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Best Famous Expanses Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Expanses poems. This is a select list of the best famous Expanses poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Expanses poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of expanses poems.

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Written by Alexander Pushkin | Create an image from this poem

Devils

 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances, Little bell goes din-din-din.
.
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Round are vast, unknown expanses; Terror, terror is within.
-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry: Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry, All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level: We have strayed, we've lost the trail.
What can WE do, when a devil Drives us, whirls us round the vale? "There, look, there he's playing, jolly! Huffing, puffing in my course; There, you see, into the gully Pushing the hysteric horse; Now in front of me his figure Looms up as a ***** mile-mark -- Coming closer, growing bigger, Sparking, melting in the dark.
" Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover; Flying snow is set alight By the moon whose form they cover; Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
We can't whirl so any longer! Suddenly, the bell has ceased, Horses halted.
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-- Hey, what's wrong there? "Who can tell! -- a stump? a beast?.
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" Blizzard's raging, blizzard's crying, Horses panting, seized by fear; Far away his shape is flying; Still in haze the eyeballs glare; Horses pull us back in motion, Little bell goes din-din-din.
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I behold a strange commotion: Evil spirits gather in -- Sundry, ugly devils, whirling In the moonlight's milky haze: Swaying, flittering and swirling Like the leaves in autumn days.
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What a crowd! Where are they carried? What's the plaintive song I hear? Is a goblin being buried, Or a sorceress married there? Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover; Flying snow is set alight By the moon whose form they cover; Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
Swarms of devils come to rally, Hurtle in the boundless height; Howling fills the whitening valley, Plaintive screeching rends my heart.
.
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Translated by Genia Gurarie July 29, 1995.
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.
edu http://www.
princeton.
edu/~egurarie/ For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.


Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Create an image from this poem

CARILLON

 In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.
Then, with deep sonorous clangor Calmly answering their sweet anger, When the wrangling bells had ended, Slowly struck the clock eleven, And, from out the silent heaven, Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere, On the earth and in the air, Save that footsteps here and there Of some burgher home returning, By the street lamps faintly burning, For a moment woke the echoes Of the ancient town of Bruges.
But amid my broken slumbers Still I heard those magic numbers, As they loud proclaimed the flight And stolen marches of the night; Till their chimes in sweet collision Mingled with each wandering vision, Mingled with the fortune-telling Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, Which amid the waste expanses Of the silent land of trances Have their solitary dwelling; All else seemed asleep in Bruges, In the quaint old Flemish city.
And I thought how like these chimes Are the poet's airy rhymes, All his rhymes and roundelays, His conceits, and songs, and ditties, From the belfry of his brain, Scattered downward, though in vain, On the roofs and stones of cities! For by night the drowsy ear Under its curtains cannot hear, And by day men go their ways, Hearing the music as they pass, But deeming it no more, alas! Than the hollow sound of brass.
Yet perchance a sleepless wight, Lodging at some humble inn In the narrow lanes of life, When the dusk and hush of night Shut out the incessant din Of daylight and its toil and strife, May listen with a calm delight To the poet's melodies, Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long; Hears amid the chime and singing The bells of his own village ringing, And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes Wet with most delicious tears.
Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Ble, Listening with a wild delight To the chimes that, through the night Bang their changes from the Belfry Of that quaint old Flemish city.
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

Maktoob

 A shell surprised our post one day 
And killed a comrade at my side.
My heart was sick to see the way He suffered as he died.
I dug about the place he fell, And found, no bigger than my thumb, A fragment of the splintered shell In warm aluminum.
I melted it, and made a mould, And poured it in the opening, And worked it, when the cast was cold, Into a shapely ring.
And when my ring was smooth and bright, Holding it on a rounded stick, For seal, I bade a Turco write Maktoob in Arabic.
Maktoob! "'Tis written!" .
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So they think, These children of the desert, who From its immense expanses drink Some of its grandeur too.
Within the book of Destiny, Whose leaves are time, whose cover, space, The day when you shall cease to be, The hour, the mode, the place, Are marked, they say; and you shall not By taking thought or using wit Alter that certain fate one jot, Postpone or conjure it.
Learn to drive fear, then, from your heart.
If you must perish, know, O man, 'Tis an inevitable part Of the predestined plan.
And, seeing that through the ebon door Once only you may pass, and meet Of those that have gone through before The mighty, the elite -- --- Guard that not bowed nor blanched with fear You enter, but serene, erect, As you would wish most to appear To those you most respect.
So die as though your funeral Ushered you through the doors that led Into a stately banquet hall Where heroes banqueted; And it shall all depend therein Whether you come as slave or lord, If they acclaim you as their kin Or spurn you from their board.
So, when the order comes: "Attack!" And the assaulting wave deploys, And the heart trembles to look back On life and all its joys; Or in a ditch that they seem near To find, and round your shallow trough Drop the big shells that you can hear Coming a half mile off; When, not to hear, some try to talk, And some to clean their guns, or sing, And some dig deeper in the chalk -- - I look upon my ring: And nerves relax that were most tense, And Death comes whistling down unheard, As I consider all the sense Held in that mystic word.
And it brings, quieting like balm My heart whose flutterings have ceased, The resignation and the calm And wisdom of the East.
Written by Friedrich von Schiller | Create an image from this poem

Human Knowledge

 Since thou readest in her what thou thyself hast there written,
And, to gladden the eye, placest her wonders in groups;--
Since o'er her boundless expanses thy cords to extend thou art able,
Thou dost think that thy mind wonderful Nature can grasp.
Thus the astronomer draws his figures over the heavens, So that he may with more ease traverse the infinite space, Knitting together e'en suns that by Sirius-distance are parted, Making them join in the swan and in the horns of the bull.
But because the firmament shows him its glorious surface, Can he the spheres' mystic dance therefore decipher aright?
Written by Aleister Crowley | Create an image from this poem

Au Bal

 [Dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers]

A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns Of sorceries, of spells, of necromancies; And all my spirit shudders; dew bedims My sight -these girls and their alluring glances! Their eyes that burn like dawn's lascivious lances Walking all earth to love -to love! Life skims The cream of joy.
If God could see what man sees, (Intoxicating Nellies, Mauds and Nances!) I see Him leave the sapphrine expanses, The choir serene and the celestial air To swoon into their sacramental hair!


Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

El Extraviado

 Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.
I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes On the way of the wind in the treetops, and the drift of the tinted rack.
For the will to be losing no wonder of sunny or starlit skies I have chosen the sod for my pillow and a threadbare coat for my back.
Evening of ample horizons, opaline, delicate, pure, Shadow of clouds on green valleys, trailed over meadows and trees, Cities of ardent adventure where the harvests of Joy mature, Forests whose murmuring voices are amorous prophecies, World of romance and profusion, still round my journey spread The glamours, the glints, the enthralments, the nurture of one whose feet From hours unblessed by beauty nor lighted by love have fled As the shade of the tomb on his pathway and the scent of the winding-sheet.
I never could rest from roving nor put from my heart this need To be seeing how lovably Nature in flower and face hath wrought, -- In flower and meadow and mountain and heaven where the white clouds breed And the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught.
Over the azure expanses, on the offshore breezes borne, I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led, Sufficed with the sunshine and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn, The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry