33 POEMS OF MODERNISM BY GREAT AUTHORS - LITERATURE - 2025

The poems of Modernism are compositions that use literary resources typical of poetry, framed in the literary movement called Modernism. Some of its most recognized representatives are José Martí, Amado Nervo, Ernesto Noboa or Eduardo Marquina.

Modernism was a literary movement that occurred between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and was the first to emerge in America and spread to Europe, largely explained by the independence movements that arose in the continent during those years.

Rubén Darío, author of Modernism.

In Modernism, poetry played a leading role, since through it the new cosmopolitan ideas and creative trends of the time could be expressed, which disdained the guidelines established by Realism and Naturalism.

Modernism was then a literary trend marked by rebellion, innovation and the libertarian spirit.

List of poems by the most famous authors of Modernism

Song of Hope

A great flight of crows stains the azure blue.

A millennial breath brings threats of the plague.

Men are killed in the far East.

Is the apocalyptic Antichrist born?

Omens have been known and wonders have been seen

and the return of Christ seems imminent.

The earth is pregnant with pain so deep

that the dreamer, meditative imperial,

suffers with the anguish of the heart of the world.

Executioners of ideals afflicted the earth,

in a well of shadow humanity is locked up

with the rude molossi of hatred and war.

Oh Lord Jesus Christ! why are you waiting, what are you waiting

to extend your hand of light on the beasts

and make your divine flags shine in the sun!

It suddenly arises and pours the essence of life

on so many crazy, sad or inveterate souls,

that lover of darkness your sweet dawn forgets.

Come, Lord, to make yourself glory.

Come with trembling stars and cataclysmic horror,

come and bring love and peace over the abyss.

And your white horse, which the visionary looked at,

come in. And the divine extraordinary clarion sounds.

My heart will be the embers of your censer.

Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)

That love does not admit strings reflections

Lady, Love is violent,

and when it transfigures

us,

madness ignites our thoughts.

Do not ask for peace from my arms

that hold yours in prison:

my hugs are of war

and my kisses are of fire;

and it would be vain to try to

turn my mind dark

if

madness ignites me.

Clear is my mind

of flames of love, lady,

like the store of the day

or the palace of the dawn.

And the perfume of your ointment

pursues my luck,

and

madness ignites my thought.

My joy your palate

rich honeycomb conceptualizes,

as in the holy Song:

Mel et lac sub lingua tua.

The delight of your breath

in such a fine glass hurries,

and

madness ignites my thought.

Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)

And I looked for you in towns…

And I looked for you in towns,

And I looked for you in the clouds,

And to find your soul,

I opened many lilies, blue lilies.

And the sad ones crying told me:

Oh, what a living pain!

That your soul has long lived

In a yellow lily!

But tell me how has it been?

Didn't I have my soul in my chest?

Yesterday I met you,

And the soul that I have here is not mine.

José Martí (Cuba)

Whenever I sink my mind into serious books…

Whenever I sink my mind into grave books, I bring it

out with a beam of dawn light:

I perceive the threads, the joint,

The flower of the Universe: I pronounce

Immortal poetry Soon to be born.

Not of altar gods or old books

Not of flowers from Greece, repainted

With fashionable concoctions, not with traces

Of traces, not with livid remains

It will tame from the dead ages:

But from the explored entrails

Of the Universe, it will emerge radiant

With the light and the graces of life.

To win, he will fight first:

And he will flood with light, like the dawn.

José Martí (Cuba)

Then

I want to die when the day declines,

on the high seas and with my face to the sky,

where agony seems like a dream,

and my soul, a bird that takes flight.

Not listening to the last moments,

with the sky and the sea alone,

more voices or sobbing prayers

than the majestic tumble of the waves.

To die when the sad light withdraws

its golden nets from the green wave,

and to be like that sun that slowly expires:

something very luminous that is lost.

Die, and young: before

time destroys the gentle crown;

when life still says: I am yours,

although we know well that it betrays us.

Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico)

The first kiss

I was already saying goodbye… and

my lip throbbing close to your red lips,

"See you tomorrow," you whispered;

I looked into your eyes for a moment

and you closed your eyes without thinking

and I gave you the first kiss: I raised my forehead

enlightened by my true happiness.

I went out into the street

joyfully while you leaned out of the door

looking at me alight and smiling.

