Famous Vitality Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Vitality poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous vitality poems. These examples illustrate what a famous vitality poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Aleister Crowley
"Aug." 10, 1911.
Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future,
Behold! these are vast words to be said.
Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
angles,
dots?
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As Frost is best conceived
By force of its Result --
Affliction is inferred
By subsequent effect --
If when the sun reveal,
The Garden keep the Gash --
If as the Days resume
The wilted countenance
Cannot correct the crease
Or counteract the stain --
Presumption is Vitality
Was somewhere put in twain....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Severer Service of myself
I -- hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind --
I worried Nature with my Wheels
When Hers had ceased to run --
When she had put away Her Work
My own had just begun.
I strove to weary Brain and Bone --
To harass to fatigue
The glittering Retinue of nerves --
Vitality to clog
To some dull comfort Those...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
There is a Languor of the Life
More imminent than Pain --
'Tis Pain's Successor -- When the Soul
Has suffered all it can --
A Drowsiness -- diffuses --
A Dimness like a Fog
Envelops Consciousness --
As Mists -- obliterate a Crag.
The Surgeon -- does not blanch -- at pain
His Habit -- is severe --
But tell him that it ceased to feel --
The Creature...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I've dropped my Brain -- My Soul is numb --
The Veins that used to run
Stop palsied -- 'tis Paralysis
Done perfecter on stone
Vitality is Carved and cool.
My nerve in Marble lies --
A Breathing Woman
Yesterday -- Endowed with Paradise.
Not dumb -- I had a sort that moved --
A Sense that smote and stirred --
Instincts for Dance -- a caper part --
An...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Death blow is a Life blow to Some
Who till they died, did not alive become --
Who had they lived, had died but when
They died, Vitality begun....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality,
Nay, it is Deity --
Unable they that love -- to die
For Love reforms Vitality
Into Divinity....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?
I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?
I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that?...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
No man saw awe, nor to his house
Admitted he a man
Though by his awful residence
Has human nature been.
Not deeming of his dread abode
Till laboring to flee
A grasp on comprehension laid
Detained vitality.
Returning is a different route
The Spirit could not show
For breathing is the only work
To be enacted now.
"Am not consumed," old Moses wrote,
"Yet saw him face to face" --
That very...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The harm of Years is on him --
The infamy of Time --
Depose him like a Fashion
And give Dominion room.
Forget his Morning Forces --
The Glory of Decay
Is a minuter Pageant
Than least Vitality....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You never saw a cat with wings,
I'll bet a dollar -- well, I did;
'Twas one of those fantastic things
One runs across in old Madrid.
A walloping big tom it was,
(Maybe of the Angora line),
With silken ears and velvet paws,
And silver hair, superbly fine.
It sprawled upon a crimson mat,
Yet though crowds came to gaze on it,
It was a supercilious cat,
And didn't...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
See the flying French depart
Like the bees of Bonaparte,
Swarming up with a most venomous vitality.
Over Baden and Bavaria,
And Brighton and Bulgaria,
Thus violating Belgian neutrality.
And the injured Prussian may
Not unreasonably say
"Why, it cannot be so small a nationality
Since Brixton and Batavia,
Bolivia and Belgravia,
Are bursting with the Belgian neutrality."
By pure Alliteration
You may trace this curious nation,
And respect this somewhat scattered Principality;
When...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Twas fighting for his Life he was --
That sort accomplish well --
The Ordnance of Vitality
Is frugal of its Ball.
It aims once -- kills once -- conquers once --
There is no second War
In that Campaign inscrutable
Of the Interior....Read more of this...
by
Frank O'Hara
1
If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermilion tears
2
how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding like a tree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's...Read more of this...
by
Louise Gluck
I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.
We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning --
Lightning -- lets away
Power to perceive His Process
With Vitality.
Maimed -- was I -- yet not by Venture --
Stone of stolid Boy --
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure --
Who mine Enemy?
Robbed -- was I -- intact to Bandit --
All my Mansion torn --
Sun -- withdrawn to Recognition --
Furthest shining -- done --
Yet was not the...Read more of this...
by
Tristan Tzara
Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief
The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances
Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins
CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS
Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Zeroes -- taught us -- Phosphorous --
We learned to like the Fire
By playing Glaciers -- when a Boy --
And Tinder -- guessed -- by power
Of Opposite -- to balance Odd --
If White -- a Red -- must be!
Paralysis -- our Primer -- dumb --
Unto Vitality!...Read more of this...
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