Famous Vital Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Vital poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous vital poems. These examples illustrate what a famous vital poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend; -oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! -He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterr...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...tling with careless step the moon-light snake,
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on
Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep
Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;
Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs
Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind
Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,
Day after day, a weary waste of hours,
Bearing within his life the brooding care
That ever fed on it...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...and casual tongue
Moulding her mighty fates,
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By desert people immemorial
On Arizonan mesas shall be done
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of ...Read more of this...
by
Moody, William Vaughn
...temple blest;
The grassy vale a banquet-room
Where he could feed and comfort many a guest.
With him the lily shared
The vital joy that breathes itself in bloom;
And every bird that sang beside the nest
Told of the love that broods o'er every living thing.
He watched the shepherd bring
His flock at sundown to the welcome fold,
The fisherman at daybreak fling
His net across the waters gray and cold,
And all day long the patient reaper swing
His curving sickle through the harves...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...
It is inevitably in the man—he and it are in love, and never leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum, it is vital as eyesight;
If there be any Soul, there is truth—if there be man or woman there is truth—if
there
be physical or moral, there is truth;
If there be equilibrium or volition, there is truth—if there be things at all upon
the
earth, there is truth.
O truth of the earth! I am determin’d to press my way toward you;
Sound your voice! I scale mountai...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...st;
In vigilance of grief that would compel
The soul to hate for having loved too well.
XVIII.
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall'n which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurled;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret:
With more capacity for love tha...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ce more I see thy sheeted spectre stand ,
Roll the dim eye, and wave the paly hand !
Soon may this fluttering spark of vital flame
Forsake its languid melancholy frame !
Soon may these eyes their trembling lustre close,
Welcome the dreamless night of long repose !
Soon may this woe-worn spirit seek the bourne
Where, lulled to slumber, Grief forgets to mourn !"...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...l of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food. Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than dom...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...like shall end; the sensate HEART,
With all its passions, all its fire,
Touch'd by FATE'S unerring dart,
Shall feel its vital strength expire;
Those eyes, that beam with FRIENDSHIP'S ray,
And glance ineffable delight,
Shall shrink from LIFE'S translucid day,
And close their fainting orbs, in DEATH'S impervious night.
Then what remains for mortal pow'r;
But TIME'S dull journey to beguile;
To deck with joy, the winged hour,
To meet its sorrows with a patient smile;
And when...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...onsummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or intuitive; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.
Wonder not then, what God for you saw good
If I refuse not, but convert,...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ping long in dark,
The which this ancient City whilome made:
Or that I had Amphion's instrument,
To quicken with his vital note's accord,
The stony joints of these old walls now rent,
By which th' Ausonian light might be restor'd:
Or that at least I could with pencil fine,
Fashion the portraits of these palaces,
By pattern of great Virgil's spirit divine;
I would assay with that which in me is,
To build with level of my lofty style,
That which no hands can evermore...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...
Rich, showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.
Sprouts take and accumulate—stand by the curb prolific and vital:
Landscapes, projected, masculine, full-sized and golden.
30
All truths wait in all things;
They neither hasten their own delivery, nor resist it;
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon;
The insignificant is as big to me as any;
(What is less or more than a touch?)
Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the nigh...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire;
Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate;
To obey, as well as command—to follow, more than to lead;
These also are the lessons of our New World;
—While how little the New, after all—how much the Old, Old World!
Long, long, long, has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ly pursued, may-be unconscious of
yourselves,
Unswerv’d by all the passing errors, perturbations of the surface;
You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts, statutes,
literatures,
Here build your homes for good—establish here—These areas entire, Lands of the Western
Shore,
We pledge, we dedicate to you.
For man of you—your characteristic Race,
Here may be hardy, sweet, gigantic grow—here tower, proportionate to Nature,
Here climb the vast, pure ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hich never more its Honours shall renew,
Clipt from the lovely Head where late it grew)
That while my Nostrils draw the vital Air,
This Hand, which won it, shall for ever wear.
He spoke, and speaking, in proud Triumph spread
The long-contended Honours of her Head.
But Umbriel, hateful Gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the Vial whence the Sorrows flow.
Then see! the Nymph in beauteous Grief appears,
Her Eyes half languishing, half drown'd in Tears;
On her heav'd Bosom hung h...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...above all other blest is heWho from the trammels of mortality,Ere half the vital thread ran out, was free,Mature for Heaven; where now the matchless fairPreserves those features, that seraphic air,And all those mental charms that raised my mind,To judge of heaven while yet on earth confined.That soft attractive glance that ...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ing stream.'
" 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
"I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand
"Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
Until the second bursts--so on my sight
Bu...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow--
A living image which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both.
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth;
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist that his skill should never die,
lma...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Grim monarch! see, depriv'd of vital breath,
A young physician in the dust of death:
Dost thou go on incessant to destroy,
Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy?
"Enough" thou never yet wast known to say,
Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway:
Nor youth, nor science, nor the ties of love,
Nor aught on earth thy flinty heart can move.
The friend, the spouse from his di...Read more of this...
by
Wheatley, Phillis
...he been ruled, for aught appears,
He might have lived these twenty years;
For when we opened him we found
That all his vital parts were sound."
From Dublin soon to London spread,
'Tis told at court "the Dean is dead."
Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
Runs laughing up to tell the queen.
The queen, so gracious, mild, and good,
Cries "Is he gone? 'tis time he should.
He's dead, you say; why, let him rot:
I'm glad the medals were forgot.
I promised him, I own; but when?
I only...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
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