Famous Velvet Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Velvet poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous velvet poems. These examples illustrate what a famous velvet poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Elinor Wylie
When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.
Little birds...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
LET OTHERS wreaths of ROSES twine
With scented leaves of EGLANTINE;
Enamell'd buds and gaudy flow'rs,
The pride of FLORA'S painted bow'rs;
Such common charms shall ne'er be wove
Around the brows of him I LOVE.
Fair are their beauties for a day,
But swiftly do they fade away;
Each PINK sends forth its choicest sweet
AURORA'S warm embrace to meet;
And each inconstant...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet snd slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
I am not sure if I knew the truth
What his case or crime might be,
I only know that he pleaded Youth,
A beautiful, golden plea!
Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes,
Its roseate velvet skin—
A plea...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
TO LAYLAH EIGHT-AND-TWENTY
Lamp of living loveliness,
Maid miraculously male,
Rapture of thine own excess
Blushing through the velvet veil
Where the olive cheeks aglow
Shadow-soften into snow,
Breasts like Bacchanals afloat
Under the proudly phallic throat!
Be thou to my pilgrimage
Light, and laughter sweet and sage,
Till the darkling day expire
Of my life in thy caress,
Thou my frenzy and my fire,
Lamp of living loveliness!
Thou the ruler of the...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
She has danced for leagues and leagues,
Over thorns and thistles,
Prancing to a tune of Griegg's
Performed on willow whistles.
Antelopes behold her, dazed,
Velvet-eyed, and furry;
Polar flowers, crackle-glazed,
Snap beneath her hurry.
In a wig of copper wire,
A gown of scalloped gauzes,
She capers like a flame of fire
Over Arctic mosses.
All her tears have turned to...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Gray
'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.
Still had she...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Once I loved a fairy,
Queen Mab it was. Her voice
Was like a little Fountain
That bids the birds rejoice.
Her face was wise and solemn,
Her hair was brown and fine.
Her dress was pansy velvet,
A butterfly design.
To see her hover round me
Or walk the hills of air,
Awakened love's deep pulses
And boyhood's...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark --
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
ONE by one lights of a skyscraper fling their checkering cross work on the velvet gown of night.
I believe the skyscraper loves night as a woman and brings her playthings she asks for, brings her a velvet gown,
And loves the white of her shoulders hidden under the dark feel of it all.
The masonry of steel looks to the night...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("S'il est un charmant gazon.")
{XXII, Feb. 18, 1834.}
If there be a velvet sward
By dewdrops pearly drest,
Where through all seasons fairies guard
Flowers by bees carest,
Where one may gather, day and night,
Roses, honeysuckle, lily white,
I fain would make of it a site
For...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I looked down on a daisied lawn
To where a host of tiny eyes
Of snow and gold from velvet shone
And made me think of starry skies.
I looked up to the vasty night
Where stars were very small indeed,
And in their galaxy of light
They made me think of daised mead.
I took a daisy in my hold;
Its snowy rays were tipped with rose,
And...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
On the water where the silver salmon...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Pocket watch, I tick well.
The streets are lizardly crevices
Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide.
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,
A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,
No rings through the nose, no cries.
Bright fish hooks, the smiles of women
Gulp at my bulk
And I, in my snazzy blacks,
Mill a litter of breasts like...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
1THERE was a late autumn cricket,
And two smoldering mountain sunsets
Under the valley roads of her eyes.
There was a late autumn cricket,
A hangover of summer song,
Scraping a tune
Of the late night clocks of summer,
In the late winter night fireglow,
This in a circle of black velvet at her neck.
2In pansy eyes a flash, a thin rim of white light, a beach...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You never saw a cat with wings,
I'll bet a dollar -- well, I did;
'Twas one of those fantastic things
One runs across in old Madrid.
A walloping big tom it was,
(Maybe of the Angora line),
With silken ears and velvet paws,
And silver hair, superbly fine.
It sprawled upon a crimson mat,
Yet though crowds came to gaze on it,
It was a supercilious cat,
And didn't...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How soft a Caterpillar steps --
I fond one on my Hand
From such a velvet world it comes
Such plushes at command
Its soundless travels just arrest
My slow -- terrestrial eye
Intent upon its own career
What use has it for me --...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
This is a place on the way after the distances
can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner
of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along
raveling courses to stop in a single moment
and lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs
some in pairs that rolled as one over the same roads
to...Read more of this...
by
Bob Kaufman
Music from her breast, vibrating
Soundseared into burnished velvet.
Silent hips deceiving fools.
Rivulets of trickling ecstacy
From the alabaster pools of Jazz
Where music cools hot souls.
Eyes more articulately silent
Than Medusa's thousand tongues.
A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles
reveal her presence singing
Of cool remembrance, happy balls
Wrapped in swinging
Jazz
Her music...
Jazz....Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the dover,
"And your English summer's done."
You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song --...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"How good God is to me," he said;
"For have I not a mansion tall,
With trees and lawns of velvet tread,
And happy helpers at my call?
With beauty is my life abrim,
With tranquil hours and dreams apart;
You wonder that I yield to Him
That best of prayers, a grateful heart?"
"How good God is to me," he said;
"For look! though gone is all...Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
SHALT thou be conquered of a human fate
My liege, my lover, whose imperial head
Hath never bent in sorrow of defeat?
Shalt thou be vanquished, whose imperial feet
Have shattered armies and stamped empires dead?
Who shall unking thee, husband of a queen?
Wear thou thy majesty inviolate.
Earth's glories flee of human eyes unseen,
Earth's kingdoms fade...Read more of this...
by
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.
Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And...Read more of this...
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