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Famous Turret Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...wand'ring genius knew; 
No golden harvest crown'd the fertile glebe; 
No city then adorn'd the rivers bank, 
Nor rising turret overlook'd the stream. 



ACASTO. 
Now view the prospect chang'd; far off at sea 
The mariner descry's our spacious towns 
He hails the prospect of the land and views 
A new, a fair a fertile world arise; 
Onward from India's isles far east, to us 
Now fair-ey'd commerce stretches her white sails, 
Learning exalts her head, the graces smile 
And peac...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...to save 
The young, the beautiful, the brave, 
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter. 
Oh! when alone along the sky 
Her turret-torch was blazing high, 
Though rising gale, and breaking foam, 
And shrieking sea-birds warn'd him home; 
And clouds aloft and tides below, 
With signs and sounds, forbade to go, 
He could not see, he would not hear, 
Or sound or sign foreboding fear; 
His eye but saw the light of love, 
The only star it hail'd above; 
His ear but rang with Hero's so...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps? - why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hil...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination. 
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself. 
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips fr...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John
...gons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden,
Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret
Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them,
Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads and her missal,
Wearing her Norman cap and her kirtle of blue, and the ear-rings,
Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heirloom,
Handed down from m...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth



...eepily in the heat. 
But she, remembering her old ruined hall, 
And all the windy clamour of the daws 
About her hollow turret, plucked the grass 
There growing longest by the meadow's edge, 
And into many a listless annulet, 
Now over, now beneath her marriage ring, 
Wove and unwove it, till the boy returned 
And told them of a chamber, and they went; 
Where, after saying to her, 'If ye will, 
Call for the woman of the house,' to which 
She answered, 'Thanks, my lord;' the t...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...old heart, underneath my hand,
Has almost ceased to thrill. 

Bleak, bleak the east wind sobs and sighs,
And drowns the turret bell,
Whose sad note, undistinguished, dies
Unheard, like my farewell! 

To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name,
And Hate will trample me,
Will load me with a coward's shame?
A traitor's perjury. 

False friends will launch their covert sneers;
True friends will wish me dead;
And I shall cause the bitterest tears
That you have ever shed. 

The dark deed...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily
...red rose springing 
Through the green moss can force its way. 

Unscared, the daw, and starling nestle, 
Where the tall turret rises high, 
And winds alone come near to rustle 
The thick leaves where their cradles lie. 

I sometimes think, when late at even 
I climb the stair reluctantly, 
Some shape that should be well in heaven, 
Or ill elsewhere, will pass by me. 

I fear to see the very faces, 
Familiar thirty years ago, 
Even in the old accustomed places 
Which look so c...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...ircean call the herd disguised. 
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood, 
But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed 
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, 
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod. 
His gentle 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...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...del, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, 
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, 
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, 
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor,
Work-box, chest, string’d instrument, boat, frame, and what not, 
Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States, 
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or sick, 
Man...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...to save 
The young, the beautiful, the brave, 
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter. 
Oh! when alone along the sky 
Her turret-torch was blazing high, 
Though rising gale, and breaking foam, 
And shrieking sea-birds warn'd him home; 
And clouds aloft and tides below, 
With signs and sounds, forbade to go, 
He could not see, he would not hear, 
Or sound or sign foreboding fear; 
His eye but saw the light of love, 
The only star it hail'd above; 
His ear but rang with Hero's so...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
..., 
A sudden raid from the hall! 
By three doors left unguarded 
They enter my castle wall! 

They climb up into my turret 
O'er the arms and back of my chair; 
If I try to escape, they surround me; 
They seem to be everywhere. 

They almost devour me with kisses, 
Their arms about me entwine, 
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! 

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 
Because you have scaled the wall, 
Such an old mustache as...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...stone.

But he, when all the place he had gone o'er,
And with much trouble clomb the broken stair,
And from the topmost turret seen the shore
And his good ship drawn up at anchor there,
Came down again, and found a crypt most fair
Built wonderfully beneath the greatest hall,
And there he saw a door within the wall,

Well-hinged, close shut; nor was there in that place
Another on its hinges, therefore he
Stood there and pondered for a little space
And thought: "Perchance some ...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...ry
Of Mars, he maked hath right such another,
That coste largely of gold a fother*. *a great amount
And northward, in a turret on the wall,
Of alabaster white and red coral
An oratory riche for to see,
In worship of Diane of chastity,
Hath Theseus done work in noble wise.
But yet had I forgotten to devise* *describe
The noble carving, and the portraitures,
The shape, the countenance of the figures
That weren in there oratories three.

First in the temple of Venus may'st thou ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r which builders vain
     Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
     The rocky summits, split and rent,
     Formed turret, dome, or battlement.
     Or seemed fantastically set
     With cupola or minaret,
     Wild crests as pagod ever decked,
     Or mosque of Eastern architect.
     Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
     Nor lacked they many a banner fair;
     For, from their shivered brows displayed,
     Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
     All twin...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...ole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, 
And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: 
And high above a piece of turret stair, 
Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound 
Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems 
Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, 
And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked 
A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. 

And while he waited in the castle court, 
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang 
Clear through the open caseme...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ects of his view,
The gloomy battlements, and ivied spires,
That crown the solitary dome, arise;
While from the topmost turret the slow clock,
Far heard along th' inhospitable wastes,
With sad-returning chime awakes new grief;
Ev'n he far happier seems than is the proud,
The potent Satrap, whom he left behind
`Mid Moscow's golden palaces, to drown
In ease and luxury the laughing hours.

Illustrious objects strike the gazer's mind
With feeble bliss, and but allure the sight,
N...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas
...Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. 

II.
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry." 

III.
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted -- "Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, ...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar
...Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

2

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

3

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—"Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may retu...Read more of this...
by Fitzgerald, Edward
...east  
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest  
'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe 15 
All green and wildly fresh without but worn and gray beneath. 

Oh could I feel as I have felt or be what I have been  
Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanish'd scene ¡ª 
As springs in deserts found seem sweet all brackish though they be  
So midst the wither'd waste of life those tears would flow to me! 20...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things