Famous Invocation Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Invocation poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous invocation poems. These examples illustrate what a famous invocation poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...O if it's true that in the night,
When rest the living in their havens
And liquid rays of lunar light
Glide down on tombstones from the heavens,
O if it's true that still and bare
Are then the graves until aurora --
I call the shade, I wait for Laura:
To me, my friend, appear, appear!
Beloved shadow, come to me
As at our parting -- wintry, ashen
In your l...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
...e them;
Till there all equal they surrender;
And so with those who toil on earth,
And those who guide them.
The Invocation
I turn me from the praise and singing
Of panegyrists, and the proud
Old poets' stories;
I would not have them hither bringing
Their artful potions that but cloud
His honest glories;
On Him Alone I lay my burden—
Him only do I now implore
In my distress,—
Who came on earth and had for guerdon
The scorn of man that did ignore
His God...Read more of this...
by
Manrique, Jorge
...the waters,
From the sands of Gitche Gumee
Summoned Hiawatha's brother.
And so mighty was the magic
Of that cry and invocation,
That he heard it as he lay there
Underneath the Big-Sea-Water;
From the sand he rose and listened,
Heard the music and the singing,
Came, obedient to the summons,
To the doorway of the wigwam,
But to enter they forbade him.
Through a chink a coal they gave him,
Through the door a burning fire-brand;
Ruler in the Land of Spirits,
Ruler o'er th...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...RARELY rarely comest thou
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day 5
'Tis since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain. 10
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...This is for Elsa, also known as Liz,
an ample-bosomed gospel singer: five
discrete malignancies in one full breast.
This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is
celebrating fifty years alive,
one since she finished chemotherapy.
with fireworks on the fifteenth of July.
This is for June, whose words are lean and mean
as she is, elucidating our protest....Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...
{V, vi., August, 1832.}
Say, Lord! for Thou alone canst tell
Where lurks the good invisible
Amid the depths of discord's sea—
That seem, alas! so dark to me!
Oppressive to a mighty state,
Contentions, feuds, the people's hate—
But who dare question that which fate
Has ordered to have been?
Haply the earthquake may unfold
...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The Naional Institute
of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941.
Great Muse, that from this hall absent for long
Hast never been,
Great Muse of Song,
Colossal Muse of mighty Melody,
Vocal Calliope,
With thine august and contrapuntal brow
And thy vast throat builded for Harmony,
Fo...Read more of this...
by
St Vincent Millay, Edna
...COME then, as ever, like the wind at morning!
Joyous, O Youth, in the aged world renew
Freshness to feel the eternities around it,
Rain, stars and clouds, light and the sacred dew.
The strong sun shines above thee:
That strength, that radiance bring!
If Winter come to Winter,
When shall men hope for Spring?...Read more of this...
by
Binyon, Laurence
...il is two being without God.
For he is an evil spirit male and female.
For he is called the Duce by foolish invocation on that account.
For Three is the simplest and best of all numbers.
For Four is good being square.
For Five is not so good in itself but works well in combination.
For Five is not so good in itself as it consists of two and three.
For Six is very good consisting of twice three.
For Seven is very good consisting ...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...1
AT the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
2
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors, O Soul!
3
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mor...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...with his magic he has fortified;
And though melodious multitudes have tried
In ecstasy, in anguish, and in vain,
With invocation sacred and profane
To lure him, even the loudest are outside.
Only at unconjectured intervals,
By will of him on whom no man may gaze,
By word of him whose law no man has read,
A questing light may rift the sullen walls,
To cling where mostly its infrequent rays
Fall golden on the patience of the dead....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ith liquid shadow.
Beauty shall breathe the fairy hush
With the chill orchids in their cells of shade,
And hear the invocation of the thrush
That calls the stars into their heaven,
And after even
Beauty shall take the night into her soul.
When the thrill voice goes crying through the wood,
(Oh, Beauty, Beauty!)
Troubling the solitude
With echoes from the lonely world,
Beauty will tremble like a cloistered thing
That hears temptation in the outlands singing,
Will steel...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Duncan Campbell
...shot eye
Implores thy dreadful deity,
Archangel! power of desolation!
Fast descending as thou art,
Say, hath mortal invocation
Spells to touch thy stony heart?
Then, sullen Winter, hear my prayer,
And gently rule the ruined year;
Nor chill the wanders bosom bare,
Nor freeze the wretch's falling tear;-
To shuddering Want's unmantled bed
Thy horror-breathing agues cease to lead,
And gently on the orphan head
Of innocence descend.-
But chiefly spare, O king of ...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...puscular
Dimmed the old grove-girt belfry glimmering white,
Throbbing, as gentlest breezes rose or fell,
Came the sweet invocation of the evening bell....Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,
The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten,
The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry,
And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.
A child I ran in the wind on a withered moor
Crying out after those great presences who were not there,
Long lost in the forgetfulness of the forgotten.
Only the archaic...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...one by some wood edge, thy touching-distant beams
enough,
Or man matured, or young or old, as now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive,
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields,
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice—and thou O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them, I know those flames, those perturbations well.)
Thou that...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
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