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Famous Vortex Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Finch, Annie
...HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997

“Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.”
—Hart Crane, “Voyages”

“If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly
past the long edge of the last human shore,
there are deep windows the waves haven't opened,
where night is reflected through decades of glass.<...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...a woman’s steel face … looking … looking.
Cliffs challenge humped; sudden arcs form on a gull’s wing in the storm’s vortex; miles of white horses plow through a stony beach; stars, clear sky, and everywhere free climbers calling; and a woman’s steel face … looking … looking …...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...against the Sun
Until the Sun and Moon go down
Comets weep and Leonids fly
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

 That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
It was not (to start again) what one had ex...Read more of this...

by Brown, Thomas Edward
...the mind of God is fullest wrought. 

Thrice happy such an one! Far other he 
Who dallies on the edge 
Of the great vortex, clinging to a sedge 
Of patent good, a timorous Manichee; 

Who takes the impact of a long-breathed force, 
And fritters it away 
In eddies of disgust, that else might stay 
His nerveless heart, and fix it to the course. 

For there is threefold oneness with the One; 
And he is one, who keeps 
The homely laws of life; who, if he sleeps, 
Or wakes...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet wit...Read more of this...



by Aiken, Conrad
...n and flowering hill.

Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky, 
A cloud comes whirling, and flings 
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill. 
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings. 
Amazing! Is there a change? 
The hill seems somehow strange. 
It is noontime. And in the tree 
The leaves are delicately disturbed 
Where the bird descends invisibly. 
It is noontime. And in the pool 
The sky is blue and cool.

Yet suddenly out...Read more of this...

by Mandelstam, Osip
...ike a dark water.
The rose was earth; time, ploughed from underneath.
Woven, the heavy, tender roses, in a slow vortex, 
the roses, heaviness and tenderness, in a double-wreath....Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...place,
in which to make a life -- a liberty -- the hollow, fetishized, and starry

 place,
a bit gossamer with dream, a vortex of evaporations,
oh little dream, invisible city, invisible hill
I make here on the upper floors for you --
down there, where you are entertained, where you are passing
time, there's glass and moss on air,
there's the feeling of being numerous, mouths submitting to air, lips

 to protocol,
and dreams of sense, tongues, hinges, forceps clicking
in anti...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...t . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died—you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'

He folds his letter, steps softly ...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...t . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

'The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died—you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .'

He folds his letter, steps softly ...Read more of this...

by Mistral, Gabriela
...cho of my cry?

Oh no. To see him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!

To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his bloody neck!...Read more of this...

by Crane, Hart
...Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Vortex poems.


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