Famous Abreast Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Grammarians Funeral

...grew dross of lead:
_Tussis_ attacked him.
``Now, master, take a little rest!''---not he!
(Caution redoubled,
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
Not a whit troubled
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
Fierce as a dragon
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
Sucked at the flagon.

Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
Bad is our bargain!
Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burt...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


A Song of the Road

...r steps, or blinding drifts of snow; 
The way thay you set face an' foot 's the way that I will go, 
An' brave I'll be, abreast o' ye, the Saints and Angels know! 
With loyal hand in loyal hand, an' one heart made o' two, 
Through summer's gold, or winter's cold, It's I will walk with you.

Sure, I will walk with you, my lad, 
A love ordains me to,-- 
To Heaven's door, an' through, my lad. 
O I will walk with you....Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb

A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds

...A wild Blue sky abreast of Winds
That threatened it -- did run
And crouched behind his Yellow Door
Was the defiant sun --
Some conflict with those upper friends
So genial in the main
That we deplore peculiarly
Their arrogant campaign --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...ve never been master’d,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master. 

I swear I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth! 
Who inaugurate one, to inaugurate all. 

I swear I will not be outfaced by irrational things! 
I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me!
I will make cities and civilizations defer to me! 
This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount—and it I teach again. 

(Democracy! while weapons were everywhe...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Atalantas Race

...y side; 
But silent did the thronging folk abide 
Until the turning-post was reach'd at last, 
And round about it still abreast they passed.

But when the people saw how close they ran,
When half-way to the starting-point they were,
A cry of joy broke forth, whereat the man
Headed the white-foot runner, and drew near
Unto the very end of all his fear; 
And scarce his straining feet the ground could feel, 
And bliss unhop'd for o'er his heart 'gan steal.

But 'midst the loud v...Read more of this...
by Morris, William


How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix

...d the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

In Sark

...Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is
shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that
thunder
Abreast and ahead.

At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and the sea thereunde...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Love Among The Ruins

...fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
 Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest,
 Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
 Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
 And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
 Stock or stone— 
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
 Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
 Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Manhattan Streets I Saunter'd Pondering

...1
MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering, 
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence. 

2
After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence; 
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality. 

The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues; 
All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence; 
Not a move can a man or woman make, that...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Mending Wall

...at sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

One Life

...in the blast.
The harvest fails on grain and tree,
Nor comes to me, nor comes to me.
The stream that bears my hopes abreast
Turns ever from my way its pregnant tide.
My laden boat, torn from its rest,
Drifts to the other side.
So all my hopes are set astray,
And drift away, and drift away.
The lark sings to me at the morn,
And near me wings her skyward-soaring flight;
But pleasure dies as soon as born,
The owl takes up the night,
And night seems long and doubly ...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul

The Boston Athenaeum

...h colours jar on our content,
The books upon the shelves are old and worn.
'T was no belated effort nor attempt
To keep abreast with old as well as new
That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise,
Easily got, and held in light esteem.
Our fathers' fathers, slowly and carefully
Gathered them, one by one, when they were new
And a delighted world received their thoughts
Hungrily; while we but love the more,
Because they are so old and grown so dear!
The backs of tarnished g...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Buglers First Communion

...x fine. 

Frowning and forefending angel-warder
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
 March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order. 

How it dóes my heart good, visiting at that bleak hill,
When limber liquid youth, that to all I teach
 Yields tender as a pushed peach,
Hies headstrong to its wellbeing of a self-wise self-will! 

Then though I should tread tufts of consolation
Dáys áfter, só I in a sort deserve to
 And do ser...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley

The Eve Of Revolution

...lights that catch the mountains crest by crest,
Are they of stars or beacons that we see?
Taygetus takes here the winds abreast,
And there the sun resumes Thermopylae;
The light is Athens where those remnants rest,
And Salamis the sea-wall of that sea.
The grass men tread upon
Is very Marathon,
The leaves are of that time-unstricken tree
That storm nor sun can fret
Nor wind, since she that set
Made it her sign to men whose shield was she;
Here, as dead time his deathless thin...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

The Funeral of the German Emperor

...d to see the procession passing the sightseers tried their best,
Especially when the cavalry hove in sight, riding four abreast;
Men and officers with their swords drawn, a magnificent sight to see
In the dim sun's rays, their burnished swords glinting dimly.
Then followed the footguards with slow and solemn tread,
Playing the "Dead March in Saul," most appropriate for the dead;
And behind them followed the artillery, with four guns abreast,
Also the ministers and court offic...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

The Ghosts of the Buffaloes

...that sleep in the grass
While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass.
They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast,
They rode in infinite lines to the west,
Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
And on past those far golden splendors they whirled.
They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep.
And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.

And the wind crept...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

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