Famous Violin Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Violin poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous violin poems. These examples illustrate what a famous violin poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...—R. B. [back]
Note 6. The source of the River Ayr.—R. B. [back]
Note 7. A well-known performer of Scottish music on the violin.—R. B. [back]
Note 8. A well-known performer of Scottish music on the violin.—R. B. [back]
Note 9. A compliment to the Montgomeries of Coilsfield, on the Feal or Faile, a tributary of the Ayr. [back]
Note 10. Mrs. Stewart of Stair, an early patroness of the poet. [back]
Note 11. The house of Professor Dugald Stewart. [back]...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...rld with the might of my voice,
I go by -- handsome,
twenty-two-year-old.
Gentle ones!
You lay your love on a violin.
The crude lay their love on a drum.
but you can't, like me, turn inside out entirely,
and nothing but human lips become!
Out of chintz-covered drawing-rooms, come
and learn-
decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues.
and you whose lips are calmly thumbed,
as a cook turns over cookery-book leaves.
If you like-
I'll be furiously...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...ittle: just a row of books
Much scrawl'd and noted; sketches on the wall,
Done rough in charcoal; the old instrument
(A violin, no Stradivarius)
He played so ill on; in the table drawer
Large schemes of undone work. Poems half-writ;
Wild drafts of symphonies; big plans of fugues;
Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand:
No more--the scattered pages of a tale,
A sorry tale that no man cared to read.
Alas, my friend, I lov'd him well, tho' he
Held me a cold and stagnant-bloode...Read more of this...
by
Levy, Amy
...t in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune:
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon ar...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance...Read more of this...
by
Cohen, Leonard
...ky.
Sound unbound by nature
Becomes bounded by art.
There is no competition of sounds
Between a nightingale and a violin.
Nature rewards and punishes
By offering unpredictable ways;
Art is apotheosis;
Often, the complaint of beauty.
Nature is an outcry,
Unpolished truth;
The art—a euphemism—
Tamed wilderness. ...Read more of this...
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...aiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past or as you walked
under an open window a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
Distracted by expectation as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing sing of women in lov...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved? (Where would you find a place
to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts
coming and going and often staying for the night.)
When longing overcomes you, sing of women i...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...er a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endlesse moniment.
GLOSS: tead] torch. ruddock] redbreast. croud] violin....Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...I told you, told you, I was one of those
And I thank you for those items that you sent me
The monkey and the plywood violin
I practiced every night, now I'm ready
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
Remember me? I used to live for music
Remember me? I brought your groceries in
Well it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin...Read more of this...
by
Cohen, Leonard
...words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay i...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...rands at him and cudgels and rakes,
but he escapes and comes to the thatched cottage
of an old blind man playing on the violin Mendelssohn's "Spring Song."
Hearing him approach, the blind man welcomes him:
"Come in, my friend," and takes him by the arm.
"You must be weary," and sits him down inside the house.
For the blind man has long dreamed of having a friend
to share his lonely life.
The monster has never known kindness ‹ the Baron was cruel --
but somehow he is able to...Read more of this...
by
Field, Edward
...NOTEBOOK
Now our plane swims
within the hot winds
swarming over Africa.
Seen from above,
Africa looks like a huge violin.
I swear
they're playing Tchaikovsky on a cello
on the angry dark island
of Africa.
And waiving his long hairy arms,
a gorilla is sobbing...
FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK
We're crossing the Indian Ocean.
We're drinking in the air
like a heavy, faint-smelling syrup.
An keeping our eyes on the yellow beacon of Singapore
-- leaving Australia on the ...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...nst the wind.
The music of evening is attenuated and thin—
The moon seen through a wave by a mermaid;
The crying of a violin.
Far down there, far down where the river turns to the west,
The delicate lights begin to twinkle
On the dusky arches of the bridge:
In the green sky a long cloud,
A smouldering wave of smoky crimson,
Breaks in the freezing wind: and above it, unabashed,
Remote, untouched, fierly palpitant,
Sings the first star....Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
t...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.
“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...th St. François' hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flied the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the f...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...se four bales of gunny-sacks,
Two hundred pounds of glue,
Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
A box of books, a cow,
A violin, Lord Byron's works,
A rip-saw and a sow.
A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!
"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!--
Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee!
Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee!
Luff!--bring her to the wind!"
For straight a farmer brought a plank,--
(Mysteriously inspired)--
And laying it unto the ship,
In silent awe retired.
Then every...Read more of this...
by
Twain, Mark
...own as she stood in the door. "Why, Dear,
What in the name of patience brings you here?
Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin
I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light.
This clasp is very much too worn and thin.
I'll take the other fiddle out to-night
If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite
Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I --
Give me the candle. No, the inside's dry.
Thank God for that! Well, Lotta, how
are you?
A bad storm, but the house still stan...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ed fruit in grass; and men and maids
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light
And shadow, while the twangling violin
Struck up with Soldier-laddie, and overhead
The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end.
Strange was the sight and smacking of the time;
And long we gazed, but satiated at length
Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire,
Through one wide chasm of time and ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
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