Famous Veins Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

An Appearance

by Sylvia Plath
 The smile of iceboxes annihilates me.
Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one!
I hear her great heart purr.

From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What am I to make of these contradictions?
I wear white cuffs, I bow.

Is this love then, this red material
Issuing from the steele needle...Read more of this...

While you have in your body bones, veins, and nerves,

by Omar Khayyam
While you have in your body bones, veins, and nerves,
place not your foot outside the limits of your destiny.
Yield never to your enemy, be that enemy Rustum,
son of Zal; accept nothing which puts you under obligation
to a friend, be that friend Hatim-tai.
383...Read more of this...

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop

by William Butler Yeats
 I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's...Read more of this...

The Sin Of Hamlet

by Delmore Schwartz
 The horns in the harbor booming, vaguely,
Fog, forgotten, yesterday, conclusion,
Nostalgic, noising dim sorrow, calling
To sleep is it? I think so, and childhood,
Not the door opened and the stair descended,
The voice answered, the choice announced, the
Trigger touched in the sharp declaration!

And when it comes, escape is small; the door
Creaks; the worms of fear spread veins; the furtive
Fugitive, looking backward, sees...Read more of this...

A Process In The Weather Of The Heart

by Dylan Thomas
 A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of...Read more of this...

Spring Offensive

by Wilfred Owen
 Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and...Read more of this...

She bore it till the simple veins

by Emily Dickinson
 She bore it till the simple veins
Traced azure on her hand --
Til pleading, round her quiet eyes
The purple Crayons stand.

Till Daffodils had come and gone
I cannot tell the sum,
And then she ceased to bear it --
And with the Saints sat down.

No more her patient figure
At twilight soft to meet --
No more her timid bonnet
Upon the village street --

But Crowns...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXIII. Occhi, piangete; accompagnate il core. DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE POET AND HIS EYES.  Playne ye, myne eyes, accompanye my harte,For, by your fault, lo, here is death at hand!Ye brought hym first into this bitter band,And of his harme as yett ye felt no part;But now ye shall: Lo! here...Read more of this...

In The Deep Museum

by Anne Sexton
 My God, my God, what ***** corner am I in? 
Didn't I die, blood running down the post, 
lungs gagging for air, die there for the sin 
of anyone, my sour mouth giving up the ghost? 
Surely my body is done? Surely I died? 
And yet, I know, I'm here. What place is this? 
Cold and *****, I sting...Read more of this...

Heleni

by Odysseus Elytis
Heleni
Translated by Daphne on May 17th, 1995


By the first drop of rain the summer died 
The words that had bore those stary nights got wet
All those words that had one sole destination You!
Where will our hands reach now that weather no longer cares for us
Where will our eyes rest now that the distant lines got dispersed in the clouds
Now that...Read more of this...

First Love

by Victor Hugo
 ("Vous êtes singulier.") 
 
 {MARION DELORME, Act I., June, 1829, played 1831.} 
 
 MARION (smiling.) You're strange, and yet I love you thus. 
 
 DIDIER. You love me? 
 Beware, nor with light lips utter that word. 
 You love me!—know you what it is to love 
 With love that is the life-blood in one's...Read more of this...

Trickle Drops

by Walt Whitman
 TRICKLE, drops! my blue veins leaving! 
O drops of me! trickle, slow drops, 
Candid, from me falling—drip, bleeding drops, 
From wounds made to free you whence you were prison’d, 
From my face—from my forehead and lips,
From my breast—from within where I was conceal’d—press forth, red drops—confession drops;

Stain every page—stain every song I sing, every word I say, bloody drops;...Read more of this...

Tunbridge Wells

by John Wilmot
 At five this morn, when Phoebus raised his head
From Thetis' lap, I raised myself from bed,
And mounting steed, I trotted to the waters
The rendesvous of fools, buffoons, and praters,
Cuckolds, whores, citizens, their wives and daughters.

My squeamish stomach I with wine had bribed
To undertake the dose that was prescribed;
But turning head, a sudden curséd view
That innocent provision overthrew,
And without drinking,...Read more of this...

Westward on the High-Hilled Plains

by A E Housman
 Westward on the high-hilled plains 
Where for me the world began, 
Still, I think, in newer veins 
Frets the changeless blood of man. 

Now that other lads than I 
Strip to bathe on Severn shore, 
They, no help, for all they try, 
Tread the mill I trod before. 

There, when hueless is the west 
And the darkness hushes wide,...Read more of this...

The Forsaken

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 I 
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished...Read more of this...

Green Thumb

by Philip Levine
 Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call 
Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all! 
Take of me all you can; my average weight 
May make amends for this, my low estate. 
But do not shake, Green Thumb, as once you did 
My heart and liver, or my prostate bid 
Good Morning to -- leave it,...Read more of this...

Before I Knocked

by Dylan Thomas
 Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten...Read more of this...

A Refusal To Mourn The Death By Fire Of A Child In London

by Dylan Thomas
 Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least...Read more of this...

The Veins of other Flowers

by Emily Dickinson
 The Veins of other Flowers
The Scarlet Flowers are
Till Nature leisure has for Terms
As "Branch," and "Jugular."

We pass, and she abides.
We conjugate Her Skill
While She creates and federates
Without a syllable....Read more of this...

Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The...Read more of this...

When We Are Old And These Rejoicing Veins

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning their remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.
O sweet,...Read more of this...

The Tired Worker

by Claude McKay
 O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon 
Is waning into evening, whisper soft! 
Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon 
From out its misty veil will swing aloft! 
Be patient, weary body, soon the night 
Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet, 
And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite 
To rest thy tired hands and...Read more of this...

43. Song—O Leave Novels!

by Robert Burns
 O LEAVE novels, 1 ye Mauchline belles,
 Ye’re safer at your spinning-wheel;
Such witching books are baited hooks
 For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel;
Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons,
 They make your youthful fancies reel;
They heat your brains, and fire your veins,
 And then you’re prey for Rob Mossgiel.


Beware a tongue that’s smoothly hung,
 A heart that warmly seems to...Read more of this...

Beauty Clear and Fair

by John Gould Fletcher
 BEAUTY clear and fair,
 Where the air
Rather like a perfume dwells;
 Where the violet and the rose
 Their blue veins and blush disclose,
And come to honour nothing else:

 Where to live near
 And planted there
Is to live, and still live new;
 Where to gain a favour is
 More than light, perpetual bliss--
Make me live by serving you!

Dear, again back...Read more of this...

In Honour Of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Laybrother of the Society of Jesus


Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Veins poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace