Famous Tranquil Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tranquil poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tranquil poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tranquil poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas Moore
"How sweetly," said the trembling maid,
Of her own gentle voice afraid,
So long had they in silence stood,
Looking upon that tranquil flood--
"How sweetly does the moon-beam smile
To-night upon yon leafy isle!
Oft in my fancy's wanderings,
I've wish'd that little isle had wings,
And we, within its fairy bow'rs,
Were wafted off to seas unknown,
Where not a pulse should beat but ours,
And we...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
I
The rutted roads are all like iron; skies
Are keen and brilliant; only the oak-leaves cling
In the bare woods, or the hardy bitter-sweet;
Drivers have put their sheepskin jackets on;
And all the ponds are sealed with sheeted ice
That rings with stroke of skate and hockey-stick,
Or in the twilight cracks with running whoop.
Bring in the logs of oak and hickory,
And make an...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams,
But, rising, quits her restless bed,
And walks where some beclouded beams
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.
Obedient to the goad of grief,
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow,
In varying motion seek relief
From the Eumenides of woe.
Wringing her hands, at intervals
But long as mute as phantom...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XVII. Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte. DISTANCE AND SOLITUDE. From hill to hill I roam, from thought to thought,With Love my guide; the beaten path I fly,For there in vain the tranquil life is sought:If 'mid the waste well forth a lonely rill,Or deep embosom'd a low...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
Doleful was the land,
Dull on, every side,
Neither soft n'or grand,
Barren, bleak, and wide;
Nothing look'd with love;
All was dingy brown;
The very skies above
Seem'd to sulk and frown.
Plodding sick and sad,
Weary day on day;
Searching, never glad,
Many a miry way;
Poor existence lagg'd
In this barren place;
While the seasons dragg'd
Slowly...Read more of this...
by
Louise Gluck
In our family, there were two saints,
my aunt and my grandmother.
But their lives were different.
My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end.
She was like a person walking in calm water;
for some reason
the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her.
When my aunt took the same path,
the waves broke over her, they attacked her,
which is how the Fates respond
to a true...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
LOVE, I renounce thy tyrant sway,
I mock thy fascinating art,
MINE, be the calm unruffled day,
That brings no torment to the heart;
The tranquil mind, the noiseless scene,
Where FANCY, with enchanting mien,
Shall in her right-hand lead along
The graceful patroness of Song;
Where HARMONY shall softly fling
Her light tones o'er the dulcet string;
And with her magic LYRE...Read more of this...
by
Gwendolyn Brooks
One wants a teller in a time like this
One's not a man, one's not a woman grown
To bear enormous business all alone.
One cannot walk this winding street with pride
Straight-shouldered, tranquil-eyed,
Knowing one knows for sure the way back home.
One wonders if one has a home.
One is not certain if or why or how.
One wants a Teller now:
Put on your rubbers...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor - lark in the air,
The bee among the heather - bells
That hide my lady fair:
The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left their solitude!
I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could...Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on
it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LIV. Mai non vedranno le mie luci asciutte. TO THE MEMORY OF GIACOMO COLONNA, WHO DIED BEFORE PETRARCH COULD REPLY TO A LETTER OF HIS. Ne'er shall I see again with eyes unwet,Or with the sure powers of a tranquil mind,Those characters where Love so brightly shined,And his own hand affection...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature’s sake, and sweet life’s sake—and
death’s the same as life’s,
Souvenirs of earliest summer—birds’ eggs, and the first berries;
Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;)
Put in April and May—the hylas croaking in the ponds—the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VI. Anzi tre di creata era alma in parte. THE HISTORY OF HIS LOVE; AND PRAYER FOR HELP. Life's three first stages train'd my soul in partTo place its care on objects high and new,And to disparage what men often prize,But, left alone, and of her fatal courseAs yet uncertain,...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
He
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window. Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.
She
The sun goes...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
Athwart the bed
I watch the moonbeams cast a trail
So bright, so cold, so frail,
That for a space it gleams
Like hoar-frost on the margin of my dreams.
I raise my head, --
The splendid moon I see:
Then droop my head,
And sink to dreams of thee --
My Fatherland, of thee!...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Come, bright-eyed maid,
Pure offspring of the tranquil mind,
Haste, my fev'rish temples bind
With olive wreaths of em'rald hue
Steep'd in morn's ethereal dew,
Where in mild HELVETIA's shade,
Blushing summer round her flings
Warm gales and sunny show'rs that hang upon her wings.
I'll seek thee in ITALIA's bow'rs,
Where supine on beds of flow'rs
Melody's soul-touching throng
Strike the soft lute or...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its sleeping scalds?
I go to meet those who are returning from the wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.
So that's the foreground....Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
On days of fresh and tranquil health, when life is as fine as a conquest, the pleasant task sits down by my side like an honoured friend.
He comes from gentle, radiant countries, with words brighter than the dews, in which to set, illuminating them, our feelings and our thoughts.
He seizes our being in a mad whirlwind; he lifts up the...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VII. Non ha tanti animali il mar fra l' onde. HE DESPAIRS OF ESCAPE FROM THE TORMENTS BY WHICH HE IS SURROUNDED. Nor Ocean holds such swarms amid his waves,Not overhead, where circles the pale moon,Were stars so numerous ever seen by night,Nor dwell so many birds among the woods,Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXVII. Non pur quell' una bella ignuda mano. HE RETURNS THE GLOVE, BEWAILING THE EFFECT OF HER BEAUTY. Not of one dear hand only I complain,Which hides it, to my loss, again from view,But its fair fellow and her soft arms tooAre prompt my meek and passive heart to pain.Love...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I will not fight: though proud of pith
I hold no one worth striving with;
And should resentment burn my breast
I deem that silence serves me best:
So having not a word to say,
Contemptuous I turn away.
I will not fret: my rest of life
Free I will keep from hate and strife;
Let lust and sin and anger sleep,
I will not delve the subsoil...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
OFTEN I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me. 5
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth...Read more of this...
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