Famous Voice Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Voice of Robert Desnos

by Robert Desnos
 So like a flower and a current of air
the flow of water fleeting shadows
the smile glimpsed at midnight this excellent evening
so like every joy and every sadness
it is the midnight past lifting its naked body above belfries and poplars
I call to me those lost in the fields
old skeletons young oaks cut down
scraps of cloth rotting on the ground and...Read more of this...

Her Voice

by Oscar Wilde
 The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun, -
It shall...Read more of this...

A Voice From The Dungeon

by Anne Bronte
 I'm buried now; I've done with life;
I've done with hate, revenge and strife;
I've done with joy, and hope and love
And all the bustling world above. 
Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb.

No hope, no pleasure can I find:
I am grown weary of my mind;
Often...Read more of this...

Hughes' Voice In My Head

by Barry Tebb
 As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire

Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable

Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain

Like a tattered lacework window;

Black glisten on roof slates,

Tarmac turned to shining ice,

Blusters of naked wind whipping

The wavelets of shifting water

To imaginary floating islets

On the turbulent river

Glumly he asked, "Where are the mills?"

Knowing their goneness in his lonely heart.

"Where are the mines...Read more of this...

The Voice Of The Ancient Bard

by William Blake
 Youth of delight come hither.
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason.
Dark disputes & artful teazing,
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways,
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead:
And feel they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others when they should be led...Read more of this...

One morning, coming from the tavern I heard a voice

by Omar Khayyam
One morning, coming from the tavern I heard a voice
which said: Come, joyous drinkers, youthful fools, arise,
and fill with me a cup of wine, ere Fate shall come to
fill the cup of our existence....Read more of this...

The Voice of the Waters

by George William Russell
 WHERE the Greyhound River windeth through a loneliness so deep,
Scarce a wild fowl shakes the quiet that the purple boglands keep,
Only God exults in silence over fields no man may reap.


Where the silver wave with sweetness fed the tiny lives of grass
I was bent above, my image mirrored in the fleeting glass,
And a voice from out the water through...Read more of this...

Again -- his voice is at the door --

by Emily Dickinson
 Again -- his voice is at the door --
I feel the old Degree --
I hear him ask the servant
For such an one -- as me --

I take a flower -- as I go --
My face to justify --
He never saw me -- in this life --
I might surprise his eye!

I cross the Hall with mingled steps --
I -- silent...Read more of this...

A voice singing lullaby

by Lam Quang My
You sitting by the window
Copy poems with great care.
As I pass accidentally
Watch you dazed as in a dream.

So skilled your calligraphic hand 
Floats pen on paper surface.
An unknown sense of poetry
Shines within your blinking eyes.

Window takes the colour green
Your shirt is a canary shade.
Little bird is flying by
And sings with sweetest voice.

Weather mourns autumnally.
Yellowed leaves of trees.
Regret of summer still...Read more of this...

My Voice

by Oscar Wilde
 Within this restless, hurried, modern world
We took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,
And now the white sails of our ship are furled,
And spent the lading of our argosy.

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,
And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded...Read more of this...

Each small gleam was a voice

by Stephen Crane
 Each small gleam was a voice,
A lantern voice --
In little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold.
A chorus of colours came over the water;
The wondrous leaf-shadow no longer wavered,
No pines crooned on the hills,
The blue night was elsewhere a silence,
When the chorus of colours came over the water,
Little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold.

Small glowing pebbles
Thrown on the dark plane...Read more of this...

A Woman's Voice

by George William Russell
 HIS head within my bosom lay,
But yet his spirit slipped not through:
I only felt the burning clay
That withered for the cooling dew.


It was but pity when I spoke
And called him to my heart for rest,
And half a mother’s love that woke
Feeling his head upon my breast:


And half the lion’s tenderness
To shield her cubs from hurt or death,
Which, when the...Read more of this...

Hound Voice

by William Butler Yeats
 Because we love bare hills and stunted trees
And were the last to choose the settled ground,
Its boredom of the desk or of the spade, because
So many years companioned by a hound,
Our voices carry; and though slumber-bound,
Some few half wake and half renew their choice,
Give tongue, proclaim their hidden name -- 'hound voice.'

The women that I picked spoke sweet and...Read more of this...

Take a cup of wine in thy hand, then mingle thy voice

by Omar Khayyam
Take a cup of wine in thy hand, then mingle thy voice
with that of the nightingale, for, if it were meet to drink
this juice of the vine without accompaniment of harmonious
sound, the wine itself would make no noise in
slipping out of the flask....Read more of this...

The Voice

by Thomas Hardy
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear?  Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would...Read more of this...

A Voice from the Town

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I thought, in the days of the droving, 
Of steps I might hope to retrace, 
To be done with the bush and the roving 
And settle once more in my place. 
With a heart that was well nigh to breaking, 
In the long, lonely rides on the plain, 
I thought of the pleasure of taking 
The hand of a...Read more of this...

Upon Julias Voice

by Robert Herrick
 When I thy singing next shall hear,
I'll wish I might turn all to ear,
To drink-in notes and numbers, such
As blessed souls can't hear too much
Then melted down, there let me lie
Entranced, and lost confusedly;
And by thy music strucken mute,
Die, and be turn'd into a Lute....Read more of this...

The Voice that stands for Floods to me

by Emily Dickinson
 The Voice that stands for Floods to me
Is sterile borne to some --
The Face that makes the Morning mean
Glows impotent on them --

What difference in Substance lies
That what is Sum to me
By other Financiers be deemed
Exclusive Property!...Read more of this...

Because Your Voice Was at My Side

by James Joyce
 Because your voice was at my side 
I gave him pain, 
Because within my hand I held 
Your hand again. 

There is no word nor any sign 
Can make amend -- - 
He is a stranger to me now 
Who was my friend....Read more of this...

When I should be asleep to mine own voice

by Fernando Pessoa
When I should be asleep to mine own voice

In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,

I find me listening to myself, the noise

Of my words othered in my hearing them.

Yet wonder not: this is the poet's soul.

I could not tell thee well of how I love,

Loved I not less by knowing it, were all

My self my love and no...Read more of this...

The Voice of the Lobster

by Lewis Carroll
 ''Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But,...Read more of this...

HEAR the Voice

by William Blake
HEAR the voice of the Bard  
Who present past and future sees; 
Whose ears have heard 
The Holy Word 
That walk'd among the ancient trees; 5 

Calling the laps¨¨d soul  
And weeping in the evening dew; 
That might control 
The starry pole  
And fallen fallen light renew! 10 

'O Earth O Earth return! 
Arise from out the...Read more of this...

The Voice of Age

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 She'd look upon us, if she could, 
As hard as Rhadamanthus would; 
Yet one may see,—who sees her face, 
Her crown of silver and of lace, 
Her mystical serene address
Of age alloyed with loveliness,— 
That she would not annihilate 
The frailest of things animate. 

She has opinions of our ways, 
And if we’re not all mad, she says,—
If our...Read more of this...

The Voice

by Andree Chedid
 Where is the distant voice
That speaks like my soul?

Buried beneath daylight's clamor
Gold and the seasons

Beneath groaning streets
And the ferment of cities 

In my grave of care
And blond laughter

In what bare tomb must I lie 
To summon the voice 
That speaks like my soul?...Read more of this...

I crave your mouth your voice your hair

by Pablo Neruda
 Don't go far off, not even for a day
Don't go far off, not even for a day, 
Because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
And I will be waiting for you, as in
An empty station when the trains are 
Parked off somewhere else, asleep. 

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then 
The...Read more of this...

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