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Famous Tones Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...
as a cook turns over cookery-book leaves. 

If you like- 
I'll be furiously flesh elemental, 
or - changing to tones that the sunset arouses - 
if you like- 
I'll be extraordinary gentle, 
not a man, but - a cloud in trousers! 

1 


You think malaria makes me delirious? 

It happened. 
In Odessa it happened. 

¡°I¡¯ll come at four,¡± Maria promised. 

Eight. 
Nine. 
Ten. 

Then the evening 
turned its back on the windows 
...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...dream of hopes that never yet 
Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
His inmost sense suspended in its web
Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 
Hers...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...ing breasts.
'Sure I have sinned!' said Christabel,
'Now heaven be praised if all be well!'
And in low faltering tones, yet sweet,
Did she the lofty lady greet
With such perplexity of mind
As dreams too lively leave behind.

So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed
Her maiden limbs, and having prayed
That He, who on the cross did groan,
Might wash away her sins unknown,
She forthwith led fair Geraldine
To meet her sire, Sir Leoline.
The lovely maid a...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...p, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,
If human souls did never kiss and greet?

 "Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content; what merest whim,
Seems all this poor endeavour after fame,
To one, who k...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e church with men. Without, in the churchyard,
Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones
Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest.
Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them
Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor
Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement,--
Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal
Closed, and in silence the crowd ...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...eople may 
 Still bear their yoke—have kings to rule alway? 
 The water flows, the wind in passing by 
 In murmuring tones takes up the questioning cry. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE BANQUET HALL. 
 
 The old stupendous hall has but one door, 
 And in the dusk it seems that more and more 
 The walls recede in space unlimited. 
 At the far end there is a table spread 
 That in the dreary void with splendor shines; 
 For ceiling we behold but rafter lines. 
 The table is arra...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...Of things which slay their sower, these each day
Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.

What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
By weed and worm, left to the stormy play
Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
By more destructful hands: Time's worst decay
Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.

Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
Th...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...yes, 
But Lara's prostrate form he bent beside, 
And in that tongue which seem'd his own replied, 
And Lara heeds those tones that gently seem 
To soothe away the horrors of his dream; 
If dream it were, that thus could overthrow 
A breast that needed not ideal woe. 

XV. 

Whate'er his frenzy dream'd or eye beheld, 
If yet remember'd ne'er to be reveal'd, 
Rests at his heart: the custom'd morning came, 
And breathed new vigour in his shaking frame; 
And solace sought...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ue all-disturbing roar above the river
Beyond the highest city built with hands.
Someone was saying in such natural tones
She almost wrote the words down on her knee,
"Do you know you remind me of a tree--
A maple tree?"

 "Because my name is Maple?"
"Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."

 "No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel.
I have to let them call me what they like."

 They were both stirred that he should have divined
Without the name her pe...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...full, so strong, so sweet,
That the uplifted spirit hardly knows
Whether the Music-Light that glows
Within the arch of tones and colours seven
Is sunset-peace of earth, or sunrise-joy of Heaven.


X

SEA AND SHORE

Music, I yield to thee;
As swimmer to the sea
I give my Spirit to the flood of song:
Bear me upon thy breast
In rapture and at rest,
Bathe me in pure delight and make me strong;
From strife and struggle bring release,
And draw the waves of passion into tides o...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...d, yet regular 
Then most, when most irregular they seem; 
And in their motions harmony divine 
So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear 
Listens delighted. Evening now approached, 
(For we have also our evening and our morn, 
We ours for change delectable, not need;) 
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn 
Desirous; all in circles as they stood, 
Tables are set, and on a sudden piled 
With Angels food, and rubied nectar flows 
In pearl, in diamond, and ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...iron doors into the Infernal Room!
Over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony 
 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 ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ping in the fields; 
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them; 
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and
 poke-weed.

6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.


Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, 
A scented gift and re...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...h and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...lor 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 Crispin stem verboseness in the sea, 
38 The old a...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ey hear.
Tap! Clink-a-tink!
Tap!
Another sharp spear
Of brightness,
And a ringing of quick metal lightness
On hard stones.
Workmen are chipping off the names of Napoleon's victories
From the triumphal arch of the Place du Carrousel.
Do they need so much force to quell the crowd?
An old Grenadier of the line groans aloud,
And each hammer tap points the sob of a woman.
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the faded-white-lily Bourbon king
Think it well
To guard against...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman* used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm," had been completed by the Bellman himself ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...but not to thee." 

But when she saw him quail and quake,
And when he urged "For pity's sake!"
Once more in gentle tones she spake. 

"Thought in the mind doth still abide
That is by Intellect supplied,
And within that Idea doth hide: 

"And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow: 

"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought." 

So passed ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...
To have just a week to spend,
When London is a city
Whose beauties never end!

VI 
When the sun shines on England, it atones 
For low-hung leaden skies, and rain and dim 
Moist fogs that paint the verdure on her stones 
And fill her gentle rivers to the brim. 
When the sun shines on England, shafts of light 
Fall on far towers and hills and dark old trees, 
And hedge-bound meadows of a green as bright— 
As bright as is the blue of tropic seas. 
When the sun shines, i...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs