Famous Adventurous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lazy Day

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
The trees bend down along the stream,
Where anchored swings my tiny boat.
The day is one to drowse and dream
And list the thrush's throttling note.
When music from his bosom bleeds
Among the river's rustling reeds.
No ripple stirs the placid pool,
When my adventurous line is cast,
A truce to sport, while clear and cool,
The mirrored clouds slide softly past.
The sky gives back a blue...Read more of this...

London Voluntaries IV: Out of the Poisonous East

by William Ernest Henley
 Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellerage of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the abominable--
The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light--
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;
And in a cloud unclean
Of excremental humours, roused to strife
By the operation of some ruinous change,
Wherever his evil mandate run...Read more of this...

Pray to What Earth

by Henry David Thoreau
 Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong,
Which asks no duties and no conscience?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path
In some far summer stratum of the sky,
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs
The snow dust still emits a silver light.
Under...Read more of this...

To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses

by John Keats
 As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its...Read more of this...

Cromwells Return

by Andrew Marvell
 An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland

The forward youth that would appear 
Must now forsake his muses dear, 
Nor in the shadows sing, 
His numbers languishing. 
'Tis time to leave the books in dust, 
And oil the unus?d armour's rust: 
Removing from the wall 
The corslet of the hall. 
So restless Cromwell could not cease 
In the inglorious...Read more of this...

My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters

by Thomas Carew
 SO grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws 
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows 
Into the angry main, to save from wrack 
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back 
These letters : yet so powerful is your sway 
As if you bid me die, I must obey. 
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

The Deserted Garden

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I MIND me in the days departed, 
How often underneath the sun 
With childish bounds I used to run 
To a garden long deserted. 

The beds and walks were vanish'd quite; 5 
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, 
The greenest grasses Nature laid, 
To sanctify her right. 

I call'd the place my wilderness, 
For no one enter'd there but I....Read more of this...

A Little Litany

by G K Chesterton
 When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven--and saw the earth.

Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.

Or...Read more of this...

What would I give to see his face?

by Emily Dickinson
 What would I give to see his face?
I'd give -- I'd give my life -- of course --
But that is not enough!
Stop just a minute -- let me think!
I'd give my biggest Bobolink!
That makes two -- Him -- and Life!
You know who "June" is --
I'd give her --
Roses a day from Zanzibar --
And Lily tubes -- like Wells --
Bees...Read more of this...

Song-Books of the War

by Siegfried Sassoon
 In fifty years, when peace outshines
Remembrance of the battle lines,
Adventurous lads will sigh and cast
Proud looks upon the plundered past.
On summer morn or winter's night,
Their hearts will kindle for the fight,
Reading a snatch of soldier-song,
Savage and jaunty, fierce and strong;
And through the angry marching rhymes
Of blind regret and haggard mirth,
They'll envy us the dazzling times
When sacrifice absolved our earth.

Some...Read more of this...

The Remorse Of The Dead

by Charles Baudelaire
 O SHADOWY Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep 
In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; 
When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep 
Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; 

And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, 
And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, 
Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, 
And...Read more of this...

This barbaric capital

by Emile Verhaeren
This barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe, soldered together by the might of claw and tooth, in a mad whirl of blood, of fiery cries, of wounds, and of jaws that bite and bite again,
This was myself before you were mine, you who are new and old, and who, from the depths of your eternity, came to me with passion and...Read more of this...

The Only Child

by Katharine Tynan
 Lest he miss other children, lo! 
His angel is his playfellow. 
A riotous angel two years old, 
With wings of rose and curls of gold. 

There on the nursery floor together 
They play when it is rainy weather, 
Building brick castles with much pain, 
Only to knock them down again. 

Two golden heads together look 
An hour long o'er...Read more of this...

Freedoms Plow

by Langston Hughes
 When a man starts out with nothing,
 When a man starts out with his hands
 Empty, but clean,
 When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on...Read more of this...

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