Famous Venice Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Venice poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous venice poems. These examples illustrate what a famous venice poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...we,
the convicts of the City Leprous,
where gold and filth spawned leper¡¯s sores,
we are purer than the azure of Venice,
washed by both the sea and the sun!
I spit on the fact
that neither Homer nor Ovid
invented characters like us,
pock-marked with soot.
I know
the sun would dim, on seeing
the gold fields of our souls!
Sinews and muscles are surer than prayers.
Must we implore the charity of the times!
We ¨C
each one of us ¨C
hold...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...eavy mind!
II
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice, where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
III
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by... what you call
... Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival;
I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all!
IV
Did young pe...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...n's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled;
I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled;
But, oh, to take your had, my dear, and ramble for a day
In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway!
I know that Eur...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ed in the breast-pin,
Centered in the golden breast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
(Author of 'The Stones of Venice,'
'Seven Lamps of Architecture,'
'Modern Painters,' and some others);
And perhaps he had not fully
Understood his author's meaning;
But, whatever was the reason,
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure.
Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little,
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of 'passive beauty...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...in the breast-pin,
Centered in the golden breast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
(Author of 'The Stones of Venice,'
'Seven Lamps of Architecture,'
'Modern Painters,' and some others);
And perhaps he had not fully
Understood his author's meaning;
But, whatever was the reason
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure....Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...ly of his doctrine concerning innate ideas.
For it is not lawful to sell poyson in England any more than it is in Venice, the Lord restrain both the finder and receiver.
For the ACCENTS are the invention of the Moabites, who learning the GREEK tongue marked the words after their own vicious pronuntiation.
For the GAULS (the now-French and original Moabites) after they were subdued by Cæsar became such Grecians at Rome.
For the Gaullic manuscripts fell ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
Broken and unrepair'd, and the...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...wisely scoff
And thought all safe, if they were so far off.
Modern geographers, 'twas there, they thought,
Where Venice twenty years the Turk had fought,
While the first year our navy is but shown,
The next divided, and the third we've none.
They, by the name, mistook it for that isle
Where Pilgrim Palmer travelled in exile
With the bull's horn to measure his own head
And on Pasipha?'s tomb to drop a bead.
But Morice learn'd dem?nstrates, by the post,
T...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath Day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright,
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shi...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ou're wasting time, you know:
Delay will spoil the venison."
"My heart is wasted with my woe!
There is no rest - in Venice, on
The Bridge of Sighs!" she quoted low
From Byron and from Tennyson.
I need not tell of soup and fish
In solemn silence swallowed,
The sobs that ushered in each dish,
And its departure followed,
Nor yet my suicidal wish
To BE the cheese I hollowed.
Some desperate attempts were made
To start a conversation;
"Madam," the sportive Brown ess...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...death crashing souls out of men ?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short ?
XVII.
When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,
When you have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
(And I have my Dead) --
XVIII.
What then ? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,
And burn your lights faintly ! My country is there,
Above the star ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...I sing!
Year of the purpose accomplish’d!
Year of the marriage of continents, climates and oceans!
(No mere Doge of Venice now, wedding the Adriatic;)
I see, O year, in you, the vast terraqueous globe, given, and giving all,
Europe to Asia, Africa join’d, and they to the New World;
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, holding a festival garland,
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand.
8
Passage to India!
Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing cradle of m...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...er king,
And with his name the seven mountains ring!
And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant! Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa, and where
The marble spires of Milan wound the air,
Rings from the Alps to the Sicilian shore,
And Dante's dream is now a dream no more.
But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,
Thy ruined palaces are but a pall
That hides thy f...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...infidelity, and avenged by a young Venetian, her lover, at the time the Seven Islands were possessed by the Republic of Venice, and soon after the Arnauts were beaten back from the Morea, which they had ravaged for some time subsequent to the Russian invasion. The desertion of the Mainotes on being refused the plunder of Misitra, led to the abandonment of that enterprise, and to the desolation of the Morea,during which the cruelty exercised on all sides was unparalleled e...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...the plenitude of July.
He gave her a camisole and a brooch. She gave him a cover and a break.
He gave her Venice, Florida. She gave him Rome, New York.
He gave her a false sense of security. She gave him a true sense of uncertainty.
He gave her the finger. She gave him what for.
He gave her a black eye. She gave him a divorce.
He gave her a steak for her black eye. She gave him his money back.
He gave her what she had...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...nd pointed like a flame.
He threw the shutters open, and in the window-frame
The morning glimmered like a tarnished Venice glass.
He took his Chinese pastilles and put them in a mass
Upon the mantelpiece till he could seek a plate
Worthy to hold them burning. Alas! He had
been late
In thinking of this need, and now he could not find
Platter or saucer rare enough to ease his mind.
The house was not astir, and he dared not go down
Into the barn-chamber, lest so...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...t the tube, the lance to wield,
Or whirl around the bickering blade; —
Was Alp, the Adrian renegade!
IV.
From Venice — once a race of worth
His gentle sires — he drew his birth;
But late an exile from her shore,
Against his countrymen he bore
The arms they taught to bear; and now
The turban girt his shaven brow.
Through many a change had Corinth pass'd
With Greece to Venice' rule at last;
And here, before her walls, with those
To Greece and Venice equal...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...r> And now? . . .
Victory waited on the arms of Spain,
Fallen was the lovely city by the lake,
The sunny Venice of the western world;
There many corpses, rotting in the wind,
Poked up stiff limbs, but in the leprous rags
No jewel caught the sun, no tawny chain
Gleamed, as the prying halberds raked them o'er.
Pillage that ran red-handed through the streets
Came railing home at evening empty-palmed;
And they, on that sad night a twelvemonth gone,
Who,...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...
Are the dreams I have of her."
And he came in the dark city
In the quiet evening time
He was thinking then of Venice
And of London all the same.
At the church both tall and dark
Stepped on shining stairs' granite
And he prayed then of the coming
Meeting with his first delight.
And above the altar made of gold
Flamed away the garden of God's rays:
"Here she is, here is the happy glimmer
Of gray joyous stars that are her eyes."
x x x
...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...mbardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes, 55
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,¡ª
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves. 60
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light, 65
As within a furnace bright,
Column, to...Read more of this...
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