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Famous Borrow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...went by--
Far from help as years went by,
 Plainer we discerned it.

Wherefore praise we famous men
 From whose bays we borrow--
They that put aside To-day--
All the joys of their To-day--
And with toil of their To-day
 Bought for us To-morrow!

Bless and praise we famous men--
 Men of little showing--
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Broad and deep continueth,
 Great beyond their knowing!...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!
"Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
A wound more fierce than his with tears and si...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...irds from coverts innermost and drear
Warbling for very joy mellifluous sorrow--
To me new born delights!

 "Now let me borrow,
For moments few, a temperament as stern
As Pluto's sceptre, that my words not burn
These uttering lips, while I in calm speech tell
How specious heaven was changed to real hell.

 "One morn she left me sleeping: half awake
I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake
My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts;
But she was gone. Whereat the bar...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...treams?"--Then she,
Sitting beneath the midmost forest tree,
For pity sang this roundelay------


 "O Sorrow,
 Why dost borrow
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?--
 To give maiden blushes
 To the white rose bushes?
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips?

 "O Sorrow,
 Why dost borrow
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?--
 To give the glow-worm light?
 Or, on a moonless night,
To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea-spry?

 "O Sorrow,
 Why dost borrow
The mellow ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...m to stifle all the heavy sorrow
"Of a poor three hours' absence? but we'll gain
"Out of the amorous dark what day doth borrow.
"Good bye! I'll soon be back."--"Good bye!" said she:--
And as he went she chanted merrily.

XXVII.
So the two brothers and their murder'd man
Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream
Gurgles through straiten'd banks, and still doth fan
Itself with dancing bulrush, and the bream
Keeps head against the freshets. Sick and wan
The brothers' faces...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...ught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the cru...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...th more, not only be no quintessence,
But mixed of all stuffs paining soul or sense,
And of the sun his working vigor borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
   Love by the spring is grown;
   As, in the firmament,
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as...Read more of this...
by Donne, John
...s everything, 
With all his tongues of silence? 

BURR

I dare say.
I dare say, but I won’t. One of those tongues 
I’ll borrow for the nonce. He’ll never miss it. 
We mean his Western Majesty, King George. 

HAMILTON

I mean the man who rode by on his horse. 
I’ll beg of you the meed of your indulgence
If I should say this planet may have done 
A deal of weary whirling when at last, 
If ever, Time shall aggregate again 
A majesty like his that has no name. 

BURR

Then you co...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...o fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...
Duly at evening Helen came
To this lone silent spot,
From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow
So much of sympathy to borrow 
As soothed her own dark lot.
Duly each evening from her home,
With her fair child would Helen come
To sit upon that antique seat,
While the hues of day were pale;
And the bright boy beside her feet
Now lay, lifting at intervals
His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse calls,
Following. He was a gentle boy 
And in all gentle sorts to...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Song of the Indian Maid 

O SORROW! 
Why dost borrow 
The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?¡ª 
To give maiden blushes 
To the white rose bushes? 5 
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips? 

O Sorrow! 
Why dost borrow 
The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?¡ª 
To give the glow-worm light? 10 
Or, on a moonless night, 
To tinge, on siren shores, the salt sea-spry? 

O Sorrow! 
Why do...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...ing bird to drink
Stops oft before his garden feast is done;
And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink
That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,
Have covered part of this old wall, entwined
With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.

And crowning other parts the wild white rose
Rivals the honey-suckle with the bees.
Above the old abandoned orchard shows
And all within beneath the dense-set trees,
Tall and luxuriant the rank grass grows,
That settled in its wavy d...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...em when it serves your ends., 
Double traitors, double black, 
Stabbing only in the back, 
Stabbing with the knives you borrow 
From the friends you bring to sorrow. 
You stab all that's true and strong, 
Truth and strength you say are wrong, 
Meek and mild, and sweet and creeping, 
Repeating, canting cadging, peeping, 
That's the art and that's the life 
To win a man his neighbour's wife. 
All that's good and all that's true, 
You kill that, so I'll kill you." 
At that I tor...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John
..."toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the"o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity. This also seems a fitting occasion to notice the other hard works in that poem. Humpty-Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a port{-} manteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. 

For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "f...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...lamon answer'd, "I grant it thee."
And thus they be departed till the morrow,
When each of them hath *laid his faith to borrow*. *pledged his faith*

O Cupid, out of alle charity!
O Regne* that wilt no fellow have with thee! *queen 
Full sooth is said, that love nor lordeship
Will not, *his thanks*, have any fellowship. *thanks to him*
Well finden that Arcite and Palamon.
Arcite is ridd anon unto the town,
And on the morrow, ere it were daylight,
Full privily two harness ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ed fountain,
          When our need was the sorest.
     The font, reappearing,
          From the rain-drops shall borrow,
     But to us comes no cheering,
          To Duncan no morrow!

     The hand of the reaper
          Takes the ears that are hoary,
     But the voice of the weeper
          Wails manhood in glory.
     The autumn winds rushing
          Waft the leaves that are searest,
     But our flower was in flushing,
          When blighting was...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...y-wounded,
That very need unwrappeth all thy wound hid.
Maugre thine head thou must for indigence
Or steal, or beg, or borrow thy dispence*. *expense

Thou blamest Christ, and sayst full bitterly,
He misdeparteth* riches temporal; *allots amiss
Thy neighebour thou witest* sinfully, *blamest
And sayst, thou hast too little, and he hath all:
"Parfay (sayst thou) sometime he reckon shall,
When that his tail shall *brennen in the glede*, *burn in the fire*
For he not help'd the ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nd each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
    So that now, to still the beating of my hear...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...t of knighthood, or gilt key 
Stuck in their loins; or like to an 'entr?' 
Up the back stairs, or such free-masonry. 
I borrow my comparisons from clay, 
Being clay myself. Let not those spirits be 
Offended with such base low likenesses; 
We know their posts are nobler far than these. 

LV 

When the great signal ran from heaven to hell — 
About ten million times the distance reckon'd 
From our sun to its earth, as we can tell 
How much time it takes up, even to a second, 
F...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ut wonder what we will
talk about if we ever
run out of things to say.

You are the curve
I burrow into. The strength
I borrow. You are the red sun
rising over the mountain.
You are the mountain.


© 2002 Lisa M. Zaran
All rights reserved....Read more of this...
by Zaran, Lisa

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry