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Famous Thebes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...
Has many a hundred times been dust 
And turned, as dust, to dust again; 
These eyes of mine have blinked and shown 
In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon. 

All that I rightly think or do, 
Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast, 
Is curse or blessing justly due 
For sloth or effort in the past. 
My life's a statement of the sum 
Of vice indulged, or overcome. 

I know that in my lives to be 
My sorry heart will ache and burn, 
And worship, unavailingly, 
The woman whom ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John



...elma hall of shells; 
Or that which Pindar on th' Elean plain, 
Sang with immortal skill and voice divine, 
When native Thebes and ev'ry Grecian state 
Pour'd forth her sons in rapid chariot race, 
To shun the goal and reach the glorious palm. 
He sang the pride of some ambitious chief, 
For olive crowns and wreaths of glory won; 
I sing the rise of that all glorious light, 
Whose sacred dawn the aged fathers saw 
By faith's clear eye, through many a cloud obscure 
And he...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk
Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx,
Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,
Stupendous columns, and wild images
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch
The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
He...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., proud, indifferent Shakespeare!
Where was it, if it ever was? By heaven,
'Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon -- 
In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this!
No thing like this was ever out of England;
And that he knows. I wonder if he cares.
Perhaps he does.... O Lord, that House in Stratford!...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...20 
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 
Which dawns upon the free  
Although a subtler Sphinx renew 
Riddles of death Thebes never knew. 

Another Athens shall arise 25 
And to remoter time 
Bequeath like sunset to the skies  
The splendour of its prime; 
And leave if naught so bright may live  
All earth can take or Heaven can give. 30 

Saturn and Love their long repose 
Shall burst more bright and good 
Than all who fell than One who rose  
Than many ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe



...e, with more than magic art,
With pity and with terror tear my heart;
And snatch me o'er the earth or thro' the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.


But not this part of the poetic state
Alone, deserves the favour of the great:
Think of those authors, Sir, who would rely
More on a reader's sense, than gazer's eye.
Or who shall wander where the Muses sing?
Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring?
How shall we fill a library with wit,
When M...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...ped whale
 swimming to shoal; Point Lobos
Was wounded with that fire; the hills at Point Sur endured it;
 the palace at Thebes; the hill Calvary.

Out of incestuous love power and then ruin. A man forcing the
 imaginations of men,
Possessing with love and power the people: a man defiling his
 own household with impious desire.

King Oedipus reeling blinded from the palace doorway, red tears
 pouring from the torn pits
Under the forehead; and the young Jew writhing...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson
...ach celestial boy.

Now Manto comes, endu'd with mighty skill,
The past to explore, the future to reveal.
Thro' Thebes' wide streets Tiresia's daughter came,
Divine Latona's mandate to proclaim:
The Theban maids to hear the orders ran,
When thus Maeonia's prophetess began:

"Go, Thebans! great Latona's will obey,
"And pious tribute at her altars pay:
"With rights divine, the goddess be implor'd,
"Nor be her sacred offspring unador'd."
Thus Manto spoke. The The...Read more of this...
by Wheatley, Phillis
...infantry 
Warred on by cranes--though all the giant brood 
Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
Begirt with British and Armoric knights; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fonta...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ms 
A phoenix, gazed by all as that sole bird, 
When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's 
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies. 
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise 
He lights, and to his proper shape returns 
A Seraph winged: Six wings he wore, to shade 
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad 
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast 
With regal ornament; the middle pair 
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thigh...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finnished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arche...Read more of this...
by Brecht, Bertolt
...f indifference.
  (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
  Enacted on this same divan or bed;
  I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
  And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
  Bestows one final patronising kiss,
  And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

  She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
  Hardly aware of her departed lover;                                     250
  Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
  "...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...lies in thy might.

"I, wretched wight, that weep and waile thus,
Was whilom wife to king Capaneus,
That starf* at Thebes, cursed be that day: *died 
And alle we that be in this array,
And maken all this lamentatioun,
We losten all our husbands at that town,
While that the siege thereabouten lay.
And yet the olde Creon, wellaway!
That lord is now of Thebes the city,
Fulfilled of ire and of iniquity,
He for despite, and for his tyranny,
To do the deade bodies villa...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...many a winter therebeforn
Was writ the death of Hector, Achilles,
Of Pompey, Julius, ere they were born;
The strife of Thebes; and of Hercules,
Of Samson, Turnus, and of Socrates
The death; but mennes wittes be so dull,
That no wight can well read it at the full.

This Soudan for his privy council sent,
And, *shortly of this matter for to pace*, *to pass briefly by*
He hath to them declared his intent,
And told them certain, but* he might have grace *unless
To have Const...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...rm, grassy 
138 Asopus bank, 
139 His robe drawn over 
140 His old sightless head, 
141 Revolving inly 
142 The doom of Thebes. 

143 They see the Centaurs
144 In the upper glens
145 Of Pelion, in the streams,
146 Where red-berried ashes fringe
147 The clear-brown shallow pools,
148 With streaming flanks, and heads
149 Rear'd proudly, snuffing
150 The mountain wind. 

151 They see the Indian
152 Drifting, knife in hand,
153 His frail boat moor'd to
154 A floating isle...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .
 She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover; 
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
When lovel...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ely made her husband for to die,
He read it with full good devotion.
He told me eke, for what occasion
Amphiorax at Thebes lost his life:
My husband had a legend of his wife
Eryphile, that for an ouche* of gold *clasp, collar
Had privily unto the Greekes told,
Where that her husband hid him in a place,
For which he had at Thebes sorry grace.
Of Luna told he me, and of Lucie;
They bothe made their husbands for to die,
That one for love, that other was for hate.
Lun...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ken stamp of godhead, and again
Thought and wise love sing words of law to men.

I, Tiresias the prophet, seeing in Thebes
Much evil, and the misery of men's hands
Who sow with fruitless wheat the stones and sands,
With fruitful thorns the fallows and warm glebes,
Bade their hands hold lest worse hap came to pass;
But which of you had heed of Tiresias?

I am as Time's self in mine own wearied mind,
Whom the strong heavy-footed years have led
From night to night and dead m...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...y wail to thee!
These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own,
See this, that only in thy virtue lies
The saving of our Thebes; for, yesternight,
To me, the great God Ares, whose one bliss
Is war and human sacrifice‹himself
Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet tipt
With stormy light as on a mast at sea,
Stood out before a darkness, crying, "Thebes,
Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I loathe
The seed of Cadmus‹yet if one of these
By his own hand‹if one of these‹"
My son...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...so cruel thou ne be
Un-to the blood of Troye, I preye thee, 
As Iuno was un-to the blood Thebane,
For which the folk of Thebes caughte hir bane.'

And after this he to the yates wente
Ther-as Criseyde out-rood a ful good paas,
And up and doun ther made he many a wente, 
And to him-self ful ofte he seyde 'Allas!
From hennes rood my blisse and my solas!
As wolde blisful god now, for his Ioye,
I mighte hir seen ayein come in-to Troye!

'And to the yonder hille I gan hir gyde...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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