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Famous Transparent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Poe, Edgar Allan
...on it." 
And, veritably, Sol is right enough. 
The general tuckermanities are arrant 
Bubbles- ephemeral and so transparent- 
But this is, now- you may depend upon it- 
Stable, opaque, immortal- all by dint 
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...s as tangled in him as any cane-brake or swamp, 
He likening sides and peaks of mountains, forests coated with northern transparent ice,
Off him pasturage, sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, 
Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird,
 night-heron, and eagle; 
His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil, 
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, 
Surrounding just fou...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...eaving there with 
 his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent 
 bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal, 
 and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...d hideous—so doth foul black heart 
 Disfigure man, till beauty all depart. 
 So to the hell within the human face 
 Transparent is. They nearer move apace; 
 And Mahaud soundly sleeps as in a bed. 
 "To work." 
 
 Joss seizes her and holds her head 
 Supporting her beneath her arms, in his; 
 And then he dared to plant a monstrous kiss 
 Upon her rosy lips,—while Zeno bent 
 Before the massive chair, and with intent 
 Her robe disordered as he raised her feet; 
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the street, the contour of their shape downwards, 
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent
 green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the
 water, 
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, 
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives
 waiting, 
The f...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
.... 
His shape exact, which the bright flames enfold, 
Like the sun's statue stands of burnished gold. 
Round the transparent fire about him flows, 
As the clear amber on the bee does close, 
And, as on angels' heads their glories shine, 
His burning locks adorn his face divine. 
But when in this immortal mind he felt 
His altering form and soldered limbs to melt, 
Down on the deck he laid himself and died, 
With his dear sword reposing by his side, 
And on the flam...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...Naked you are simple as one of your hands;
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round.
You've moon-lines, apple pathways
Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba;
You've vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are spacious and yellow
As summer in a golden church.

Naked you are tiny as one of your nails;
Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
And you withdra...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...d the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...y care,
Or plods with saunt'ring gait, the dewy meads along. 

CHASTE ORB! as thro' the vaulted sky
Feath'ry clouds transparent sail; 
When thy languid, weeping eye,
Sheds its soft tears upon the painted vale; 
As I ponder o'er the floods,
Or tread with listless step, th'embow'ring woods,
O, let thy transitory beam,
Soothe my sad mind, with FANCY'S aëry dream. 

Wrapt in REFLECTION, let me trace 
O'er the vast ethereal space, 
Stars, whose twinkling fires illume 
Dark...Read more of this...

by Lewis, C S
...s of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap 
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness 
Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap;

But ...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...nineteen 
 hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East,
 Denver city white below
Blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a 
 morning star high over the balcony 
above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill 
 from Flatiron's jagged pine ridge,
sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone
 cliffs above brick townhouse roofs
as sparrows waked whistling through Marine Street's
 summer green leafed trees.

 III

This ode ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ture, not even the
 best; 
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. 

I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning; 
How you settled 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
 a...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...es! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs! 
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards! 
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much! 
You doors and ascending steps! you arches! 
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has been near you, I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would
 impart the
 same secretly to me; 
From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...whose bloom
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray;
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright,
And not a word of murmur - not
A groan o'er his untimely lot, -
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence - lost
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...o the Train beneath.
Some to the Sun their Insect-Wings unfold,
Waft on the Breeze, or sink in Clouds of Gold. 
Transparent Forms, too fine for mortal Sight,
Their fluid Bodies half dissolv'd in Light.
Loose to the Wind their airy Garments flew,
Thin glitt'ring Textures of the filmy Dew;
Dipt in the richest Tincture of the Skies,
Where Light disports in ever-mingling Dies,
While ev'ry Beam new transient Colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self same bough, & heard as there
The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
Sweet talk in music ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I. It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Ge...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...ram, the royal crest,
insignia in neon dwarf the lads
who spray a few odd FUCKS when they're depressed.

Letters of transparent tubes and gas
in Düsseldorf are blue and flash out KRUPP.
Arms are hoisted for the British ruling class
and clandestine, genteel aggro keeps them up.

And there's HARRISON on some Leeds building sites
I've taken in fun as blazoning my name,
which I've also seen on books, in Broadway lights,
so why can't skins with spraycans do the same?

...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...,
And we love the parting,
And brief meetings' hour.



x x x

Somewhere is light and happy, in elation,
Transparent, warm and simple life there is.
A man across the fence has conversation
With girl before the evening, and the bees
Hear only the tenderest of conversation.

And we are living pompously and hard
And follow bitter rituals like sun
When, flight past us, the unreasoned wind
Interrupts speech that's barely begun.

But not for any...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...tened to alone, when I wrote
Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm.
*
"Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent
Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you
My guardian angel? Or is this arrant
Seeming, hallucination, thrown 
Up by that fly engineering a novel does
So beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad? 
Are there ways of dreaming I don't know?
Too bad. My soul has made its home
In you. I'm here and bare before you: shy,
In tears. But if I...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things