Famous Transformations Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Transformations poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous transformations poems. These examples illustrate what a famous transformations poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Masters, Edgar Lee
..., suffering, the understanding of many personalities,
The power to interpret glances, silences,
The pauses in momentous transformations,
The genius of divination and prophecy;
So that you feel able at times to hold the world
In the hollow of your hand;
Then, if, by the crowding of so many powers
Into the compass of your soul,
Your soul takes fire,
And in the conflagration of your soul
The evil of the world is lighted up and made clear --
Be thankful if in that hour of supreme...Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...ave to learn
The language of the trees. That's done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.
The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,
Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.
But best of all are the words that shape the leaves –
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform –
And their venation – palmate and parallel –
And ti...Read more of this...
by
Kunitz, Stanley
...ve in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes....Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as n...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...WHAT miracle was it that made this grey Rathgar
Seem holy earth, a leaping-place from star to star?
I know I strode along grey streets disconsolate,
Seeing nowhere a glimmer of the Glittering Gate,
My vision baffled amid many dreams, for still
The airy walls rose up in fabulous hill on hill.
The stars were fortresses upon the dizzy slope
And one and al...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...I
=The Town=
Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethes
About you: only last night you were
A Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;
To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke-wreaths.
To-morrow swimming in evening's vague, dim vapour
Like a weeded city in shadow under the sea,
Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:
T...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...hat dreams had long since bolted
and dared to sigh like breezes (old storms’ goodbyes)
they came as swords (not keen on transformations)
and (landscapes reconditioned) left as ploughshares...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...A MASK—a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps....Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...s lip touch on lip a memento mori?
Does the blood-thrust nipple against its eager
mate recall, through lust, a breast's transformations
sometimes are lethal?
Now or later, what's the enormous difference?
If one day is good, is a day sufficient?
Is it fear of death with which I'm so eager
to live my life out
now and in its possible permutations
with the one I love? (Only four days later,
she was on a plane headed west across the
Atlantic, work-bound.)
Men and women, mor...Read more of this...
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