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Famous Run-On Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Suckling, Sir John
...I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, 
Where I the rarest things have seen, 
O, things without compare! 
Such sights again cannot be found 
In any place on English ground, 
Be it at wake or fair.

At Charing Cross, hard by the way 
Where we, thou know'st, do sell our hay, 
There is a house with stairs; 
And there did I see coming down 
Such folks as ar...Read more of this...



by Riley, James Whitcomb
...I ain't a-goin' to cry no more, no more!
I'm got ear-ache, an' Ma can't make
It quit a-tall;
An' Carlo bite my rubber-ball
An' puncture it; an' Sis she take
An' poke' my knife down through the stable-floor
An' loozed it - blame it all!
But I ain't goin' to cry no more, no more!

An' Aunt Mame wrote she's comin',
an she can't -
Folks is come there! - An I d...Read more of this...

by de la Mare, Walter
...Over the fence, the dead settle in
for a journey. Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today. Boys asleep. Husband out.

A beer bottle sweats in your hand,
and sea lavender clogs the air
with perfume. Think of yourself.
Your arms rest with nothing to do

after weeks spent attending to others.
Your thoughts turn to ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...'Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writing or in Judging ill,
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense:
Some few in that, but Numbers err in this,
Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss;
A Fool might once himself alone expose,
Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose.

'Tis wit...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..."As unto the bow the cord is, 
So unto the man is woman; 
Though she bends him, she obeys him, 
Though she draws him, yet she follows; 
Useless each without the other!"
Thus the youthful Hiawatha 
Said within himself and pondered, 
Much perplexed by various feelings, 
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, 
Dreaming still of Minnehaha, 
Of the lovely Laughing...Read more of this...



by Lanier, Sidney
...I. Sunrise.


In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone in my sleep;
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of range and of sweep,
Interwoven with waftures of wild sea-liberties, drifting,
Came through the lapped leaves sifting, sifting,
Came to the...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...Now Night came down, and rose full soon
That patroness of rogues, the Moon;
Beneath whose kind protecting ray,
Wolves, brute and human, prowl for prey.
The honest world all snored in chorus,
While owls and ghosts and thieves and Tories,
Whom erst the mid-day sun had awed,
Crept from their lurking holes abroad.


On cautious hinges, slow and stiller...Read more of this...

by Jonson, Ben
...Come, leave the loathed stage,
And the more loathsome age;
Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,
Usurp the chair of wit!
Indicting and arraigning every day
Something they call a play.
Let their fastidious, vain
Commission of the brain
Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn;
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

Say that thou...Read more of this...

by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...Men with picked voices chant the names 
of cities in a huge gallery: promises 
that pull through descending stairways 
to a deep rumbling. 

 The rubbing feet 
of those coming to be carried quicken a 
grey pavement into soft light that rocks 
to and fro, under the domed ceiling, 
across and across from pale 
earthcolored walls of bare limestone. 

...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...I have heard about the civilized, 
the marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are 
savages. You come in with a bag, 
hold it out to me in silence. 
I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it 
and understand the message: I have 
pleased you greatly last night. We sit 
quietly, side by side, to eat, 
the long pancakes dan...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...The news came down on the Castlereagh, and went to the world at large, 
That twenty thousand travelling sheep, with Saltbush Bill in charge, 
Were drifting down from a dried-out run to ravage the Castlereagh; 
And the squatters swore when they heard the news, and wished they were well away: 
For the name and the fame of Saltbush Bill were over the country-...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of renown,
Who in the Murrumbi...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new 
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; 
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, 
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, 
I myself -- you mayn't believe it -- helped to run a paper once 
With ...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade is not', 
And you mentioned it was dus...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
..."Oh yes, I went over to Edmonstoun the other day and saw Johnny, mooning around as usual! He will never make his way." 
Letter of George Keats, 18-- 


Night falls; the great jars glow against the dark, 
Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake, 
Writhing eternally in smoky gyres, 
Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn 
Within them. S...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...I.

You're my friend:
I was the man the Duke spoke to;
I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;
So here's the tale from beginning to end,
My friend!

II.

Ours is a great wild country:
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are pac...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...X. Hiawatha's Wooing

"As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman,
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!"

Thus the youthful Hiawatha
Said within himself and pondered,
Much perplexed by various feelings,
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
Of t...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...THE TRIUMPH OF TIME. Dell' aureo albergo con l' Aurora innanzi.  Behind Aurora's wheels the rising sunHis voyage from his golden shrine begun,With such ethereal speed, as if the HoursRead more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...I

Swear by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by the authors of simile and
metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to
go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when w...Read more of this...

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