Famous Venus Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hero And Leander

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See you the towers, that, gray and old,
Frown through the sunlight's liquid gold,
Steep sternly fronting steep?
The Hellespont beneath them swells,
And roaring cleaves the Dardanelles,
The rock-gates of the deep!
Hear you the sea, whose stormy wave,
From Asia, Europe clove in thunder?
That sea which rent a world, cannot
Rend love from love asunder!

In Hero's, in Leander's heart,
Thrills the sweet anguish of the dart
Whose...Read more of this...

The Lady who offers her Looking-Glass to Venus

by Matthew Prior
 VENUS, take my votive glass: 
Since I am not what I was, 
What from this day I shall be, 
Venus, let me never see....Read more of this...

Venus of the Louvre

by Emma Lazarus
 Down the long hall she glistens like a star, 
The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone, 
Yet none the less immortal, breathing on. 
Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar. 
When first the enthralled enchantress from afar 
Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone, 
Serenely poised on her world-worshipped throne, 
As when she guided once...Read more of this...

On A Watch Made By A Blacksmith

by William Strode
 A Vulcan and a Venus seldom part.
A blacksmith never us'd to filinge art
Beyond a lock and key, for Venus' sake
Hath cut a watch soe small that sence will ake
In searching every wire, and subtile sphere
Which his industrious skill hath order'd theire:
It scarce outswells a nut, and is soe light
A Ladies eare might well indure the weight.
Twas for a Mistrisse:...Read more of this...

Guenevere

by Sara Teasdale
 I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved: --
There is no other havoc left to do.

A little month ago I was a queen,
And mothers held their babies up to see
When I came riding out of Camelot.
The women smiled, and all the world...Read more of this...

Goddess In The Wood The

by Rupert Brooke
 In a flowered dell the Lady Venus stood,
Amazed with sorrow. Down the morning one
Far golden horn in the gold of trees and sun
Rang out; and held; and died. . . . She thought the wood
Grew quieter. Wing, and leaf, and pool of light
Forgot to dance. Dumb lay the unfalling stream;
Life one eternal instant rose in dream
Clear out of time,...Read more of this...

Lilys Menagerie

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which 
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change 
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images."]

THERE'S no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;

She keeps the strangest creatures in it,
And catches them, she knows not how.

Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave,
And their clipp'd pinions...Read more of this...

Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star...Read more of this...

Poem 6

by Edmund Spenser
 My loue is now awake out of her dreame,
and her fayre eyes like stars that dimmed were
With darksome cloud, now shew theyr goodly beams
More bright then Hesperus his head doth rere.
Come now ye damzels, daughters of delight,
Helpe quickly her to dight,
But first come ye fayre houres which were begot
In loues sweet paradice, of Day and Night,
Which doe the seasons...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIV: Venus! To Thee

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Venus! to thee, the Lesbian Muse shall sing,
The song, which Myttellenian youths admir'd, 
when Echo, am'rous of the strain inspir'd,
Bade the wild rocks with madd'ning plaudits ring!
Attend my pray'r! O! Queen of rapture! bring
To these fond arms, he, whom my soul has fir'd;
From these fond arms remov'd; yet, still desir'd,
Though love, exulting, spreads his varying wing!
Oh! source of ev'ry...Read more of this...

Absence

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 WHEN from the craggy mountain's pathless steep,
Whose flinty brow hangs o'er the raging sea, 
My wand'ring eye beholds the foamy deep,
I mark the restless surge­and think of THEE. 
The curling waves, the passing breezes move, 
Changing and treach'rous as the breath of LOVE; 
The "sad similitude" awakes my smart, 
And thy dear image twines about my heart. 

When at...Read more of this...

Prothalamion

by Edmund Spenser
CALM was the day, and through the trembling air 
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play¡ª 
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay 
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair; 
When I, (whom sullen care, 5 
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay 
In princes' court, and expectation vain 
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away 
Like empty shadows, did...Read more of this...

Proud Music of The Storm

by Walt Whitman
 1
PROUD music of the storm! 
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! 
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! 
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! 
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; 
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! 
You formless, free, religious dances! you...Read more of this...

Love Of The Woodland

by Victor Hugo
 ("Orphée au bois du Caystre.") 
 
 {Bk. I. ii.} 


 Orpheus, through the hellward wood 
 Hurried, ere the eve-star glowed, 
 For the fauns' lugubrious hoots 
 Followed, hollow, from crookèd roots; 
 Aeschylus, where Aetna smoked, 
 Gods of Sicily evoked 
 With the flute, till sulphur taint 
 Dulled and lulled the echoes faint; 
...Read more of this...

While Moon and Venus in the sky shall dwell,

by Omar Khayyam
While Moon and Venus in the sky shall dwell,
None shall see aught red grape-juice to excel:
O foolish publicans, what can you buy
One half so precious as the goods you sell?...Read more of this...

A Vow To Venus

by Robert Herrick
 Happily I had a sight
Of my dearest dear last night;
Make her this day smile on me,
And I'll roses give to thee!...Read more of this...

1777

by Amy Lowell
 I
The Trumpet-Vine Arbour
The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are 
wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting...Read more of this...

A Hymn To Venus And Cupid

by Robert Herrick
 Sea-born goddess, let me be
By thy son thus graced, and thee,
That whene'er I woo, I find
Virgins coy, but not unkind.
Let me, when I kiss a maid,
Taste her lips, so overlaid
With love's sirop, that I may
In your temple, when I pray,
Kiss the altar, and confess
There's in love no bitterness....Read more of this...

from Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard...Read more of this...

Venus Runaway

by Ben Jonson
 Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say?
He is Venus' runaway.

She that will but now discover
Where the winged wag doth hover,
Shall to-night receive a kiss,
How or where herself would wish:
But who brings him to his mother,
Shall have that kiss, and another.

He hath marks about...Read more of this...

For A Thirteenth Birthday

by Lisel Mueller
 You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
predictable planes and levels,
pavement that holds you,
stairs that lift you,
ice that trips you,
nights that begin after sunset,
four lunar phases,
a finite house.

I give you Dreiser
although (or because)
I am no longer sure.
Lately I have been walking into glass doors.
Through the car windows, curbs...Read more of this...

On a Picture Painted by her self representing two Nimphs of DIANAs one in a posture to Hunt the other Batheing

by Anne Killigrew
 WE are Diana's Virgin-Train, 
Descended of no Mortal Strain; 
Our Bows and Arrows are our Goods, 
Our Pallaces, the lofty Woods, 
The Hills and Dales, at early Morn, 
Resound and Eccho with our Horn; 
We chase the Hinde and Fallow-Deer, 
The Wolf and Boar both dread our Spear; 

In Swiftness we out-strip the Wind, 
An Eye and Thought we...Read more of this...

After The Storm

by Derek Walcott
 There are so many islands! 
As many islands as the stars at night 
on that branched tree from which meteors are shaken 
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight. 
But things must fall,and so it always was, 
on one hand Venus,on the other Mars; 
fall,and are one,just as this earth is one 
island in archipelagoes of stars. 
My first...Read more of this...

Since the day when Venus and the moon appeared in

by Omar Khayyam
Since the day when Venus and the moon appeared in
the sky, no one has seen anything here below preferable
to ruby wine. I am truly astonished at the wine-merchants,
for how can they buy anything superior to
that which they sell?...Read more of this...

Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers

by Henry Lawson
 While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse 
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse, 
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part -- 
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte. 

If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks, 
And discover shining rivers...Read more of this...

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