Famous Veil Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Veil

by Victor Hugo
 ("Qu'avez-vous, mes frères?") 
 
 {XI., September, 18288.} 
 
 "Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?" 


 




...Read more of this...

Living Remembrance

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HALF vex'd, half pleased, thy love will feel,
Shouldst thou her knot or ribbon steal;
To thee they're much--I won't conceal;

Such self-deceit may pardon'd be;
A veil, a kerchief, garter, rings,
In truth are no mean trifling things,

But still they're not enough for me.

She who is dearest to my heart,
Gave me, with well dissembled smart,
Of her own life, a living part,

No charm in...Read more of this...

The Ideal And The Actual Life

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

Seekest thou on...Read more of this...

Approaching The Veil Scientifically

by Belinda Subraman
 Eyes like stars sparkle and die
and cycle into new stars, new eyes.

The answer is outside our window.
Astronomers look
for the beginning
and find there is no end.

Down to earth
there are frozen lines,
winter trees,
stalled cars in dirty snow,
sorrow over endings.

The real world is through the window,
infinite, ageless.
Though a clear veil
keeps us distant,
the soul of what 
we can never prove
keeps us close....Read more of this...

The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson
 I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed...Read more of this...

Sonnet LI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 274] SONNET LI. I dì miei più leggier che nessun cervo. HIS PASSION FINDS ITS ONLY CONSOLATION IN CONTEMPLATING HER IN HEAVEN.  My days more swiftly than the forest hindHave fled like shadows, and no pleasure seenSave for a moment, and few hours serene,Whose bitter-sweet I treasure in...Read more of this...

Under Her Dark Veil

by Anna Akhmatova
 Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister

And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He...Read more of this...

Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, 
And it but mimic all we would believe 
With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear 
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave 
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. 
I knew one who had lifted it--he sought, 
For his lost heart was...Read more of this...

For Catherine: Juana Infanta of Navarre

by Erin Belieu
 Ferdinand was systematic when
he drove his daughter mad.

With a Casanova's careful art,
he moved slowly,
stole only one child at a time
through tunnels specially dug
behind the walls of her royal
chamber, then paid the Duenna
well to remember nothing
but his appreciation.

Imagine how quietly
the servants must have worked,

loosening the dirt, the muffled
ring of pick-ends against
the castle stone. The Duenna,
one eye gauging the drugged girl's
sleep,...Read more of this...

I had not minded -- Walls

by Emily Dickinson
 I had not minded -- Walls --
Were Universe -- one Rock --
And far I heard his silver Call
The other side the Block --

I'd tunnel -- till my Groove
Pushed sudden thro' to his --
Then my face take her Recompense --
The looking in his Eyes --

But 'tis a single Hair --
A filament -- a law --
A Cobweb -- wove in Adamant...Read more of this...

What eye can pierce the veil of God's decrees,

by Omar Khayyam
What eye can pierce the veil of God's decrees,
Or read the riddle of earth's destinies?
Pondered have I for years threescore and ten,
But still am baffled by these mysteries....Read more of this...

Sonnet X

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 243] SONNET X. Nell' età sua più bella e più fiorita. HE DESIRES TO DIE, THAT HIS SOUL MAY BE WITH HER, AS HIS THOUGHTS ALREADY ARE.  E'en in youth's fairest flower, when Love's dear swayIs wont with strongest power our hearts to bind,Leaving on earth her fleshly veil...Read more of this...

O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold

by Omar Khayyam
O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold
vault of brilliant heaven is naught. Then give thyself
to joy in this disordered place [the world], for life is
but an instant wed to it, and that is equally naught.
298...Read more of this...

See Dawn appears. Already has it rent the veil of

by Omar Khayyam
See Dawn appears. Already has it rent the veil of
night. Arise, then, and empty the morning cup. Why
this sadness? Drink, O my heart! drink, for these dawns
will succeed each other with face turned towards us,
when we shall have ours turned towards the earth....Read more of this...

The Glory Of The Heavens

by Emile Verhaeren
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves
And down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves;
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies,


The wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk
Speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er;
And diamond-rayed,...Read more of this...

Sestina I

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA I. A qualunque animale alberga in terra. NIGHT BRINGS HIM NO REST. HE IS THE PREY OF DESPAIR.  To every animal that dwells on earth,Except to those which have in hate the sun,Their time of labour is while lasts the day;But when high heaven relumes its thousand stars,This seeks his...Read more of this...

To Lady Jane

by Vachel Lindsay
 Romance was always young.
You come today
Just eight years old
With marvellous dark hair.
Younger than Dante found you
When you turned
His heart into the way
That found the heavenly stair.

Perhaps we must be strangers.
I confess
My soul this hour is Dante's,
And your care
Should be for dolls
Whose painted hands caress
Your marvellous dark hair.

Romance, with moonflower face
And morning eyes,
And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
The canticles...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXVI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXVI. O bella man, che mi distringi 'l core. THE STOLEN GLOVE.  O beauteous hand! that dost my heart subdue,And in a little space my life confine;Hand where their skill and utmost efforts joinNature and Heaven, their plastic powers to show!Sweet fingers, seeming pearls of orient hue,To my wounds...Read more of this...

All mortal ken is bounded by the veil,

by Omar Khayyam
All mortal ken is bounded by the veil,
To see beyond man's sight is all too frail;
Yea! earth's dark bosom is his only home;—
Alas! 'twere long to tell the doleful tale....Read more of this...

The Betrothed

by Rudyard Kipling
 "You must choose between me and your cigar."
 -- BREACH OF PROMISE CASE, CIRCA 1885.


Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box --...Read more of this...

Arrival

by Philip Larkin
 Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.

Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And...Read more of this...

Contemplation

by Charles Baudelaire
 THOU, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, 
The eve is thine which even now drops down, 
To carry peace or care to human will, 
And in a misty veil enfolds the town. 

While the vile mortals of the multitude, 
By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, 
Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- 
Grief, place thy hand in mine,...Read more of this...

The Grownup

by Rainer Maria Rilke
All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

As she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with...Read more of this...

Heaven--Haven: A Nun Takes The Veil

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 I have desired to go
 Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
 And a few lilies blow.

 And I have asked to be
 Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
 And out of the swing of the sea....Read more of this...

V was a veil

by Edward Lear
V  was a veilWith a border upon it,And a ribbon to tie itAll round a pink bonnet.  v! Pretty green Veil!...Read more of this...

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