Famous All Embracing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Last Lines

by Emily Brontë
 NO coward soul is mine, 
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: 
I see Heaven's glories shine, 
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 

O God within my breast, 
Almighty, ever-present Deity! 
Life--that in me has rest, 
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! 

Vain are the thousand creeds 
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; 
Worthless as wither'd weeds,...Read more of this...

The Knife

by Keith Douglas
 Can I explain this to you? Your eyes
are entrances the mouths of caves
I issue from wonderful interiors
upon a blessed sea and a fine day,
from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall
in some black liquid cooled by legend
fell across my thought in a moment
became a garment I am naked without
lines drawn across through morning and...Read more of this...

The Tear

by George (Lord) Byron
 When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear:

Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear:

Mild Charity's glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity...Read more of this...

The Burning of the Steamer City of Montreal

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A sad tale of the sea I will relate, which will your hearts appal
Concerning the burning of the steamship "City of Montreal,"
Which had on board two hundred and forty-nine souls in all,
But, alas! a fearful catastrophe did them befall. 

The steamer left New York on the 6th August with a general cargo,
Bound for Queenstown and Liverpool also;
And all went...Read more of this...

Sky Diving

by Nikki Giovanni
Sky DivingI hang on the edge   of this universe   singing off-key   talking too loud   embracing myself   to cushion the fall    I shall tumble   into deep space   never in this form   or with this feeling   to return to earth     It is not tragic   ...Read more of this...

After a Tempest

by William Cullen Bryant
 The day had been a day of wind and storm;-- 
The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,-- 
And stooping from the zenith, bright and warm 
Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last. 
I stood upon the upland slope and cast 
My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene, 
Where the vast plain lay girt by...Read more of this...

The two little skeezucks

by Eugene Field
 There were two little skeezucks who lived in the isle
Of Boo in a southern sea;
They clambered and rollicked in heathenish style
In the boughs of their cocoanut tree.
They didn't fret much about clothing and such
And they recked not a whit of the ills
That sometimes accrue
From having to do
With tailor and laundry bills.

The two little skeezucks once heard of a Fair
Far...Read more of this...

Peace

by Henry Van Dyke
 I

IN EXCELSIS

Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light
Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all thy cares and fears have dropped...Read more of this...

Carol of Words

by Walt Whitman
 1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
 said; 
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, 
Behold! these are vast words to be said. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
 angles,
 dots? 
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in...Read more of this...

Narcissus

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Encircled by her arms as by a shell,
she hears her being murmur,
while forever he endures
the outrage of his too pure image...

Wistfully following their example,
nature re-enters herself;
contemplating its own sap, the flower
becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens...

It's the return of all desire that enters
toward all life embracing itself from afar...
Where does it fall? Under the dwindling
surface, does it hope...Read more of this...

Ganymede

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 How, in the light of morning,
Round me thou glowest,
Spring, thou beloved one!
With thousand-varying loving bliss
The sacred emotions
Born of thy warmth eternal
Press 'gainst my bosom,
Thou endlessly fair one!
Could I but hold thee clasp'd
Within mine arms!

Ah! upon thy bosom
Lay I, pining,
And then thy flowers, thy grass,
Were pressing against my heart.
Thou coolest the burning
Thirst of my bosom,
Beauteous morning breeze!
The nightingale then calls...Read more of this...

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

by Walt Whitman
 1
OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking, 
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, 
Out of the Ninth-month midnight, 
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d
 alone, bare-headed, barefoot, 
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive, 
Out from the...Read more of this...

Song of the Universal

by Walt Whitman
 1
COME, said the Muse, 
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, 
Sing me the Universal. 

In this broad Earth of ours, 
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart, 
Nestles the seed Perfection. 

By every life a share, or more or less, 
None born but it is born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed...Read more of this...

Lit Instructor

by William Stafford
 Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
it bites like a...Read more of this...

Night (O you whose countenance)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Night. O you whose countenance, dissolved
in deepness, hovers above my face.
You who are the heaviest counterweight
to my astounding contemplation.

Night, that trembles as reflected in my eyes,
but in itself strong;
inexhaustible creation, dominant,
enduring beyond the earth's endurance;

Night, full of newly created stars that leave
trails of fire streaming from their seams
as they soar in inaudible adventure
through interstellar space:

how, overshadowed by your all-embracing...Read more of this...

Woods in Winter

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is...Read more of this...

Song Of The German Lanzknecht

by Victor Hugo
 ("Sonnex, clarions!") 
 
 {Bk. VI. vii.} 


 Flourish the trumpet! and rattle the drum! 
 The Reiters are mounted! the Reiters will come! 
 
 When our bullets cease singing 
 And long swords cease ringing 
 On backplates of fearsomest foes in full flight, 
 We'll dig up their dollars 
 To string for girls' collars— 
...Read more of this...

The Fish

by Rupert Brooke
 In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and...Read more of this...

Parabola

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Year after year the princess lies asleep 
Until the hundred years foretold are done, 
Easily drawing her enchanted breath. 
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep, 
Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one 
Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.

But when the Destined Lover at last shall come, 
For whom alone Fortune reserves the...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait

by Linda Pastan
 After Adam Zagajewski



I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.
On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.
My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.
He digs...Read more of this...

Corona

by Paul Celan
 Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love...Read more of this...

In the Holy Nativity of our Lord

by Richard Crashaw
 CHORUS
Come we shepherds whose blest sight
Hath met love's noon in nature's night;
Come lift we up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.

To all our world of well-stol'n joy
He slept, and dreamt of no such thing,
While we found out heav'n's fairer eye,
And kiss'd the cradle of our King.
Tell him he rises now too late
To show us aught...Read more of this...

Eight forms has Shiva

by Kalidasa
Eight forms has Shiva, lord of all and king:
And these are water, first created thing;
And fire, which speeds the sacrifice begun;
The priest; and time's dividers, moon and sun;
The all-embracing ether, path of sound;
The earth, wherein all seeds of life are found;
And air, the breath of life: may he draw near,
Revealed in these, and bless those gathered here....Read more of this...

To Various Persons Talked To All At Once

by Kenneth Koch
 You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want company?
Tell me about the old people who built the bridge.
What is "the Japanese economy"?
Where did you hide the...Read more of this...

No Coward Soul Is Mine

by Emily Brontë
 No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me has rest,
As I—undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding...Read more of this...

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