Famous Vision Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Vision poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous vision poems. These examples illustrate what a famous vision poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...e sceptre wait with sov'reignty and sway
On Judah's hand till Shiloh came. That light
Which Beor's son in clearer vision saw,
Its beams sore piercing his malignant eye;
But yet constrain'd by the eternal truth
Confess'd its origin and hail'd its rise,
Fresh as a star from Judah's sacred line.
This, Amos' son touch'd with seraphic fire
In after times beheld. He saw it beam
From Judah's royal tribe; he saw it shine
O'er Judah's happy land, and bade the hil...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...il,
Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has attained it.
But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that faintly
Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the moonlight.
It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of a phantom.
Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before her,
And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and nearer.
Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of the oars...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ways play, nor ladies smile:
Endure with patience the distasteful fun
For just a little while!"
A change came o'er my Vision - it was night:
We clove a pathway through a frantic throng:
The steeds, wild-plunging, filled us with affright:
The chariots whirled along.
Within a marble hall a river ran -
A living tide, half muslin and half cloth:
And here one mourned a broken wreath or fan,
Yet swallowed down her wrath;
And here one offered to a thirsty fair
(His words h...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...brated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to conve...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ts blinded darkness strikes the noon
Yet never sees the sun, so do my eyes
Restlessly follow that which from my cheated vision flies.
O for one grand unselfish simple life
To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!
Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye shelt...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ng wail
By which the air of all the hells is stirred
Increasing ever, which caused mine eyes unveil
Their keenest vision to search what came, and he
Who marked, indulgent, told. "Ahead we see
The city of Dis, with all its dolorous crew,
Numerous, and burdened with reliefless pain,
And guilt intolerable to think."
I said,
"Master, already through the night I view
The mosques of that sad city, that fiery red
As heated metal extend, and crowd the p...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ar meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:¡ªdo I wake or sleep? 80 ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...idual soul,
For ever happy: Him who disobeys,
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Into utter darkness, deep ingulfed, his place
Ordained without redemption, without end.
So spake the Omnipotent, and with his words
All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all.
That day, as other solemn days, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred hill;
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere
Of planets, and ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...sweet, I lay,' said he,
`And mused upon it, drifting up the stream
In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced
The broken vision; for I dream'd that still
The motion of the great deep bore me on,
And that the woman walk'd upon the brink:
I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it:
"It came," she said, "by working in the mines:"
O then to ask her of my shares, I thought;
And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head.
And then the motion of the current ceased,
And there ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...cannot reach;
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds, and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision—it is unequal to measure itself;
It provokes me forever;
It says sarcastically, Walt, you contain enough—why don’t you let
it out, then?
Come now, I will not be tantalized—you conceive too much of articulation.
Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded?
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost;
The dirt receding b...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...
With Westland king and Westland saint,
And watched the western glory faint
Along the road to Frome.
BOOK I THE VISION OF THE KING
Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.
Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.
Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...then was stamp'd upon her mind —
But once beguiled — and evermore beguiling;
Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision
To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given,
When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian,
And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven;
Soft, as the memory of buried love;
Pure as the prayer which Childhood wafts above,
Was she — the daughter of that rude old Chief,
Who met the maid with tears — but not of grief.
Who hath not proved ho...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...y have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itsel...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...d my horse
Spare not, but urge direct in headlong course
Unto some fair far hill that gain I must:
But near arrived the vision soon mistrust,
Rein in, and stand as one who sees the source
Of strong illusion, shaming thought to force
From off his mind the soil of passion's gust.
My brow I bare then, and with slacken'd speed
Can view the country pleasant on all sides,
And to kind salutation give good heed:
I ride as one who for his pleasure rides,
And stroke the neck of m...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nd,
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?'
`Nay,' said the knight; `for no such passion mine.
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries,
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out
Among us in the jousts, while women watch
Who wins, who falls; and waste the spiritual strength
Within us, better offered up to Heaven.'
To whom the monk: `The Holy Grail!--I trust
We are green in Heaven's eyes; but here too much
We m...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...as yesternight,
Old Allan-bane foretold your plight,—
A gray-haired sire, whose eye intent
Was on the visioned future bent.
He saw your steed, a dappled gray,
Lie dead beneath the birchen way;
Painted exact your form and mien,
Your hunting-suit of Lincoln green,
That tasselled horn so gayly gilt,
That falchion's crooked blade and hilt,
That cap with heron plumage trim,
And yon two hounds so dark and grim.
...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...the door?
"Yet still before him as he flies
One pallid form shall ever rise,
And, bodying forth in glassy eyes
"The vision of a vanished good,
Low peering through the tangled wood,
Shall freeze the current of his blood."
Still from each fact, with skill uncouth
And savage rapture, like a tooth
She wrenched some slow reluctant truth.
Till, like a silent water-mill,
When summer suns have dried the rill,
She reached a full stop, and was still.
Dead calm suc...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...heard as there
The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
This was the tenour of my waking dream.
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to & fro
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whenc...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
..., — like all other exaggeration, necessarily begets opposition. In whatever manner he may be spoken of in this new 'Vision,' his public career will not be more favourably transmitted by history. Of his private virtues (although a little expense to the nation) there can be no doubt.
With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey.Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...cuses.
x x x
To lose the freshness of the words and sense, for us,
Is it same as for an artist to lose vision,
Or for an actor -- voice and motion,
Or for a gorgeous woman -- her finesse?
But do not seek now for yourself to keep
What heaven has given to you below:
We have been judged -- and we ourselves both know --
To give away, and not to keep.
Or else alone you go to heal the blind,
To know yourself in heavy hour of doubt
The students' smu...Read more of this...
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