Best Cleopatra Poems

Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

In a Harlem cabaret
...

She stands as pale as Parian statues stand;
Like Cleopatra when she turned at bay,
And felt her strength above the Roman sway,
And felt the aspic writhing in her hand.
...

The Oak of Lancashire emits color
Of your hair, light as Tulips on Titicaca Lake
Brown as chestnut of Hunstanton
Silken as Tianjin silk
...

The Alexandrians were gathered
to see Cleopatra's children,
Caesarion, and his little brothers,
Alexander and Ptolemy, whom for the first
...

I am the lover's eyes, and the spirit's
Wine, and the heart's nourishment.
I am a rose. My heart opens at dawn and
The virgin kisses me and places me
...

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands,
And mark yon meeting of the sun and sea,
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands.
Ah! longer, longer, we.
...

...

Tajmahal
(My Cleopatra)

Citadel of love is empty,
...

AS when the hunt by holt and field
Drives on with horn and strife,
Hunger of hopeless things pursues
Our spirits throughout life.
...

Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie,
Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky
Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime,
And so has vow'd, whilst there is world or time.
So great's thy glory, and thine excellence,
...

I. (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
...

And what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
...

You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass’s head in Fairyland
As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
...

Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!
...

I.
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
...

I thought of EvE, when ADAM trusted her
They were both banished, became so unpure
But they have made it, and mankind began
You and me here we are, we owe them one.
...

'O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our soul's as free
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
...

If Anthony hadn't loved
Cleopatra
in that last second,
maybe he would have
...

After a fine mild rain,
I walked on the pavements,
Of a garden of flowers,
Aftershocks of showers,
...

HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
...

Did I ever say I'm always right when I never was?

Should I blame others when I could not understand myself?
...

Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,
Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.
Around her neck they have put a golden necklace
...

To-night I'll have my friar -- let me think
About my room, -- I'll have it in the pink;
It should be rich and sombre, and the moon,
Just in its mid-life in the midst of June,
...

I'm un-ore-clowded, too! free from the mist!
The blind and late Heaven's-eyes great Occulist,
Obscured with the false fires of his sceme,
Not half those souls are lightned by this theme.
...

To-night I'll have my friar -- let me think
About my room, -- I'll have it in the pink;
It should be rich
...

She was like a plant grown on her own,
Those white legs were tenderer than flowers,
The green eyes had been displaying,
Nothing ferocious or mysterious
...

At four o'clock in late October
I sat alone in the country school-house
Back from the road 'mid stricken fields,
And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
...

Enobarbus describes Queen Cleopatra


Enobarbus: I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
...

O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour,
Leaping along the verge of death and night,
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight
Four long years past, discovering pride and power.
...

'There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which,--taken at the flood,'--you know the rest,
And most of us have found it now and then;
At least we think so, though but few have guess'd
...

Turn, turn, my wheel? Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:
So spins the flying world away!
...

'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
Second in order of felicity
...

Ah!--What should follow slips from my reflection;
Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be
As à-propos of hope or retrospection,
As though the lurking thought had follow'd free.
...

1

Senlin sits before us, and we see him.
He smokes his pipe before us, and we hear him.
...

Big city confusion,
Dazzling neon lights flash
Downtown intersection
Where exited people talk
...

The little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet.
The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwins
Were seen lying along the upper seats
...

The sun went down for the night to cover
The earth that lay bare in front of me
Like the face you hide for the lover to adore
The curves and lines the dusk of your beauty
...

I.

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
...

Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
Blessed be the vintage!)
...

Life is up and takes the morning;
Why should love still lie abed?
Lo! the charms of slumber scorning,
Tramps the troop that must be led.
...

I.
How pleasant were the songs of Toobonai,
When Summer's Sun went down the coral bay!
Come, let us to the islet's softest shade,
...

Yet in those ashes on the Pharian shore,
In that small heap of dust, was not confined
So great a shade; but from the limbs half burnt
...

I'm un-ore-clowded, too! free from the mist!
The blind and late Heaven's-eyes great Occulist,
Obscured with the false fires of his sceme,
Not half those souls are lightned by this theme.
...

Great Alexander was wise Philips son,
He to Amyntas, Kings of Macedon;
The cruel proud Olympias was his Mother,
...

Thus did the Trojans watch. But Panic, comrade of blood-stained
Rout, had taken fast hold of the Achaeans and their princes were all
of them in despair. As when the two winds that blow from Thrace- the
north and the northwest- spring up of a sudden and rouse the fury of
...

Time that came out after explosion of an old nebula
And diverged moving beauty all-round the vacant space
In a weak moment of love scattered all its charming wealth
But it burst in tears by losing a gorgeous grace.
...

My wife lost her health,
And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds.
Then that woman, whom the men
Styled Cleopatra, came along.
...

Now’s the time for drinking deep, and now’s the time
to beat the earth with unfettered feet, the time
to set out the gods’ sacred couches,
my friends, and prepare a Salian feast.
...

On Egypt sleeping under sky of brass
The twain gazed wistfully from terrace high,
And watched the Flood, through Delta rolling high,
...

I

How vain is Life! which rightly we compare
To flying Posts, that haste away;
...

Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
...

Cordel das Mulheres...
G u s t a v o D o u r a d o
...

Lily was my co-league,
Never tired of fatigue,
Strong with her pen,
One female, while others were men.
...

Celestial Beauty and Joy

Cleopatra of My Soul,
The unuttered word of my silent Being,
...

KING DAVID.
Knights mine, all that be in hall,
I have a counsel to you all,
Because of this thing God lets fall
...

Ye giant shades of RA and TUM,
Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian,
If murmurs of our planet come
To exiles in the precincts wan
...

