Famous Bound Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Bell

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I love thy music, mellow bell,
I love thine iron chime,
To life or death, to heaven or hell,
Which calls the sons of Time.

Thy voice upon the deep
The home-bound sea-boy hails,
It charms his cares to sleep,
It cheers him as he sails.

To house of God and heavenly joys
Thy summons called our sires,
And good men thought thy sacred voice
Disarmed the thunder's fires.

And soon...Read more of this...

Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World

by William Bronk
 Whether what we sense of this world
is the what of this world only, or the what 
of which of several possible worlds
--which what?--something of what we sense 
may be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense.
For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance
of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words
that twist the tongue, to feel...Read more of this...

The Squaw Man

by Robert William Service
 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...

Chaucer

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 An old man in a lodge within a park; 
The chamber walls depicted all around 
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, 
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, 
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark 
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; 
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, 
Then writeth in a...Read more of this...

Bound Home to Mount Song

by Wang Wei
 The limpid river, past its bushes 
Running slowly as my chariot, 
Becomes a fellow voyager 
Returning home with the evening birds. 
A ruined city-wall overtops an old ferry, 
Autumn sunset floods the peaks. 
...Far away, beside Mount Song, 
I shall close my door and be at peace....Read more of this...

The Bracelet To Julia

by Robert Herrick
 Why I tie about thy wrist,
Julia, this my silken twist?
For what other reason is't,
But to shew thee how in part
Thou my pretty captive art?
But thy bond-slave is my heart;
'Tis but silk that bindeth thee,
Knap the thread and thou art free;
But 'tis otherwise with me;
I am bound, and fast bound so,
That from thee I cannot go;
If I could, I would...Read more of this...

To Qiwu Qian Bound Home After Failing In An Examination

by Wang Wei
In a happy reign there should be no hermits; 
The wise and able should consult together.... 
So you, a man of the eastern mountains, 
Gave up your life of picking herbs 
And came all the way to the Gate of Gold -- 
But you found your devotion unavailing. 
...To spend the Day of No Fire on one of the southern...Read more of this...

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

by Alan Seeger
 Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms 
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, 
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, 
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, 
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold 
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, 
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains 
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...

All Souls Night

by William Butler Yeats
 Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink...Read more of this...

Beauty XXV

by Kahlil Gibran
 And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty." 

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? 

And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? 

The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle. 

Like a young mother...Read more of this...

Is White a Color?

by John Matthew
 White, pristine, unblemished
They say it is not a color
I love white mists, clouds
Lingering on blue mountains.

White, no shades
No off white, cream
Pure as snow on shimmering peaks
Is my favorite sight.

Nurses, priests, politicians
Are bound, chained to white
White nebulous clouds
evoke deep nostalgic thoughts.

They swaddled my father in white
As he lay in the black coffin
His best shirt was white
His loin cloth was white.

The...Read more of this...

Bound for your distant home

by Alexander Pushkin
 Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I’ve known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, ‘When we meet again,
in the shadow...Read more of this...

I am bound to this Land by blood

by Olu Oguibe
I am bound to this land by blood
That's why my vision is blurred
I am rooted in its soil
And its streams flood my veins
I smell the sweat of its men
And the million feet that plod
The dust of its streets
Leave their prints on my soul
I have walked the footpaths of this land
Climbed the snake-routes of its hills
I have known the heat of...Read more of this...

Colonel Martin

by William Butler Yeats
 I

The Colonel went out sailing,
He spoke with Turk and Jew,
With Christian and with Infidel,
For all tongues he knew.
'O what's a wifeless man?' said he,
And he came sailing home.
He rose the latch and went upstairs
And found an empty room.
The Colonel went out sailing.

 II

'I kept her much in the country
And she was much alone,
And though she may be there,' he...Read more of this...

Bound -- a trouble

by Emily Dickinson
 Bound -- a trouble --
And lives can bear it!
Limit -- how deep a bleeding go!
So -- many -- drops -- of vital scarlet --
Deal with the soul
As with Algebra!

Tell it the Ages -- to a cypher --
And it will ache -- contented -- on --
Sing -- at its pain -- as any Workman --
Notching the fall of the Even...Read more of this...

To Elizabeth Ward Perkins

by Amy Lowell
 Dear Bessie, would my tired rhyme
Had force to rise from apathy,
And shaking off its lethargy
Ring word-tones like a Christmas chime.
But in my soul's high belfry, chill
The bitter wind of doubt has blown,
The summer swallows all have flown,
The bells are frost-bound, mute and still.
Upon the crumbling boards the snow
Has drifted deep, the clappers hang
Prismed with icicles, their clang
Unheard since ages...Read more of this...

The Tree of Laughing Bells

by Vachel Lindsay
 [A Poem for Aviators]


How the Wings Were Made

From many morning-glories 
That in an hour will fade, 
From many pansy buds 
Gathered in the shade, 
From lily of the valley 
And dandelion buds, 
From fiery poppy-buds 
Are the Wings of the Morning made. 


The Indian Girl Who Made Them

These, the Wings of the Morning, 
An Indian Maiden wove, 
Intertwining subtilely...Read more of this...

Homeward Bound

by Henry Van Dyke
 Home, for my heart still calls me;
Home, through the danger zone;
Home, whatever befalls me,
I will sail again to my own! 

Wolves of the sea are hiding
Closely along the way,
Under the water biding
Their moment to rend and slay. 

Black is the eagle that brands them,
Black are their hearts as the night,
Black is the hate that sends them
To murder but not...Read more of this...

Nevertheless

by Marianne Moore
 you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow 
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear - 

leaf...Read more of this...

To Qiwu Qian Bound Home After Failing an Examination

by Wang Wei
 In a happy reign there should be no hermits; 
The wise and able should consult together.... 
So you, a man of the eastern mountains, 
Gave up your life of picking herbs 
And came all the way to the Gate of Gold -- 
But you found your devotion unavailing. 
...To spend the Day of No Fire on one of the...Read more of this...

From Snow-Bound 11:1-40 116-154

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein,...Read more of this...

Market days

by Jonas Mekas
 Mondays, way before dawn,
before even the first hint of blue in the windows,
we'd hear it start, off the road past our place,
over on the highway nearby,
in a clatter of market-bound traffic.

Riding the rigs packed with fruit and crated live fowl,
or on foot, with cattle hitched to tailgates slowing the pace,
or sitting up high, on raised seats
(the women all wore...Read more of this...

Boaz Asleep

by Victor Hugo
 Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight 
made his pallet on the threshing floor 
where all day he had worked, and now he slept 
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

The old man owned wheatfields and barley, 
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded. 
No filth soured the sweetness of his well. 
No hot iron of torture whitened in...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Friends

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Two good friends had Hiawatha, 
Singled out from all the others, 
Bound to him in closest union, 
And to whom he gave the right hand 
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; 
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Straight between them ran the pathway, 
Never grew the grass upon it; 
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods, 
Story-tellers, mischief-makers, 
Found...Read more of this...

Memorial Verses

by Matthew Arnold
 Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw 
Of...Read more of this...

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