Paris Poems | Captivating Poems About Paris You’ll Love

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    The Face That Launch’d A Thousand Ships Poem by Christopher Marlowe

    Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
    And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
    Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
    Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
    Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
    Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
    And all is dross that is not Helena.
    I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
    Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
    And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
    And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
    Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
    And then return to Helen for a kiss.
    O, thou art fairer than the evening air
    Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
    Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
    When he appear’d to hapless Semele;
    More lovely than the monarch of the sky
    In wanton Arethusa’s azur’d arms;
    And none but thou shalt be my paramour!

     

     

    ‘Fighting Mac’ Poem by Robert William Service

    A Life Tragedy

    A pistol shot rings round and round the world;
    In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
    A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
    A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
    Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
    Eyes that could smile at death – could not face shame.

    Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
    In the bright sunshine of that Paris day;
    Saw in his thought the awful hand of doom;
    Saw in his dream his glory pass away;
    Tried in his heart, his weary heart, to pray:
    ‘O God! who made me, give me strength to face
    The spectre of this bitter, black disgrace.’

    * * * * *

    The burn brawls darkly down the shaggy glen;
    The bee-kissed heather blooms around the door;
    He sees himself a barefoot boy again,
    Bending o’er page of legendary lore.
    He hears the pibroch, grips the red claymore,
    Runs with the Fiery Cross, a clansman true,
    Sworn kinsman of Rob Roy and Roderick Dhu.

    Eating his heart out with a wild desire,
    One day, behind his counter trim and neat,
    He hears a sound that sets his brain afire –
    The Highlanders are marching down the street.
    Oh, how the pipes shrill out, the mad drums beat!
    ‘On to the gates of Hell, my Gordons gay! ‘
    He flings his hated yardstick away.

    He sees the sullen pass, high-crowned with snow,
    Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate.
    He hurls himself against the hidden foe.
    They try to rally – ah, too late, too late!
    Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait
    For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay,
    And flouts the Boers, that mad Majuba day.

    He sees again the murderous Soudan,
    Blood-slaked and rapine-swept. He seems to stand
    Upon the gory plain of Omdurman.
    Then Magersfontein, and supreme command
    Over his Highlanders. To shake his hand
    A King is proud, and princes call him friend.
    And glory crowns his life – and now the end,

    The awful end. His eyes are dark with doom;
    He hears the shrapnel shrieking overhead;
    He sees the ravaged ranks, the flame-stabbed gloom.
    Oh, to have fallen! – the battle-field his bed,
    With Wauchope and his glorious brother-dead.
    Why was he saved for this, for this? And now
    He raises the revolver to his brow.

    * * * * *

    In many a Highland home, framed with rude art,
    You’ll find his portrait, rough-hewn, stern and square;
    It’s graven in the Fuyam fellah’s heart;
    The Ghurka reads it at his evening prayer;
    The raw lands know it, where the fierce suns glare;
    The Dervish fears it. Honor to his name
    Who holds aloft the shield of England’s fame.

    Mourn for our hero, men of Northern race!
    We do not know his sin; we only know
    His sword was keen. He laughed death in the face,
    And struck, for Empire’s sake, a giant blow.
    His arm was strong. Ah! well they learnt, the foe
    The echo of his deeds is ringing yet –
    Will ring for aye. All else… let us forget.

     

     

    In Paris With You Poem by James Fenton1

    Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful
    And I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two.
    I’m one of your talking wounded.
    I’m a hostage. I’m maroonded.
    But I’m in Paris with you.

    Yes I’m angry at the way I’ve been bamboozled
    And resentful at the mess I’ve been through.
    I admit I’m on the rebound
    And I don’t care where are we bound.
    I’m in Paris with you.

    Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
    If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
    If we skip the Champs Elysées
    And remain here in this sleazy

    Old hotel room
    Doing this and that
    To what and whom
    Learning who you are,
    Learning what I am.

    Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
    The little bit of Paris in our view.
    There’s that crack across the ceiling
    And the hotel walls are peeling
    And I’m in Paris with you.

    Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris.
    I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
    I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
    I’m in Paris with… all points south.
    Am I embarrassing you?
    I’m in Paris with you.

     

     

    Paris At Night Poem by Jacques Prevert

    Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
    La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier
    La seconde pour voir tes yeux
    La dernière pour voir ta bouche
    Et l’obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
    En te serrant dans mes bras.

    (translation:
    Three matches one by one struck in the night
    The first to see your face in its entirety
    The second to see your eyes
    The last to see your mouth
    And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
    As I hold you in my arms.)

     

     

    Monet Refuses The Operation Poem by Lisel Mueller

    Doctor, you say there are no haloes
    around the streetlights in Paris
    and what I see is an aberration
    caused by old age, an affliction.
    I tell you it has taken me all my life
    to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
    to soften and blur and finally banish
    the edges you regret I don’t see,
    to learn that the line I called the horizon
    does not exist and sky and water,
    so long apart, are the same state of being.
    Fifty-four years before I could see
    Rouen cathedral is built
    of parallel shafts of sun,
    and now you want to restore
    my youthful errors: fixed
    notions of top and bottom,
    the illusion of three-dimensional space,
    wisteria separate
    from the bridge it covers.
    What can I say to convince you
    the Houses of Parliament dissolves
    night after night to become
    the fluid dream of the Thames?
    I will not return to a universe
    of objects that don’t know each other,
    as if islands were not the lost children
    of one great continent. The world
    is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
    becomes water, lilies on water,
    above and below water,
    becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
    and white and cerulean lamps,
    small fists passing sunlight
    so quickly to one another
    that it would take long, streaming hair
    inside my brush to catch it.
    To paint the speed of light!
    Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
    burn to mix with air
    and change our bones, skin, clothes
    to gases. Doctor,
    if only you could see
    how heaven pulls earth into its arms
    and how infinitely the heart expands
    to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

     

     

    Paris In Spring Poem by Sara Teasdale

    The city’s all a-shining
    Beneath a fickle sun,
    A gay young wind’s a-blowing,
    The little shower is done.
    But the rain-drops still are clinging
    And falling one by one –
    Oh it’s Paris, it’s Paris,
    And spring-time has begun.

    I know the Bois is twinkling
    In a sort of hazy sheen,
    And down the Champs the gray old arch
    Stands cold and still between.
    But the walk is flecked with sunlight
    Where the great acacias lean,
    Oh it’s Paris, it’s Paris,
    And the leaves are growing green.

    The sun’s gone in, the sparkle’s dead,
    There falls a dash of rain,
    But who would care when such an air
    Comes blowing up the Seine?
    And still Ninette sits sewing
    Beside her window-pane,
    When it’s Paris, it’s Paris,
    And spring-time’s come again.

     

     

    His Wife, The Painter Poem by Charles Bukowski

    There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
    and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
    insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
    says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
    ‘I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
    at work.’
    He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he
    fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like
    a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.
    He feels hatred and discard of the world, sharper than
    his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he
    self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his
    hung beard from razor in water (like life) , not warm enough.
    Daumier. Rue Transonian, le 15 Avril, 1843. (lithograph.)
    Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
    ‘She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.’
    ‘What is it? A love affair? ‘
    ‘Silly. I can’t love a woman. Besides, she’s pregnant.’
    I can paint- a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a
    lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
    and that under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
    clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy…
    men drive cars and paint their houses,
    but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
    Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
    Paris, Louvre.
    ‘I must write Kaiser, though I think he’s a homosexual.’
    ‘Are you still reading Freud? ‘
    ‘Page 299.’
    She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
    arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
    snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h’ve
    time and the dog.
    About church: the trouble with a mask is it
    never changes.
    So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
    So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
    and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the
    wind like the ned of a tunnel.
    He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some
    segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.
    When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches
    warmer and more blood-real than the dove.
    Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.
    Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.
    He burned away in his sleep.

     

     

    America For Me Poem by Henry Van Dyke

    ‘Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down
    Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
    To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings
    But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things.

    So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
    My heart is turning home again and there I long to be,
    In the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars,
    Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

    Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
    And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
    And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
    But when it comes to living there is no place like home.

    I like the German fir-woods in green battalions drilled;
    I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing foutains filled;
    But, oh, to take your had, my dear, and ramble for a day
    In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her sway!

    I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack!
    The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
    But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free-
    We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.

    Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
    I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
    To the blessed Land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars,
    Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

     

     

    A Man Young And Old Poem by William Butler Yeats

    I
    First Love

    Though nurtured like the sailing moon
    In beauty’s murderous brood,
    She walked awhile and blushed awhile
    And on my pathway stood
    Until I thought her body bore
    A heart of flesh and blood.
    But since I laid a hand thereon
    And found a heart of stone
    I have attempted many things
    And not a thing is done,
    For every hand is lunatic
    That travels on the moon.
    She smiled and that transfigured me
    And left me but a lout,
    Maundering here, and maundering there,
    Emptier of thought
    Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
    When the moon sails out.

