Famous Athwart Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Aquarium

by Amy Lowell
 Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver -- gold --
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.
Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,
The light rippling over them
In steel-bright tremors.
Outspread translucent fins
Flute, fold, and relapse;
The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles
In scarcely tarnished twinklings.
Curving of spotted spines,
Slow up-shifts,
Lazy convolutions:
Then a...Read more of this...

A Florida Sunday

by Sidney Lanier
 From cold Norse caves or buccaneer Southern seas
Oft come repenting tempests here to die;
Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies,
They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh,
Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock'd hair
Of sick men's heads, and soon -- this world outworn --
Sink into saintly heavens of stirless air,
Clean from confessional. One died, this morn,
And willed the world to wise Queen...Read more of this...

Sonnets from the Portuguese ii

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
UNLIKE are we unlike O princely Heart! 
Unlike our uses and our destinies. 
Our ministering two angels look surprise 
On one another as they strike athwart 
Their wings in passing. Thou bethink thee art 5 
A guest for queens to social pageantries  
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes 
Than tears even can make mine to play thy part...Read more of this...

The Assignation

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Hear I the creaking gate unclose?
The gleaming latch uplifted?
No--'twas the wind that, whirring, rose,
Amidst the poplars drifted!
Adorn thyself, thou green leaf-bowering roof,
Destined the bright one's presence to receive,
For her, a shadowy palace-hall aloof
With holy night, thy boughs familiar weave.
And ye sweet flatteries of the delicate air,
Awake and sport her rosy cheek around,
When their light weight the tender feet shall...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

446. A Vision

by Robert Burns
 AS I stood by yon roofless tower,
 Where the wa’flower scents the dewy air,
Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower,
 And tells the midnight moon her care.


The winds were laid, the air was still,
 The stars they shot alang the sky;
The fox was howling on the hill,
 And the distant echoing glens reply.


The stream, adown its hazelly path,
...Read more of this...

The Moon of Other Days

by Rudyard Kipling
 Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
 When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch -- alas! --
 Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
 She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be
 The Moon of Other Days?

Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
 Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
 The Moon of August shone,
When...Read more of this...

Variations on an Elizabethan Theme

by Edgar Bowers
 Long days, short nights, this Southern summer 
Fixes the mind within its timeless place. 
 Athwart pale limbs the brazen hummer 
Hangs and is gone, warm sound its quickened space. 

 Butterfly weed and cardinal flower, 
Orange and red, with indigo the band, 
 Perfect themselves unto the hour. 
And blood suffused within the sunlit hand, 

 Within the...Read more of this...

Ii

by Victor Hugo
 But he saw nothing; space was black—no sound. 
 "Forward," said Canute, raising his proud head. 
 There fell a second stain beside the first, 
 Then it grew larger, and the Cimbrian chief 
 Stared at the thick vague darkness, and saw naught. 
 Still as a bloodhound follows on his track, 
 Sad he went on. 'There...Read more of this...

Merlin II

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
To every foot its antipode,
Each color with its counter glowed,
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;
Flavor gladly blends with flavor;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough,
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet,
In one body grooms and brides;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal...Read more of this...

Paternal Love

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ma fille! ô seul bonheur.") 
 
 {LE ROI S'AMUSE, Act II} 


 My child! oh, only blessing Heaven allows me! 
 Others have parents, brothers, kinsmen, friends, 
 A wife, a husband, vassals, followers, 
 Ancestors, and allies, or many children. 
 I have but thee, thee only. Some are rich; 
 Thou art my treasure, thou art...Read more of this...

Between the Showers

by Amy Levy
 Between the showers I went my way,
The glistening street was bright with flowers;
It seemed that March had turned to May
Between the showers.

Above the shining roofs and towers
The blue broke forth athwart the grey;
Birds carolled in their leafless bowers.

Hither and tither, swift and gay,
The people chased the changeful hours;
And you, you passed and smiled that day,
Between the showers....Read more of this...

The Zeppelin

by Laurence Binyon
 Guns! far and near 
Quick, sudden, angry, 
They startle the still street, 
Upturned faces appear, 
Doors open on darkness, 
There is a hurrying of feet, 
And whirled athwart gloom 
White fingers of alarm 
Point at last there 
Where illumined and dumb 
A shape suspended 
Hovers, a demon of the starry air! 
Strange and cold as a dream 
Of sinister...Read more of this...

Claribel: A Melody

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.

At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling...Read more of this...

Mariana

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
WITH BLACKEST moss the flower-plots 
Were thickly crusted, one and all: 
The rusted nails fell from the knots 
That held the pear to the gable-wall. 
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange: 
Unlifted was the clinking latch; 
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
Upon the lonely moated grange. 
She only said, "My life is dreary, 
He cometh not," she said;...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...

112. A Dream

by Robert Burns
 GUID-MORNIN’ to our Majesty!
 May Heaven augment your blisses
On ev’ry new birth-day ye see,
 A humble poet wishes.
My bardship here, at your Levee
 On sic a day as this is,
Is sure an uncouth sight to see,
 Amang thae birth-day dresses
 Sae fine this day.


I see ye’re complimented thrang,
 By mony a lord an’ lady;
“God save the King” ’s a...Read more of this...

Fire-Fly City

by Henry Van Dyke
 Like a long arrow through the dark the train is darting,
Bearing me far away, after a perfect day of love's delight:
Wakeful with all the sad-sweet memories of parting,
I lift the narrow window-shade and look out on the night. 

Lonely the land unknown, and like a river flowing,
Forest and field and hill are gliding backward still athwart my dream;
Till in...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 2

by Alexander Pope
 Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, 
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...

Voices Of the Night

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 PRELUDE.

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

Epilogue

by Richard Aldington
 Che son contenti nel fuoco

We are of those that Dante saw
Glad, for love's sake, among the flames of hell,
Outdaring with a kiss all-powerful wrath;
For we have passed athwart a fiercer hell,
Through gloomier, more desperate circles
Than ever Dante dreamed:
And yet love kept us glad....Read more of this...

A Sunset

by Victor Hugo
 I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, 
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, 
In numerous leafage bosomed close; 
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, 
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere 
On cloudy archipelagos. 

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,...Read more of this...

Fixed Is The Doom

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 FIXED is the doom; and to the last of years
Teacher and taught, friend, lover, parent, child,
Each walks, though near, yet separate; each beholds
His dear ones shine beyond him like the stars.
We also, love, forever dwell apart;
With cries approach, with cries behold the gulph,
The Unvaulted; as two great eagles that do wheel in air
Above a mountain, and with screams confer,
Far...Read more of this...

Melancholy -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into...Read more of this...

Claribel

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Where Claribel low-lieth
The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony,
Where Claribel low-lieth.

At eve the beetle boometh
Athwart the thicket lone:
At noon the wild bee hummeth
About the moss'd headstone:
At midnight the moon cometh,
And looketh down alone.
Her song the lintwhite swelleth,
The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth,
The callow throstle lispeth,
The slumbrous wave outwelleth,
The babbling...Read more of this...

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