Ode Poems | Poemist

Popular Ode Poems

The Passions

by William Collins

An Ode for Music

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined;

......

Juvenilia, An Ode To Natural Beauty

by Alan Seeger

There is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,
When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing
From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed

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Dawn

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Dawn is a broad, unflawed painting
hanging on the loose threads of light,
hiding first behind wavering bulrushes on
the soft spikes of day
before spilling the good spell on us
of a new beginning.

Ode To Psyche

by John Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof

......

Bki:Xxx Ode To Venus

by Horace

O Venus, the queen of Cnidos and Paphos,
spurn your beloved Cyprus, and summoned
by copious incense, come to the lovely shrine
of my Glycera.

And let that passionate boy of yours, Cupid,
and the Graces with loosened zones, and the Nymphs,
and Youth, less lovely without you, hasten here,
and Mercury too.

Recent Ode Poems

Tumbleweed

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

For heaven’s sake,
Let me roll like tumbleweed —
Freely and frequently,
Having balls,
By night or day,
Now and then,
On the surface of the earth,
Smooth or bumpy,
Flat or rolling,
Paved eternally with freedom,

......

Dawn

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Dawn is a broad, unflawed painting
hanging on the loose threads of light,
hiding first behind wavering bulrushes on
the soft spikes of day
before spilling the good spell on us
of a new beginning.

Fall

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

It’s gradually falling
Summer is increasingly lolling
The leaves are gently browning
We can’t wait for October’s crowning
When the gold leaves of lustre
Charm the fold with their cluster,
Flamboyantly trooping the autumn colours
And socially grouping them with lullers.

Night Nurse

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Her eyes are laden with drunken sleep,
Silhouetted by lank, tired hair flimsier
Than the spine of an elderly, broken night.
Tattered, it buries the horrors of night;
Braided, it creases the rows of black corn,
Sweeping swiftly south and downwards;
Ponytail ties the umbilical linking life
And skyline light.
Lissome, she traipses with no lamp,
Even when darkness confidently pitches its nightingale’s romance

......

And Then There Were None (For Agatha Christie)

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

I’ve only desired to light old lamps with young wicks
(the tongues of flame must be blinking hard with vigilance)
Across dark, mildewed alcoves that smell of ink —her writing ink —
But one thing led to the other, and the ink I
Found froze in my eyes, the bottle instantly petrified among desert ruins.
I searched, from my village to Nantucket, borrowing
The courage of voyaging storms, seeking earnestly her quill feather,
Just to caress her pretty face with it.
But the power of distance arrested me midway and warned me
Of the dangers of costly adventures.

......