    II
    Human Dignity
    Like the moon her kindness is,
    If kindness I may call
    What has no comprehension in’t,
    But is the same for all
    As though my sorrow were a scene
    Upon a painted wall.
    So like a bit of stone I lie
    Under a broken tree.
    I could recover if I shrieked
    My heart’s agony
    To passing bird, but I am dumb
    From human dignity.

    III
    The Mermaid
    A mermaid found a swimming lad,
    Picked him for her own,
    Pressed her body to his body,
    Laughed; and plunging down
    Forgot in cruel happiness
    That even lovers drown.

    IV
    The Death of the Hare
    I have pointed out the yelling pack,
    The hare leap to the wood,
    And when I pass a compliment
    Rejoice as lover should
    At the drooping of an eye,
    At the mantling of the blood.
    Then’ suddenly my heart is wrung
    By her distracted air
    And I remember wildness lost
    And after, swept from there,
    Am set down standing in the wood
    At the death of the hare.

    V
    The Empty Cup
    A crazy man that found a cup,
    When all but dead of thirst,
    Hardly dared to wet his mouth
    Imagining, moon-accursed,
    That another mouthful
    And his beating heart would burst.
    October last I found it too
    But found it dry as bone,
    And for that reason am I crazed
    And my sleep is gone.

    VI
    His Memories
    We should be hidden from their eyes,
    Being but holy shows
    And bodies broken like a thorn
    Whereon the bleak north blows,
    To think of buried Hector
    And that none living knows.
    The women take so little stock
    In what I do or say
    They’d sooner leave their cosseting
    To hear a jackass bray;
    My arms are like the twisted thorn
    And yet there beauty lay;
    The first of all the tribe lay there
    And did such pleasure take –
    She who had brought great Hector down
    And put all Troy to wreck –
    That she cried into this ear,
    ‘Strike me if I shriek.’

    VII
    The Friends of his Youth
    Laughter not time destroyed my voice
    And put that crack in it,
    And when the moon’s pot-bellied
    I get a laughing fit,
    For that old Madge comes down the lane,
    A stone upon her breast,
    And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
    And she can get no rest
    With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
    She that has been wild
    And barren as a breaking wave
    Thinks that the stone’s a child.
    And Peter that had great affairs
    And was a pushing man
    Shrieks, ‘I am King of the Peacocks,’
    And perches on a stone;
    And then I laugh till tears run down
    And the heart thumps at my side,
    Remembering that her shriek was love
    And that he shrieks from pride.

    VIII
    Summer and Spring
    We sat under an old thorn-tree
    And talked away the night,
    Told all that had been said or done
    Since first we saw the light,
    And when we talked of growing up
    Knew that we’d halved a soul
    And fell the one in t’other’s arms
    That we might make it whole;
    Then peter had a murdering look,
    For it seemed that he and she
    Had spoken of their childish days
    Under that very tree.
    O what a bursting out there was,
    And what a blossoming,
    When we had all the summer-time
    And she had all the spring!

    IX
    The Secrets of the Old
    I have old women’s sectets now
    That had those of the young;
    Madge tells me what I dared not think
    When my blood was strong,
    And what had drowned a lover once
    Sounds like an old song.
    Though Margery is stricken dumb
    If thrown in Madge’s way,
    We three make up a solitude;
    For none alive to-day
    Can know the stories that we know
    Or say the things we say:
    How such a man pleased women most
    Of all that are gone,
    How such a pair loved many years
    And such a pair but one,
    Stories of the bed of straw
    Or the bed of down.

    X
    His Wildness
    O bid me mount and sail up there
    Amid the cloudy wrack,
    For peg and Meg and Paris’ love
    That had so straight a back,
    Are gone away, and some that stay
    Have changed their silk for sack.
    Were I but there and none to hear
    I’d have a peacock cry,
    For that is natural to a man
    That lives in memory,
    Being all alone I’d nurse a stone
    And sing it lullaby.

    XI
    From ‘Oedipus at Colonus’
    Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
    Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
    Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
    Even from that delight memory treasures so,
    Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
    As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.
    In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
    The bride is catried to the bridegroom’s chamber
    through torchlight and tumultuous song;
    I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.
    Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
    Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have
    looked into the eye of day;
    The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

     

     

    Black Stone On Top Of A White Stone Poem by Cesar Vallejo

    I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
    On a day I already remember.
    I shall die in Paris- it does not bother me-
    Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.

    It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
    As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
    To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
    And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

    César Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
    All of them, though he did nothing to them,
    They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
    With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
    The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads…