Read more of this...
by
Gregory Corso
My hands did numb to beauty
as they reached into Death and tightened!
O sovereign was my touch
upon the tan-inks's fragile page!
Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!
I would have taken the page
breathing in the crime!
For no evidence have I wrung from dreams--
yet what triumph is there in private credence?
Often, in some steep ancestral book,
when...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
... Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared...Read more of this...
by
Delmira Agustini
SpanishFuera, la noche en veste de tragedia sollozaComo una enorme viuda pegada a mis cristales. Mi cuarto:…Por un bello milagro de la luz y del fuegoMi cuarto es una gruta de oro y gemas raras:Tiene un musgo tan suave, tan hondo de tapices,Y es tan vívida y cálida, tan dulce que me creoDentro de un corazón… Mi lecho que está en blanco...Read more of this...
by
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
I Approach and I Withdraw (Español)
Me acerco y me retiro:
¿quién sino yo hallar puedo
a la ausencia en los ojos
la presencia en lo lejos?
Del desprecio de Filis,
infelice, me ausento.
¡Ay de aquel en quien es
aun pérdida el desprecio!
Tan atento la adoro
que, en el mal que padezco,
no siento sus rigores
tanto como...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly, while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.
The green leaves they looked greener still,
And the thrush, renewing his tune,
Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill
Into the bright blue noon.
Robin Hood's mother looked out, and said
"It were a shame and a sin
For fear of getting a wet...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
My friend is lodging high in the Eastern Range,
Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and hills.
At green Spring he lies in the empty woods,
And is still asleep when the sun shines on igh.
A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and coat;
A peebly stream cleans his heart and ears.
I envy you, who far from strife and talk
Are high-propped on a pillow...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)
Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell,
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me -- brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
I tried to peg out soldierly -- no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
O TAN-FACED prairie-boy!
Before you came to camp, came many a welcome gift;
Praises and presents came, and nourishing food—till at last, among the recruits,
You came, taciturn, with nothing to give—we but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world, you gave me. 5...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Composed of chalk dust,
Pencil shavings and
The sharp odour
Of stale urine;
It meets me now and then
Creeping down a creosoted corridor
Or waiting to be banged
With the dust from piles of books
On top of a cupboard.
The double desks heeled with iron
Having long been replaced;
The steel-nibbed pens and
Ink watered to pale grey
Gone too: the cane’s bamboo bite
Has nothing left to bite on
And David’s...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!
Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.
Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.
You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,
Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos....Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Eighty-one degrees a record high for the day
which is not my birthday but will do until
the eleventh of June comes around and I know
what I want: a wide-brimmed Panama hat
with a tan hatband, a walk in the park
and to share a shower with a zaftig beauty
who lost her Bronx accent in Bronxville
and now wants me to give her back...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
The rooks aclamor when one enters here
Startle the empty towers far overhead;
Through gaping walls the summer fields appear,
Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red.
The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss
Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown
The gate where banners blazoned with a cross
Rolled forth to toss round Tyre and Ascalon.
Decay...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms 5
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,...Read more of this...
by
Craig Raine
'and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence'
-- George Eliot, Middlemarch
Dead dandelions, bald as drumsticks,
swaying by the roadside
like Hare Krishna pilgrims
bowing to the Juggernaut.
They have given up everything.
Gold gone and their silver gone,
humbled with dust, hollow,
their milky bodies tan
to the colour of annas.
The wind changes their identity:
slender Giacomettis, Doré's convicts,
Rodin's burghers...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ASHES of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.
Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves,
In...Read more of this...
by
Delmira Agustini
Spanish –Eros: acaso no sentiste nuncaPiedad de las estatuas?Se dirían crisálidas de piedraDe yo no sé qué formidable razaEn una eterna espera inenarrable.Los cráteres dormidos de sus bocasDan la ceniza negra del Silencio,Mana de las columnas de sus hombrosLa mortaja copiosa de la CalmaY fluye de sus órbitas la noche;Victimas del Futuro o del Misterio,En capullos terribles y magníficosEsperan a la...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
THE indications, and tally of time;
Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs;
Time, always without flaw, indicates itself in parts;
What always indicates the poet, is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their
words;
The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark—but the words
of
the
maker of...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?
The shadow of...Read more of this...
by
Gary Snyder
At Tower Peak
Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing
Freeways are clogged all day
Academies packed with scholars writing papers
City people lean and dark
This land most real
As its western-tending golden slopes
And bird-entangled central valley swamps
Sea-lion, urchin coasts
Southerly salmon-probes
Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills
Along a range of granite peaks
The...Read more of this...
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