Famous Barriers Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Barriers poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous barriers poems. These examples illustrate what a famous barriers poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Bronte, Charlotte
...turn thee from the path of crime,
Back to the Church's pale.'
And, did I need that thou shouldst tell
What mighty barriers rise
To part me from that dungeon-cell,
Where my loved Walter lies ?
And, did I need that thou shouldst taunt
My dying hour at last,
By bidding this worn spirit pant
No more for what is past ?
Priestmust I cease to think of him ?
How hollow rings that word !
Can time, can tears, can distance dim
The memory of my lord ?
I said before, I saw ...Read more of this...
by
Wagoner, David
...d heel of your shoe
And a leg-thrust to break it open.
Or you can approach the door as if accustomed
To having all barriers open by themselves.
You can wrench aside
This unauthorized interruption of your progress
And then leave it ajar
For others to do with as they may see fit.
Or you can stand at ease
And give the impression you can see through
This door or any door and have no need
To take your physical self to the other side.
Or you can turn the knob as ...Read more of this...
by
Muir, Edwin
...
‘Give, but have something to give.
No man can want you all.
Live, and learn to live.
When all the barriers fall
You are nothing at all.’...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...own to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were t...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...drove the car straight at them with a harsh,
Dry crunch that showered both with scraps and chips,
Drove through them; barriers rising let them pass
Drove through and on and on, with Dad's moustache
Beside her twitching still round waxen lips
And Mother's tears still streaming down the glass....Read more of this...
by
Jackson, Helen Hunt
...eathless flies the pestilence;
It walls itself in towers of defence;
By land, by sea, against the storm it lays
Down barriers; then, comforted, it says:
"This spot, this hour is safe." Oh, vain pretence!
Man born of man knows nothing when he goes;
The winds blow where they list, and will disclose
To no man which brings safety, which brings risk.
The mighty are brought low by many a thing
Too small to name. Beneath the daisy's disk
Lies hid the pebble for...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...purple hue,
Bids my bosom bound with swifter motion,
Like a fever wild my veins runs through?
Every nerve from out its barriers rises,
O'er its banks, the blood begins to flow;
Body seeks to join itself to body,
Spirits kindle in one blissful glow.
Powerful as in the dead creations
That eternal impulses obey,
O'er the web Arachne-like of Nature,--
Living Nature,--Love exerts her sway.
Laura, see how joyousness embraces
E'en the overflow of sorrows wild!
How e'en ri...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ck'd,
And show'd him, like a vermin in its hole,
Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard
The voice that billow'd round the barriers roar
An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,
But newly-enter'd, taller than the rest,
And armour'd all in forest green, whereon
There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,
And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,
With ever-scattering berries, and on shield
A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late
From overseas in Brittany return'd,
And marriage with a ...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...scorching breath; cannot
kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will.
"But for the storm that flung up barriers
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,
three days at most; but for the storm we should
have been prepared for what befell.
Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was
that interval of moonless calm filled only
with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds,
then sudden movement, blows a...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
..., the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's ar...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...t with him in his flight,
And out of Nature's now-enriched dominions
New worlds of beauty issue forth to light.
The barriers upon knowledge are o'erthrown;
The spirit that, with pleasure soon matured,
Has in your easy triumphs been inured
To hasten through an artist-whole of graces,
Nature's more distant columns duly places.
And overtakes her on her pathway lone.
He weighs her now with weights that human are,
Metes her with measures that she lent of old;
While in ...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...age,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...for a strength
Was in us from this vision, overthrew
So many knights that all the people cried,
And almost burst the barriers in their heat,
Shouting, "Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale!"
`But when the next day brake from under ground--
O brother, had you known our Camelot,
Built by old kings, age after age, so old
The King himself had fears that it would fall,
So strange, and rich, and dim; for where the roofs
Tottered toward each other in the sky,
Met foreheads all ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d,
And showed him, like a vermin in its hole,
Modred, a narrow face: anon he heard
The voice that billowed round the barriers roar
An ocean-sounding welcome to one knight,
But newly-entered, taller than the rest,
And armoured all in forest green, whereon
There tript a hundred tiny silver deer,
And wearing but a holly-spray for crest,
With ever-scattering berries, and on shield
A spear, a harp, a bugle--Tristram--late
From overseas in Brittany returned,
And marriag...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...er along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon;
Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling,
And weep!
In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;
On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the
atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the
jealo...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...THOU unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain
And fetters sure and fast
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn 5
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood with all its mirth
Youth Manhood Age that draws us to the ground 10
And last Man's L...Read more of this...
by
Abercrombie, Lascelles
...storming heart
Into the ocean sea, as into mob
A rebel utters turbulence and rage,
And raise before my path swelling barriers
Of hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike
My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all
The ridges of thy power. And I will show
This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman,
A thing to make his proud heart of evil
Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see
How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of ...Read more of this...
by
Blok, Aleksandr
...tedium of bungalows
A pretzel sign begilds a bakery
And children screech fortissimo.
And every evening beyond the barriers
Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm
Go strolling beside the drainage ditches --
A tilted derby and a lady at the arm.
The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water
A woman's shriek assaults the ear
While above, in the sky, inured to everything,
The moon looks on with a mindless leer.
And every evening my one companion
Sits here, ref...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...ened wisdom; blindly still we yearn
After a virtue that we do not know,
Until our thirst and longing rise above
The barriers of reason—and we love.
XIII
And still I did not see my life was changed,
Utterly different—by this love estranged
For ever and ever from my native land;
That I was now of that unhappy band
Who lose the old, and cannot gain the new
However loving and however true
To their new duties. I could never be
An English woman, there was that...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...one
Runs o'er swiftly
To his glad goal:
He whose heart cruel
Fate hath contracted,
Struggles but vainly
Against all the barriers
The brazen thread raises,
But which the harsh shears
Must one day sever.
Through gloomy thickets
Presseth the wild deer on,
And with the sparrows
Long have the wealthy
Settled themselves in the marsh.
Easy 'tis following the chariot
That by Fortune is driven,
Like the baggage that moves
Over well-mended highways
After the train of a prince...Read more of this...
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