Famous Visions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Rules and visions

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 Life counts
the rules;
the sunset, their exceptions.
Rain drinks up
the centuries;
spring, our dreams.
The eagle sees
the sunrays
and youth, the visions....Read more of this...

Juvenilia An Ode to Natural Beauty

by Alan Seeger
 There is a power whose inspiration fills 
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, 
Like airy dew ere any drop distils, 
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught 
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole 
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. 
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, 
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, 
When...Read more of this...

Sestina

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
I saw my soul at rest upon a day
      As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
      To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
      And knew...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXI. Qual paura ho, quando mi torna a mente. MELANCHOLY RECOLLECTIONS AND PRESAGES.  O Laura! when my tortured mindThe sad remembrance bearsOf that ill-omen'd day,When, victim to a thousand doubts and fears,I left my soul behind,That soul that could not from its partner stray;In nightly visions to my...Read more of this...

The Harvest

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword
Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored...Read more of this...

Sonnet- To Zante

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers,
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take!
How many memories of what radiant hours
At sight of thee and thine at once awake!
How many scenes of what departed bliss!
How many thoughts of what entombed hopes!
How many visions of a maiden that is
No more- no more upon thy verdant slopes!
No more! alas, that...Read more of this...

Near The Wall Of A House

by Yehuda Amichai
 Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that...Read more of this...

On Behalf of Some Irishmen not Followers of Tradition

by George William Russell
 THEY call us aliens, we are told,
Because our wayward visions stray
From that dim banner they unfold,
The dreams of worn-out yesterday.
The sum of all the past is theirs,
The creeds, the deeds, the fame, the name,
Whose death-created glory flares
And dims the spark of living flame.
They weave the necromancer’s spell,
And burst the graves where martyrs slept,
Their ancient story to retell,
Renewing tears the...Read more of this...

Æstivation

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor. 




In candent ire the solar splendor flames;
The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from thc crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

To Mignon

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 OVER vale and torrent far
Rolls along the sun's bright car.
Ah! he wakens in his course

Mine, as thy deep-seated smart

In the heart.
Ev'ry morning with new force.

Scarce avails night aught to me;
E'en the visions that I see
Come but in a mournful guise;

And I feel this silent smart

In my heart
With creative pow'r arise.

During many a beauteous year
I have seen ships 'neath me...Read more of this...

against the ladling of doom

by Rg Gregory
 crisis has a fact to get straight
it needn't be the end of the world
beginnings too are coated with death

because we've had enough of the old's
dirty jokes doesn't mean there's no
more grass ready to push itself up

or dreams can't go on being lived
the dreamers' necks having been twisted
(visions root in mists and spread outwards)
the chrysalis has to be taken apart
for...Read more of this...

The Captive

by Rudyard Kipling
 Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining
He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining.
When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them,
He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them.
Ere the sad dust of the marshalled feet of the chain-gang swallowed him,
Observing him nobly at ease, I alighted and followed...Read more of this...

The Iron Gate

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting?
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name,
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting
In days long vanished,-- is he still the same,

Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting,
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,
Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?

Old age, the graybeard! Well,...Read more of this...

City Visions

by Emma Lazarus
 I

As the blind Milton's memory of light, 
The deaf Beethoven's phantasy of tone, 
Wroght joys for them surpassing all things known 
In our restricted sphere of sound and sight,-- 
So while the glaring streets of brick and stone 
Vix with heat, noise, and dust from morn till night, 
I will give rein to Fancy, taking flight 
From dismal now...Read more of this...

Visions of the worlds vanitie

by Edmund Spenser
 One day, whiles that my daylie cares did sleepe,
My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison,
Began to enter into meditation deepe
Of things exceeding reach of common reason;
Such as this age, in which all good is geason,
And all that humble is and meane debaced,
Hath brought forth in her last declining season,
Griefe of good mindes, to see goodnesse disgraced.
On which when as...Read more of this...

Still Be A Child

by Victor Hugo
 ("O vous que votre âge défende") 
 
 {IX., February, 1840.} 


 In youthful spirits wild, 
 Smile, for all beams on thee; 
 Sport, sing, be still the child, 
 The flower, the honey-bee. 
 
 Bring not the future near, 
 For Joy too soon declines— 
 What is man's mission here? 
 Toil, where no sunlight...Read more of this...

How the old Mountains drip with Sunset

by Emily Dickinson
 How the old Mountains drip with Sunset
How the Hemlocks burn --
How the Dun Brake is draped in Cinder
By the Wizard Sun --

How the old Steeples hand the Scarlet
Till the Ball is full --
Have I the lip of the Flamingo
That I dare to tell?

Then, how the Fire ebbs like Billows --
Touching all the Grass
With a departing -- Sapphire -- feature...Read more of this...

Sonnet

by Louise Bogan
 To the River Otter

Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have past,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimm'd the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters...Read more of this...

Speak God Of Visions

by Emily Brontë
 O, thy bright eyes must answer now,
When Reason, with a scornful brow,
Is mocking at my overthrow!
O, thy sweet tongue must plead for me,
And tell why I have chosen thee!

Stern Reason is to judgment come,
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say
Why I did cast the world away;

Why I have presevered...Read more of this...

Sonnet 26 - I lived with visions for my company

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come—to be,
Beloved, what they...Read more of this...

Lullaby

by Louise Gluck
 Sleep, pretty lady, the night is enfolding you;
Drift, and so lightly, on crystalline streams.
Wrapped in its perfumes, the darkness is holding you;
Starlight bespangles the way of your dreams.
Chorus the nightingales, wistfully amorous;
Blessedly quiet, the blare of the day.
All the sweet hours may your visions be glamorous-
Sleep, pretty lady, as long as you may.

Sleep, pretty lady, the night shall be...Read more of this...

Sweeney

by Henry Lawson
 It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, 
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; 
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think -- 
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink. 

'Neath the public-house verandah I was resting on a bunk 
When a stranger rose before me,...Read more of this...

On such a night or such a night

by Emily Dickinson
 On such a night, or such a night,
Would anybody care
If such a little figure
Slipped quiet from its chair --

So quiet -- Oh how quiet,
That nobody might know
But that the little figure
Rocked softer -- to and fro --

On such a dawn, or such a dawn --
Would anybody sigh
That such a little figure
Too sound asleep did lie

For Chanticleer to wake it...Read more of this...

These -- saw Visions --

by Emily Dickinson
 These -- saw Visions --
Latch them softly --
These -- held Dimples --
Smooth them slow --
This -- addressed departing accents --
Quick -- Sweet Mouth -- to miss thee so --

This -- We stroked --
Unnumbered Satin --
These -- we held among our own --
Fingers of the Slim Aurora --
Not so arrogant -- this Noon --

These -- adjust -- that ran to...Read more of this...

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