I turned my face in sweet rapture,

and without even taking my eyes off you,

I jumped onto a rapidly moving tram;

and I stared at you for a moment

and smiling with my whole soul,

and even more I smiled at you… And on the tram

to an anxious, sarcastic and curious man,

who looked at us both with irony,

I said, becoming happy:

- «Forgive me, Lord this joy. "

Amado Nervo (Mexico)

In peace

Very close to my sunset, I bless you, my life,

because you never gave me failed hope,

or unfair work, or undeserved pain;

because I see at the end of my rough path

that I was the architect of my own destiny;

that if I extracted honey or gall from things, it

was because I put gall or tasty honeys in them:

when I planted rose bushes, I always harvested roses.

… True, winter is going to follow my freshness:

but you didn't tell me that May was eternal!

I certainly found long nights of my sorrows;

but you didn't promise me only good nights;

and instead I had some holy serene…

I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face.

Life, you owe me nothing! Life, we are at peace!

Amado Nervo (Mexico)

The Twilight Eyes

As in a background of light, deep and calm water,

In the blue of the afternoon the campaigns rest.

And to the star that ajar its lucid pupil,

The shadow of the night trembles in the eyelashes.

A slight darkness is smoothing the grass

With the usual caress of the hand on the hair;

And in his last glance he takes the earth to heaven,

The submissive sweetness of the doe's eye.

The blue of the still afternoon is the sky itself

That descends to earth, with such a soft deliquity,

That it seems that in it its abyss clears,

And that in its deep soul it is looking at itself.

And it curdles in the dew that at the edge of the grove

Cry the black eyes of the nocturnal grass;

And contemplate into the taciturn water,

And expand the lids of the lotus more slowly.

And crystallizes, like icebergs, the walls

Of the little white house that with its door looks at

The peace of the prairies; and gently expires

In the noble sadness of your dark eyes.

Leopoldo Lugones (Argentina)

To the gauchos (fragment)

Brave and tough race

that with wild strength

gave the country in equestrian panache

his primitive sculpture.

A terrible fortune

goes to her sacrifice united, how the wound unfolds

that the bull breaks the neck, in the stream of the slaughter

the banner of life.

Is that the faithful will

that makes the grim fate glad, melt the black grape into wine

from harsh adversity.

And in point of freedom

there is no more clear satisfaction, to measure it complete

between risk and heart, with three quarters of a facón

and four quatra feet.

In the hour of great pain

that history gave birth to us,

as well as the good of the day

the songbird trova, the payador song

announced the dawn, and in the cool rosicler

that painted the first ray, the cute gaucho of Mayo

he left never to return…

Author: Leopoldo Lugones

A little bit of sky and a little bit of lake

A little bit of sky and a little bit of lake

where the graceful bamboo fishes stars, and at the back of the park, with intimate compliments, the night that looks how you look.

Bloom in the lilies of your poetry,

the candid moon that rises from the sea.

And in flimsy delirium of blue melody, it infuses you with a vague anguish of love.

The sweet sighs that your soul perfume, they give you, like her, celestial ascension.

The night, your eyes, a bit of Schumann

and my hands full of your heart.

Author: Leopoldo Lugones

To lmachilena

You have abyss eyes, hair

full of light and shadow, like the river

that sliding its wild flow,

the kiss of the moon reverberates.

Nothing more rocking than your hip, rebel to the pressure of the attire…

There is summer in your enduring blood

and eternal spring on your lips.

Beautiful out melt in your lap

the kiss of death with your arm…

Breathe out like a god, languidly, having your hair as a garland, so that the touch of a burning flesh

the corpse in your skirt shudders…

Author: Carlos Pezoa Véliz

In memory of Josefina

one

Of what was a love, a sweetness

unparalleled, made of dreams and joy,

only the cold ash remains

that retains this pale envelope.

The orchid of fantastic beauty, the butterfly in its polychrome

they rendered their fragrance and gallantry

to the fate that fixed my misfortune.

My memory prevails over oblivion;

my pain tears her from her grave;

my faith quotes her, my passion awaits her,

and I return it to the light, with that frank

spring morning smile:

Noble, modest, loving and white!

two

That I loved you without rival, you knew it

and the Lord knows it; never flirt

the erratic ivy to the friendly forest

how your being joined my sad soul.

In my memory your living persists

with the sweet sound of a cantiga, and the nostalgia for your love mitigates

my duel, that to the oblivion resists.

Diaphanous spring that does not run out, you live in me, and my austere aridity

your freshness mixes drop by drop.

You went to my desert the palm tree,

to my bitter sea, the seagull, And you will only die when I die!

Author: Guillermo Valencia

There is an instant of twilight…

There is an instant of twilight

in which things shine more, fleeting throbbing moment

of a delinquent intensity.

The branches are velvety, the towers polish their profile, a bird buries its silhouette

on the sapphire ceiling.

The afternoon changes, concentrates

to forget the light, and a soft gift penetrates her

of melancholic stillness,

as if the orb collected

all its good and its beauty, all his faith, all his grace

against the shadow that will come…

My being blooms in that hour

of mysterious blossoming;

I carry a twilight in my soul, of dreamy placidity;

in him the shoots burst

of the spring illusion, and in it I get drunk with aromas

from some garden beyond!…

Author: Guillermo Valencia

I was thinking of you, of your hair

I was thinking of you, of your hair

that the shadow world would envy, and I put a point of my life in them

and I wanted to dream that you were mine.

I walk the earth with my eyes

raised - oh, my eagerness! - so high

that in haughty anger or miserable blushes

the human creature lit them.

Live: -Know how to die; that's how it ails me

this unfortunate search, this fierce good,

and all the Being in my soul is reflected, and searching without faith, of faith I die.

Author: José Martí

I am a sincere man (fragment)

I am an honest man

From where the palm grows, And before I die I want

Cast my verses from the soul.

I come from everywhere

And everywhere I go:

I am art among the arts, In the mountain, I am mountain.

I know the strange names

Of herbs and flowers, And of deadly deceptions, And of sublime pains.

I have seen in the dark night

Rain on my head

The rays of pure fire

Of divine beauty.

I saw wings coming from the shoulders

Of the beautiful women:

And come out of the rubble, Flying butterflies.

I've seen a man live

With the dagger at his side, Without ever saying the name

Of the one who has killed him.

Quick, like a reflection, Twice I saw the soul, two:

When the poor old man died, When she said goodbye to me

I trembled once - at the gate,

At the entrance to the vineyard, -

When the barbarian bee

It stung my girl's forehead.

I enjoyed once, in such luck

That I enjoyed as never before: -when

The sentence of my death

The warden read crying.

I hear a sigh, through

Of the lands and the sea, And it is not a sigh, -it is

That my son is going to wake up.

If they say that the jeweler

Take the best jewel, I take a sincere friend

And I put love aside

Author: José Martí

Song of autumn

Well: I know! Death is sitting

At my doorstep: cautious she comes, Because their cries and their love do not prepare

In my defense, when they live far away

Parents and child. When returning frowning

Of my sterile labor, sad and dark, With which to my winter house I shelter, Standing on the yellow leaves

In the fatal hand the flower of sleep, The black woman plays on topped wings, Avid face, tremulous I look at her

Every afternoon waiting for me at my door.

I think of my son, and of the dark lady

I flee without strength, devoured the chest

Of a frenzied love! Most beautiful woman

There is no that Death! For a kiss from him

Thick forests of various laurels, And the oleanders of love, and joy

To remember my childhoods!

… I think of the one to whom my guilty love

Brought to live, and, sobbing, I dodge

From my beloved the arms; more I already enjoy

Of the perennial dawn the sure good.

Oh life, goodbye! Who is going to die is dead.

Author: José Martí

Summer Romance (excerpt)

Summer noon - gold and blue - what do you wear

so much new joy, so much secret anxiety,

Like a blossoming over hearts!

Under the restless breeze

the noisy park of nests and songs,

it is like a harmonious poet's heart.

Thirst for love in souls, which moistens the eyes,

the divine madness of divine excesses,

in the red goblets

on mischievous lips, like golden horseflies, kisses flutter!

On the bright paths

the soft sands,

loving couples

interweave with threads of sweet moments

the mantle of the auspicious and serene hours…

Fragile rounds pass, fragrant bouquets

of romantic blondes and fiery brunettes.

Author: Ernesto Noboa

To my mother

To calm the grave hours

Calvary of the heart

I have your sad soft hands

that perch like two birds

on the cross of my affliction.

To ease the sad hours

of my quiet loneliness

It is enough for me… to know that you exist!

and you accompany me and assist me

and you instill serenity in me.

When the asp of boredom gnaws at me, I have some books that are in

the bloody hours myrrh, aloe, the support of my weak soul:

Heine, Samain, Laforgue, Poe

and, above all, my Verlaine!

And so my life slides

-no object or orientation-

suffering, quiet, submissive,

with sad resignation,

between a sigh, a smile, some imprecise tenderness

and some real pain…

Author: Ernesto Noboa

Ego sum

I love everything strange, I love everything exotic;

the equivocal and morbid, the false and the abnormal:

only

the morphine vial and the chloral vial can calm my neurotic nerves.

