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Famous Bend Poems by Famous Poets

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

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

by Hilaire Belloc

 To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the...Read more of this...

Form: Ode

Indian Dancer

by Sarojini Naidu

 EYES ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms aflaming with fire 
Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth heavens that glimmer around them in fountains of light; 
O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music that cleaveth the stars like a wail of desire, 
And beautiful dancers with houri-like faces bewitch the voluptuous watches of night.


The...Read more of this...

Wedding Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 THE tale of the Count our glad song shall record

Who had in this castle his dwelling,
Where now ye are feasting the new-married lord,

His grandson of whom we are telling.
The Count as Crusader had blazon'd his fame,
Through many a triumph exalted his name,
And when on his steed to his dwelling he came,

His castle still rear'd its proud head,
But servants and...Read more of this...

To Little Jeanne

by Victor Hugo

 ("Vous eûtes donc hier un an.") 
 
 {September, 1870.} 


 You've lived a year, then, yesterday, sweet child, 
 Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild, 
 New-hatched in warmer nest 'neath sheltering bough, 
 Chirp merrily to feel their feathers grow. 
 Your mouth's a rose, Jeanne! In these volumes grand 
 Whose pictures please you—while I trembling...Read more of this...

The Bohemian Dreams

by Robert William Service

 Because my overcoat's in pawn,
I choose to take my glass
Within a little bistro on
The rue du Montparnasse;
The dusty bins with bottles shine,
The counter's lined with zinc,
And there I sit and drink my wine,
And think and think and think.

I think of hoary old Stamboul,
Of Moslem and of Greek,
Of Persian in coat of wool,
Of Kurd and Arab sheikh;
Of all the types...Read more of this...

Form: Lyric

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...

Town and Country

by Rupert Brooke

 Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
And flaming brains are the white heart of all.

Here, million pulses to one centre beat:
Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,
Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.

Here the green-purple...Read more of this...

The Towers of Time

by G K Chesterton

 Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong...Read more of this...

Sonnet XVIII: With What Sharp Checks

by Sir Philip Sidney

 With what sharp checks I in myself am shent, 
When into Reason's audit I do go: 
And by just counts myself a bankrupt know 
Of all the goods, which heav'n to me hath lent: 

Unable quite to pay even Nature's rent, 
Which unto it by birthright I do owe: 
And, which is worse, no good excuse can show, 
But...Read more of this...

Lausanne In Gibbons Old Garden: 11-12 p.m

by Thomas Hardy

 (The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at the same hour and place) 

 A spirit seems to pass, 
 Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal: 
 He contemplates a volume stout and tall, 
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias. 

 Anon the book is closed, 
 With "It is...Read more of this...

Night

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

'Tis eventide; the noisy brook is hushed
Or murmurs only as a tired child,
Worn out with play; the tangled weeds lie still
Within the marshy hollow. Quaint and dark
The willows bend above the brooklet's tide,
Reflecting shadowy images therein.
The dark-browed trees, with faces to the sky,
Shut out the light that fades in crimson lines
Along the western sky. And yonder shade
Of purple marks the...Read more of this...

All My Pretty Ones

by Anne Sexton

 Father, this year's jinx rides us apart 
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber; 
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,...Read more of this...

To Baynard Taylor

by Sidney Lanier

 To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much...Read more of this...

Sonnet 02 - But only three in all Gods universe

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 But only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. 'Nay'...Read more of this...

Written On Sunday Morning

by Robert Southey

 Go thou and seek the House of Prayer!
I to the Woodlands wend, and there
In lovely Nature see the GOD OF LOVE.
The swelling organ's peal
Wakes not my soul to zeal,
Like the wild music of the wind-swept grove.
The gorgeous altar and the mystic vest
Rouse not such ardor in my breast,
As where the noon-tide beam
Flash'd from the broken stream,
Quick vibrates on the...Read more of this...

blue dress

by Rg Gregory

 i can see through the blue
dress when you stand
in the doorway - the light
come indoors softly like

a cat between your legs
when you walk and
the dress flows
over the curved pebble

of your belly into
the blue pool my eye
is already there
waiting for the ripple

i have the echo
in my own dark waters
it is an old dress
and it knows how to touch

a breast as...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier

 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot

 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

Come let us drink & deeply drown

by Hafez

Come let us drink & deeply drown
In Heav’n’s pure wine our sorrowing!
Fling ye earth’s faded garlands down,
Scatter away life’s flowering!

Though sorrow’s myriad armies strive
To subjugate & slay us, we,
O proud cup-bearer, will contrive
To overcome their tyranny.

O earth’s sad lover, drink & throw
Unto high heaven thy misery:
So shall perchance bright beauty know
Thy longing need & bend to thee.

Not in this life’s...Read more of this...

Tell me my simple and tranquil sweetheart

by Emile Verhaeren

Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its sleeping scalds?
I go to meet those who are returning from the wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on...Read more of this...

For the Union Dead

by Robert Lowell

 "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam." 

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I...Read more of this...

At the Cedars

by Duncan Campbell Scott

 You had two girls -- Baptiste -- 
One is Virginie --
Hold hard -- Baptiste!
Listen to me.

The whole drive was jammed
In that bend at the Cedars,
The rapids were dammed
With the logs tight rammed
And crammed; you might know
The Devil had clinched them below.

We worked three days -- not a budge,
'She's as tight as a wedge, on the ledge,'
Says our foreman;
'Mon Dieu!...Read more of this...

Oh! Blame Not the Bard

by Thomas Moore

 Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers 
Where Pleasure lies, carelessly smiling at Fame; 
He was born for much more, and in happier hours 
His soul might have burn'd with a holier flame. 
The string, that now languishes loose o'er the lyre, 
Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior's dart;
And the lip, which...Read more of this...

sam swill