Famous Tongue Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tongue poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tongue poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tongue poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...ring stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.
'His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, untidy though they be.
His rudeness so with his authorized youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.
'Well could he ride, and often men would say
'That horse his mettle from his rider takes:
Proud of sub...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ings,
Which erst with pompous panegyric rung.
Vain words and soothing flattery she hates,
And feigned tears, and tongue which silver-tipt
Moves in the cause of wickedness and pride.
She mourns not that fair liberty depress'd
Which kings tyrannic can extort, but that
Pure freedom of the soul to truth divine
Which first indulg'd her and with envious hand
Pluck'd thence, left hideous slavery behind.
She weeps not loss of property on earth,
Nor stirs the mu...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...women, nations,
Crying, Leap from your seats, and contend for your lives!
I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet;
Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?
(With pangs and cries, as thine own, O bearer of many children!
These clamors wild, to a race of pride I give.)
O lands! would you be freer than all that has ever been before?
If you...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ng with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenor and deep organ tone:
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents; O how frail
To that large utterance of the early Gods!
"Saturn, look up!---though wherefore, poor old King?
I have no comfort for thee, no not one:
I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'
For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth
Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
And ocean too, with all its solemn nois...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.
II.
The chief of Lara is return'd again:
And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main?
Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself; — that heritage of woe,
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest! —
With none to check, and few to poi...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...d on the green-wood stone, She talked and sung the woods among; And it was in the English tongue. "Sweet babe! they say that I am mad, But nay, my heart is far too glad; And I am happy when I sing Full many a sad and doleful thing: Then, lovely baby, do not fear! I pray thee have no fear of me, But, safe as in a cradle, here &...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ntle dumb expression turned at length
The eye of Eve to mark his play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue
Organick, or impulse of vocal air,
His fraudulent temptation thus began.
Wonder not, sovran Mistress, if perhaps
Thou canst, who art sole wonder! much less arm
Thy looks, the Heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate; I thus single;nor have feared
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
O the joy of my soul leaning pois’d on itself—receiving identity through
materials,
and loving them—observing characters, and absorbing them;
O my soul, vibrated back to me, from them—from facts, sight, hearing, touch, my
phrenology, reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like;
The real life of my senses and flesh, transcending ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my
bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the
argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;
And that all the me...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...ped and were wise,
But you shall raid the whole land through
And never a tree shall talk to you,
Though every leaf is a tongue taught true
And the forest is full of eyes.
"On one round hill to the seaward
The trees grow tall and grey
And the trees talk together
When all men are away.
"O'er a few round hills forgotten
The trees grow tall in rings,
And the trees talk together
Of many pagan things.
"Yet I could lie and listen
With a cross upon my clay,
And hear un...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...mplices — no friends!
XVII.
"All this, Zuleika, harshly sounds;
But harsher still my tale must be:
Howe'er my tongue thy softness wounds,
Yet I must prove all truth to thee.
I saw thee start this garb to see,
Yet is it one I oft have worn,
And long must wear: this Galiong?e,
To whom thy plighted vow is sworn,
Is leader of those pirate hordes,
Whose laws and lives are on their swords;
To hear whose desolating tale
Would make thy waning cheek more pale:
...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...ot declare.
2.7 To shew her bearing pangs, I should do wrong,
2.8 To tell that pain, which can't be told by tongue.
2.9 With tears into this world I did arrive;
2.10 My mother still did waste, as I did thrive,
2.11 Who yet with love and all alacity,
2.12 Spending was willing to be spent for me.
2.13 With wayward cries, I did disturb her rest,
2.14 Who sought still to appease me with her breast;
2.15 With weary arms, she danc'd, ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...tling thy cheek its happy home possest,
And sterner sport by day put strength to test,
And custom's feast at night gave tongue to truth
Or say hath flaunting summer a device
To match our midnight revelry, that rang
With steel and flame along the snow-girt ice?
Or when we hark't to nightingales that sang
On dewy eves in spring, did they entice
To gentler love than winter's icy fang?
11
There's many a would-be poet at this hour,
Rhymes of a love that he hath never woo'd,
And...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...past away,
And carven with strange figures; and in and out
The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll
Of letters in a tongue no man could read.
And Merlin called it "The Siege perilous,"
Perilous for good and ill; "for there," he said,
"No man could sit but he should lose himself:"
And once by misadvertence Merlin sat
In his own chair, and so was lost; but he,
Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's doom,
Cried, "If I lose myself, I save myself!"
`Then on a summer n...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...l who were present that day,
He uprose in full evening dress,
And with senseless grimaces endeavoured to say
What his tongue could no longer express.
Down he sank in a chair--ran his hands through his hair--
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.
"Leave him here to his fate--it is getting so late!"
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half the day. Any further delay,
...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...
There as he might his virtue exercise.
And thus within a while his name sprung
Both of his deedes, and of his good tongue,
That Theseus hath taken him so near,
That of his chamber he hath made him squire,
And gave him gold to maintain his degree;
And eke men brought him out of his country
From year to year full privily his rent.
But honestly and slyly* he it spent, *discreetly, prudently
That no man wonder'd how that he it had.
And three year in this wise his lif...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...ead,
Elastic from her airy tread:
What though upon her speech there hung
The accents of the mountain tongue,—-
Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear,
The listener held his breath to hear!
XIX.
A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.
And seldom was a snood amid
Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid,
Whose glossy black to shame might b...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ly one might trace
A shadow growing on his face.
The Second Voice
THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech
She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.
She urged "No cheese is made of chalk":
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him "Which?"...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know,
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue,
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
Of lilies, and the Wood-gods in a crew,
Came blithe as in the olive-copses thick
Cicade are, drunk with the noonday dew;
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Teazing the God to sing them some...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ce kill and kill? It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street. The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good: O let me be!
A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world. There i...Read more of this...
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