III,2
At the forum. Enter ANTONY, CASSIUS, BRUTUS, ARTEMIDORUS, a SOOTHSAYER.

ANTONY: Cassius, your hands killed Caesar but now they should do anything else.
...

Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt;
Cleopatra was the queen of beauty.
She came to the throne at her eighteen
The first century BC witnessed it.
...

We dream and fight
With demons real and imagined;
We only live if we dream;
We grow from our dreams,
...

Hard have you won her, and must hold as fast!
She is Love's reveller — those tawny eyes
Are up and down still in warm passion cast,
...

Cleopatra: Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there, that kills and
pains not?
Clown: Truly I have him; but I would not be the party that
...

Thy foes had girt thee with their dead array,
O stately Alexandra! - yet the sound
Of mirth and music, at the close of day,
...

The story from our own hearts
Eyes of love, why do you stare at me?
Why do you stare at my wept eyes?
Didn’t you say you won’t come back? Or you’ve come to see my wept eyes?
...

Last week, she took a Louisville
Slugger and slaughtered over one hundred
cans of Campbell's Cream of Reality
soup at the Circle K outside Bloody Basin, Arizona.
...

I know sweet heart your arms of beauty,
I know sweet heart your charms of beauty,
You moved with all the forms of beauty,
You attacked my heart with storms of beauty.
...

(Le Bestiaire ou Cortège d’Orphée)
Orpheus

Admire the vital power
...

The asp, her baby, on her breast,
She falls asleep,
Ever, like Antony, to rest
...

A near perfect face
Exuding a touch of grace
A Cleopatra-like long neck
Enhanced with delicate jewellery
...

What am I? I am Earth the mother,
With all her nebulous memories;
And the young Day, and Night her brother,
And every god that was and is.
...

When Mardi Gras wooed Pantomime
they danced through all the streets,
the gods, whose Credo was the time
sent fireworks as treats.
...

I have a dream of an Africa
A united Africa!
Self sustaining and self reliant
Able to produce
...

Alike I hate to be your debtor,
Or write a mere perfunctory letter;
For letters, so it seems to me,
Our careless quintessence should be
...

It fell upon a summer night
The village folk were soundly sleeping,
Unconscious of the glamour white
In which the moon all things was steeping;
...

Where the fair Helen, destroyer of Troy?
Where Cleopatra, seducer of Rome?
Where Saint Joan, deliverer of France?
And where Eleanor, the Queen of Romance
...

The neighborhood described in this poem is in the University of Chicago area, as it existed over 60 years ago. Most of it no longer exists, due to one of the first Urban Renewal programs in the United States. The 'Bomb' refers to the atom bomb, of which the University had a large part in the planning. I worked there for a short time. I wanted a picture of that corner for my poem 'Lost', and Ms. Schlesinger kindly sent it to me, so I wrote this poem.

Dear, Dear, Ms. Schlesinger
You are the messenger
...

- Cleopatra of My Soul-

Such ethereal beauty
Tenuous cover
...

When Caesar, following those who bore the head,
First trod the shore accursed, with Egypt's fates
His fortunes battled, whether Rome should pass
...

I Find You Fascinating
You, Mercurial Creature
You, Are Exciting
Like A Jungle Adventure
...

We were like ancient Egypt's Joseph and Julekha
You attracted me like Queen Cleopatra
But guilty feelings barred me again and again
From making love with you O my sweetheart
...

The curl of the hair
On the side of the beloved’s cheek
Telling the legend learnt through ages
From the time of Cleopatra
...

Hans Carvel, impotent and old,
Married a lass of London mould.
Handsome? Enough; extremely gay;
Loved music, company, and play:
...

She is no rock star or pop star but a glitter...
Yup! She's rocking the empire of mine, a glimmer;
She is a yummy ice-cream in summer...
She is a mind-blowing coffee in winter...
...

Smile
(My Cleopatra)

Black is needed as backbone
...

… Oh, Why Do We Believe? …
… Because Real Legends, Never Leave
A Mistaken Myth, May Be Reality
Or Was It Just A Folklore Legacy
...

Death settled onto his dark Cleopatra couch
picking admirers who in black auras
sought immortality in magnificent deaths.
...

‘All that glitters is not gold! ’
Yet it is believed and often told,
That ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’,
Then why does a beautiful woman need to be clever?
...

What's the color of life mama
What's the color of lie
What's the color of pain mama
What's the color of pride
...

Divine love
***********
(My Cleopatra)
...

My Love is within
Without
**********
So much storm and peace,
...

Rogero, as directed by the pair,
The giantess Eriphila o'erthrows.
That done, he to Alcina's labyrinth, where
...

THE head and hands of murdered Cicero,
Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
...

Gaza smiling....
...

She languishes there among my memories

making fleeting and unexpected appearances;
...

All beautiful and smart ladies seek security and joy to live life;
Beauty is their weapon as pen for poet and gun for soldier in war;
Care they take with whom they can align themselves to in the world!
...

....and when it slipped out of my fingers,
it landed on the tiles.
A vase from Alexandria,
a Pharaoh who smiles.
...

Presence

Fixing the mind in front,
On grass the tiny bloom,
...

Victory, why are you feeling so blue?
Because I won't be heard by the Gods I pray to
Great Jupiter, listen
Your Psyche is calling
...

It is not
That there is not
Enough space
...

One hundred and three years old today.
Her silver beard of a single hair stretches
from chin to floor.
...

Love happens like a pouring rainstorm in a hot summer
Love happens like hitting a jackpot
Love happens more dramatically than movies
Love can happen even in the most secluded places of Gauntanamo Bay
...