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Best Famous Outgrowing Poems

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Enigma

 Come riddle-me-ree, come riddle-me-ree,
And tell me, what my name may be.
I am nearly one hundred and thirty years old,
And therefore no chicken, as you may suppose; --
Though a dwarf in my youth (as my nurses have told),
I have, ev'ry year since, been outgrowing my clothes;
Till, at last, such a corpulent giant I stand,
That if folks were to furnish me now with a suit,
It would take ev'ry morsel of scrip in the land
But to measure my bulk from the head to the foot.
Hence, they who maintain me, grown sick of my stature,
To cover me nothing but rags will supply;
And the doctors declare that, in due course of nature,
About the year 30 in rags I shall die.
Meanwhile I stalk hungry and bloated around,
An object of int'rest, most painful, to all;
In the warehouse, the cottage, the palace I'm found,
Holding citizen, peasant, and king in my thrall.
Then riddle-me-ree, oh riddle-me-ree,
Come, tell me what my name may be.


When the lord of the counting-house bends o'er his book,
Bright pictures of profit delighting to draw,
O'er his shoulders with large cipher eye-balls I look,
And down drops the pen from his paralyz'd paw!
When the Premier lies dreaming of dear Waterloo,
And expects through another to caper and prank it,
You'd laugh did you see, when I bellow out "Boo!"
How he hides his brave Waterloo head in the blanket.
When mighty Belshazzar brims high in the hall
His cup, full of gout, to Gaul's overthrow,
Lo, "Eight Hundred Millions" I write on the wall,
And the cup falls to earth and -- the gout to his toe!
But the joy of my heart is when largely I cram
My maw with the fruits of the Squirearchy's acres,
And, knowing who made me the thing that I am,
Like the monster of Frankenstein, worry my makers.
Then riddle-me-ree, come, riddle-me-ree,
And tell, if thou knows't, who I may be.

Written by Percy Bysshe Shelley |

Hymn of Pan

FROM the forests and highlands 
We come we come; 
From the river-girt islands  
Where loud waves are dumb  
Listening to my sweet pipings. 5 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes  
The bees on the bells of thyme  
The birds on the myrtle bushes  
The cicale above in the lime  
And the lizards below in the grass 10 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was  
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

Liquid Peneus was flowing  
And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow outgrowing 15 
The light of the dying day  
Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns  
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves  
To the edge of the moist river-lawns 20 
And the brink of the dewy caves  
And all that did then attend and follow  
Were silent with love as you now Apollo  
With envy of my sweet pipings. 

I sang of the dancing stars 25 
I sang of the d?dal earth  
And of heaven and the giant wars  
And love and death and birth. 
And then I changed my pipings¡ª 
Singing how down the vale of M?nalus 30 
I pursued a maiden and clasp'd a reed: 
Gods and men we are all deluded thus! 
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed. 
All wept¡ªas I think both ye now would  
If envy or age had not frozen your blood¡ª 35 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.