I love withered things, that chlorotic tint

of thugs and whores, hospital grass.

In my sick, sensitive and chaotic brain,

like a Poean spider, evil weaves its web.

It doesn't matter that the others run away from me. Isolation

is conducive to the blossoming of the flower of feeling:

the tuberose of dreams sprouts in solitude.

It does not matter if I am denied human applause

if the music of distant stars

and the flapping of my wings over reality intoxicates me.

Author: Ernesto Noboa

Psalm of love

God bless you, love, because you are beautiful!

God bless you, love, because you are mine!

God bless you, love, when I look at you!

God bless you, love, when you look at me!

God bless you if you keep faith in me;

if you don't keep faith in me, God bless you!

Today that you make me live, bless you;

when you make me die, be blessed!

God bless your steps towards good, your steps towards evil, God bless you!

Blessings to you when you welcome me;

blessings to you when you dodge me!

Bless you the morning light

that when you wake up hurts your pupils;

bless you the shadow of the night,

that in his lap he will find you asleep!

Open your eyes to bless you, before succumbing, he who is dying!

If the murderer blesses you when you hurt, May God bless you for your blessing!

Bless the humble whom you help!

Blessed, by naming you, your friends!

Blessed are the servants of your house!

The pleased mourners bless you!

May the earth bless you in flowers, and the time in copy of peaceful days, and the sea is still to bless you,

and the pain back down and bless you!

Play with the snowy lily again

Gabriel your forehead, and declare it anointed!

Give heaven to your mercy gift of miracle

and heal the sick in your sight!

Oh dear woman!… Today that you adore me, all of blessings is the day!

I bless you, and I want you to

God and heaven and earth bless you!

Author: Eduardo Marquina

Melancholia

To you, for whom I would die,

I like to see you cry

In pain you are mine

in pleasure you leave me

Author: Eduardo Marquina

Cry? For what!

This is the book of my pain:

tear by tear I formed it;

once done, I swear to you, by

Christ, I'll never cry again.

Cry? Why!

My rhymes will be like shimmering

of an intimate light, that I will leave

in every verse; but cry, Never again! By whom? Why?

They will be a placid Florigelio,

a bundle of notes that I will water, and there will be a laugh for every arpeggio…

But a tear? What sacrilege!

Never that anymore. By whom? Why?

Author: Amado Nervo

Autobiography

Autobiographical verses? There are my songs

there are my poems: I, like the nations

happy, and example of the honest woman, I have no history: nothing has ever happened to me, Oh, noble unknown friend, that I could tell you.

Back in my early years I guessed about Art

harmony and rhythm, dear to the musageta, and, being able to be rich, I preferred to be a poet.

-And then?

-I have suffered, like everyone else, and I have loved.

Much?

-Enough to be forgiven…

Author: Amado Nervo

Spain

Let me go on and row the galley

under the storm, on the waves:

He is heading for a Spanish Atlantis

where the future is silent and waits.

The resentment is not extinguished nor the hatred dies

before the banner that the barbarian flies:

if one day justice was alone, the whole of humanity will feel it.

And row among the foaming waves,

and row the galley that you have already seen

how are the fickle storms.

That the race is on its feet and the arm is ready, that Captain Cervantes is on the ship, and above floats the pavilion of Christ.

Author: Rubén Darío (Nicaragua)

The country of the sun

Next to the black palace of the king of the island of Iron (Oh cruel, horrible, exile!) How is that

you, harmonious sister, make the gray sky sing, your aviary of nightingales, your formidable musical box?

Doesn't it sadden you to remember the spring when you heard a divine bird and litmus

in the land of the sun?

In the garden of the king of the island of Gold (oh my dream that I adore!) Was better than you, harmonious

sister, train your winged flutes, your sonorous harps; you who were born where the blood carnation and the red rose are born prettier, in the land of the sun

Or in the palace of the queen of the island of Plata (Schubert, sobs the Serenade…) you could too, sister

harmonious, make the mystical birds of your soul praise, sweetly, sweetly, the moonlight, the virgin lilies, the dove nun and the marquis swan. The best silver melts in a burning crucible, in the land of the sun

So go back to your boat, which has the sail ready (resonates, lyre, Zephyr, flies) and leaves, harmonious

sister, where a beautiful prince, by the seashore, asks for lyres, and verses and roses, and caresses her curls of

gold under a royal blue parasol,

in the country of the sun.

Author: Rubén Darío

Divine Psyche (fragment)

I

Divine Psyche, sweet invisible butterfly

that from the abysses you have become everything

what in my nervous being and in my sensitive body

form the sacred spark of the mud statue!

You peek through my eyes in the light of the earth

and prisoner you live in me as a strange owner:

my senses at war reduce you to a slave

and you just roam free in the garden of sleep.

I knew to Lust that you know ancient sciences, sometimes you shake between impossible walls, and beyond all vulgar consciences

you explore the most terrible and dark corners.

And you find shadow and mourning. What shadow and duel you find

under the vine where the Devil's wine is born.

You perch on the breasts, you perch on the bellies

that made Juan crazy and made Pablo sane.

A virgin Juan, and a military and violent Pablo;

to Juan who never knew of the supreme contact;

to Paul the stormy man who found Christ in the wind, and to Juan before whom Hugo is dumbfounded.

Author: Rubén Darío

Nocturnal of the street copla (fragment)

I have long burned my ships

like the conqueror, and I threw myself into the bustle of adventure

from one heart to another heart;

but…

I confess

that I have also had my sad night.

Oh sad night I am crying!

Oh night when, wandering

Through the haunting-looking dark neighborhoods

where in humble houses romanticism dreams

of virgins sick of Moon and song, has interrupted my step

a couplet escaped through the treacherous hole

from a window, just

stick me in the middle of my heart…

And the couplet came to me

thrown, amid the grumbling of an old accordion, by some conceited lad

according to the impudence of his hoarse voice.

Author: Santos Chocano

Orchids

Glass amphorae, graceful finery

in enigmatic surprising ways, headbands typical of apolines fronts, ornaments worthy of lavish rooms.

In the nodes of a trunk they make scales;

and twist their serpent stalks,

until remaining in the pending altitude, like birds without wings.

Sad as pensive heads

they sprout, without clumsy ties

of tyranny root, free and haughty;

because also, with the mean at war, they want to live, like pure souls, without a single contact with the earth.

Author: Santo Chocano

Mother

Little mother, little mother

White cantarrana flower

Soft charm of my life

Sweet love that never cheats.

Who looks at you already admires you

Non-fogging mirror

Virtue well learned

To suffer always quiet

Industrious spider

That in the mountain corner

His laborious little telita.

In silence weave and keep

A lovely life

Of delicate tenderness

Of kind patience

Sweet love that never cheats.

Author: Rómulo Gallegos

In a fan

Poor damned verse

to look at your red lips

and in the light of your eyes

always wanting to burn.

Hummingbird from which it moves away

the myrtle that causes it

and take a close look at your mouth

and he cannot kiss her.

Author: Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera

Amethyst twilight

The twilight, of amethyst, turns

Blue more and more intense,

The lantern fills with a faint green glow

The trees of the avenue.

The old piano plays a

serene and slow and jovial melody;

She hunches over the yellowed keys,

And thus tilts her head.

Shy thoughts, serious and wide eyes

And hands that wander as they listen…

The twilight Turns even darker blue

With reflections of amethyst.

Author: James Joyce

Cowardice

It happened with his mother. What rare beauty!

What blond garzul wheat hair!

What a rhythm in step! What innate royalty

of bearing! What shapes under the fine tulle…!

It happened with her mother. He turned his head:

his blue gaze pierced me deeply!

I was as ecstatic…

With feverish haste,

"Follow her!", Body and soul shouted alike.

… But I was afraid to love madly,

to open my wounds, which usually bleed,

and despite all my thirst for tenderness,

closing my eyes, I let it pass!

Author: Amado Nervo

Other poems of interest

Poems of Romanticism.

Avant-garde poems.

Poems of Realism.

Poems of Futurism.

Poems of Classicism.

Poems of Neoclassicism.

Poems of the Baroque.

Poems of Cubism.

Poems of Dadaism.

Poems of the Renaissance.

References

1. Spanish Literature of Modernism and Modernism (literature in Spanish). Recovered from es.wikipedia.org
2. Poems by Rubén Darío. Recovered from poesiaspoemas.com and amor.com.mx
3. Poem by Amado Nervo. Recovered from amor.com.mx
4. Poem by Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera. Recovered from ciudadseva.com
5. Poems by José Martí. Recovered from amediavoz.com and frasesypoemas.com
6. Poem by Leopoldo Lugones. Recovered from poesi.as.