Famous Vanish Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The house where I was born (02)

by Yves Bonnefoy
  I woke up, it was the house where I was born.
It was raining softly in all the rooms,
I went from one to another, looking at
The water that shone on the mirrors
Piled up everywhere, some broken or even
Pushed between the furniture and the walls.
It was from these reflections that sometimes a face
Would emerge, laughing, of a gentleness
That was different...Read more of this...

Fugue

by Howard Nemerov
 You see them vanish in their speeding cars, 
The many people hastening through the world,
And wonder what they would have done before
This time of time speed distance, random streams
Of molecules hastened by what rising heat?
Was there never a world where people just sat still?

Yet they might be all of them contemplatives
Of a timeless now, drivers and passengers
In the moving...Read more of this...

Portsmouths Looking Glass

by John Wilmot
 Methinks I see you, newly risen
From your embroider'd Bed and pissing,
With studied mien and much grimace,
Present yourself before your glass,
To vanish and smooth o'er those graces,
You rubb'd off in your Night Embraces....Read more of this...

The Windows

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers ; then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, & more doth win:
Which else shows...Read more of this...

A Vision of Beauty

by George William Russell
 WHERE we sat at dawn together, while the star-rich heavens shifted,
We were weaving dreams in silence, suddenly the veil was lifted.
By a hand of fire awakened, in a moment caught and led
Upward to the heaven of heavens—through the star-mists overhead
Flare and flaunt the monstrous highlands; on the sapphire coast of night
Fall the ghostly froth and fringes of the ocean...Read more of this...

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and gast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.
His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.
His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward...Read more of this...

Romance Moderne

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose 
flickering mountain—bulging nearer, 
ebbing back into the sun 
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,— 
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, 
churning itself white, drawing 
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels 
fall— 
And—the other world— 
the windshield a blunt barrier: 
Talk...Read more of this...

The Little Black Boy

by William Blake
MY mother bore me in the southern wild, 
And I am black, but O, my soul is white! 
White as an angel is the English child, 
But I am black, as if bereaved of light. 

My mother taught me underneath a tree, 5 
And, sitting down before the heat of day, 
She took me on her lap and kiss¨¨d me,...Read more of this...

The Grandmother

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dors-tu? mère de notre mère.") 
 
 {III., 1823.} 
 
 "To die—to sleep."—SHAKESPEARE. 


 Still asleep! We have been since the noon thus alone. 
 Oh, the hours we have ceased to number! 
 Wake, grandmother!—speechless say why thou art grown. 
 Then, thy lips are so cold!—the Madonna of stone 
 Is like thee in thy holy...Read more of this...

Delilah

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 cIn the midnight of darkness and terror, 
When I would grope nearer to God, 
With my back to a record of error
And the highway of sin I have trod, 
There comes to me shapes I would banish –
The shapes of the deeds I have done; 
And I pray and I plead till they vanish –
All vanish and leave me,...Read more of this...

Jasmines

by Claude McKay
 Your scent is in the room. 
Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me! 
Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume, 
Heavy with dew before the dawn of day! 
Your face was in the mirror. I could see 
You smile and vanish suddenly away, 
Leaving behind the vestige of a tear. 
Sad suffering face, from parting grown so dear! 
Night jasmines cannot...Read more of this...

The Secret of the Machines

by Rudyard Kipling
 We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
 We were melted in the furnace and the pit--
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
 We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
 And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now, if you will...Read more of this...

The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever

by Archibald MacLeish
 Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?

To be, yes!--whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.

They also...Read more of this...

Natural Magic

by George William Russell
 WE air tired who follow after
Phantasy and truth that flies:
You with only look and laughter
Stain our hearts with richest dyes.


When you break upon our study
Vanish all our frosty cares;
As the diamond deep grows ruddy,
Filled with morning unawares.


With the stuff that dreams are made of
But an empty house we build:
Glooms we are ourselves afraid of,
By the ancient starlight chilled.


All unwise...Read more of this...

Drink thou of wine before thy name shall vanish from

by Omar Khayyam
Drink thou of wine before thy name shall vanish from
this world, for, when this nectar enters thy heart, sorrow
disappears. Unbind strand by strand the hair of thy
charming idol, before the jointure of thy frame itself is
loosed....Read more of this...

The Poets Of The Tomb

by Henry Lawson
 The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, 
'Tis time the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head, 
For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave -- 
Those bards of `tears' and `vanished hopes', those poets of the grave. 
They say that life's an awful thing,...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Star Teachers

by George William Russell
 EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires,
The plumes of paradise, the dying light
Rays through the fevered air in misty spires
 That vanish in the heights.


These myriad eyes that look on me are mine;
Wandering beneath them I have found again
The ancient ample moment, the divine,
 The God-root within men.


For this, for this the lights innumerable
As symbols shine that we the...Read more of this...

Nature

by George Herbert
 Full of rebellion, I would die, 
Or fight, or travel, or deny
That thou has aught to do with me.
O tame my heart; 
It is thy highest art
To captivate strong holds to thee.

If thou shalt let this venom lurk, 
And in suggestions fume and work, 
My soul will turn to bubbles straight, 
And thence by kind
Vanish into a wind, 
Making...Read more of this...

Botany Bay Eclogues 05 - Frederic

by Robert Southey
 (Time Night. Scene the woods.)


Where shall I turn me? whither shall I bend
My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint
How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood
Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry
That rings along the forest seems to sound
My parting knell: it is the midnight howl
Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey!
Again! oh save me--save me gracious...Read more of this...

After-Thought

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. -Vain sympathies!
For backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth...Read more of this...

Psalm 102 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-13,20,21 
C. M.
A prayer of the afflicted.

Hear me, O God, nor hide thy face;
But answer, lest I die;
Hast thou not built a throne of grace
To hear when sinners cry?

My days are wasted like the smoke
Dissolving in the air;
My strength is dried, my heart is broke,
And sinking in despair.

My spirits flag like with'ring grass
Burnt with excessive heat;
In secret groans my...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIII: The Gossamer

by Charlotte Turner Smith
 O'er faded heath-flowers spun, or thorny furze,
The filmy Gossamer is lightly spread;
Waving in every sighing air that stirs,
As Fairy fingers had entwined the thread:
A thousand trembling orbs of lucid dew
Spangle the texture of the fairy loom,
As if soft Sylphs, lamenting as they flew,
Had wept departed Summer's transient bloom:
But the wind rises, and the turf receives
The glittering web: -- So,...Read more of this...

Size and Tears

by Lewis Carroll
 When on the sandy shore I sit,
Beside the salt sea-wave,
And fall into a weeping fit
Because I dare not shave -
A little whisper at my ear
Enquires the reason of my fear.

I answer "If that ruffian Jones
Should recognise me here,
He'd bellow out my name in tones
Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out)."

Ah...Read more of this...

A Litany For Survival

by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death...Read more of this...

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