Famous Bow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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As I Walked Out One Evening

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
As I walked out one evening,Walking down Bristol Street,The crowds upon the pavementWere fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming riverI heard a lover singUnder an arch of the railway:'Love has no ending. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love youTill China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over the mountainAnd the salmon sing in the street, 'I'll love...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Bow

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Bow,Whom nobody happened to know;So they gave him some soap, and said coldly, "We hopeYou will go back directly to Bow!" ...Read more of this...

Fairy Land iii

by William Shakespeare
 COME unto these yellow sands, 
 And then take hands: 
Court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,-- 
 The wild waves whist,-- 
Foot it featly here and there; 
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 
 Hark, hark! 
 Bow, wow, 
 The watch-dogs bark: 
 Bow, wow. 
 Hark, hark! I hear 
 The strain of strutting chanticleer 
 Cry,...Read more of this...

Psalm 102 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.13-21 
C. M.
Prayer heard, and Zion restored.

Let Zion and her sons rejoice,
Behold the promised hour;
Her God hath heard her mourning voice,
And comes t' exalt his power.

Her dust and ruins that remain
Are precious in our eyes;
Those ruins shall be built again,
And all that dust shall rise.

The Lord will raise Jerusalem
And stand in glory there;
Nations shall bow before his name,
And kings...Read more of this...

Faith

by Robert William Service
 Since all that is was ever bound to be;
 Since grim, eternal laws our Being bind;
 And both the riddle and the answer find,
And both the carnage and the calm decree;
Since plain within the Book of Destiny
 Is written all the journey of mankind
 Inexorably to the end; since blind
And mortal puppets playing parts are we:

Then let's have faith;...Read more of this...

The Surprise

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 As there I left the road in May,
And took my way along a ground,
I found a glade with girls at play,
By leafy boughs close-hemmed around,
And there, with stores of harmless joys,
They plied their tongues, in merry noise:
Though little did they seem to fear
So ***** a stranger might be near;
Teeh-hee! Look here! Hah! ha! Look there!
And oh! so playsome, oh!...Read more of this...

The Gardener XLIV: Reverend Sir Forgive

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Reverend sir, forgive this pair of
sinners. Spring winds to-day are 
blowing in wild eddies, driving dust
and dead leaves away, and with them 
your lessons are all lost.
Do not say, father, that life is a 
vanity.
For we have made truce with death
for once, and only for a few fragrant
hours we two have been made immortal.
Even if the king's army came...Read more of this...

The Harvest Bow

by Seamus Heaney
 As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I...Read more of this...

A Dialogue

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I
DEATH, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wit?

No dome with suns and dews impearled and gilt,
Imperial: but some roof of wildwood tree,
Too mean for sceptre's heft or swordblade's hilt.

Some low sweet roof where love might live, set free
From...Read more of this...

Ape

by Russell Edson
 You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father, 
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

 I've had enough monkey, cried father.

 You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the 
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

 I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough, 
said father.

 I...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIX: On Cupids Bow

by Sir Philip Sidney
 On Cupid's bow how are my heartstrings bent, 
That see my wrack, and yet embrace the same? 
When most I glory, then I feel most shame: 
I willing run, yet while I run, repent. 

My best wits still their own disgrace invent: 
My very ink turns straight to Stella's name; 
And yet my words, as them my pen doth...Read more of this...

Yee Bow

by Edgar Lee Masters
 They got me into the Sunday-school
In Spoon River
And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.
I could have been no worse off
If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
The minister's son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
With a blow...Read more of this...

The Vagabond

by Henry Lawson
 White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier 
As we glide to the grand old sea -- 
But the song of my heart is for none to hear 
If one of them waves for me. 
A roving, roaming life is mine, 
Ever by field or flood -- 
For not far back in my father's line 
Was a dash of...Read more of this...

Across the Sea Along the Shore

by Arthur Hugh Clough
 Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers more and ever more,
From lonely hut and busy town,
The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk Galilee?
The reed that in the wind doth shake?
The weed that washes in the lake?
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.
What was it...Read more of this...

Our biggest fish

by Eugene Field
 When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke,
I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like;
And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught
When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught!
And, oh, the indignation and the valor I'd display
When I claimed that all the biggest fish...Read more of this...

Baby Picture

by Anne Sexton
 It's in the heart of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
It's in the clerical collar of the dress
where that smile lies.
What smile?
The smile of my seventh year,
caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the assorted features.
It's like a...Read more of this...

To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Ladys Brother and Sister

by Phillis Wheatley
 On Death's domain intent I fix my eyes,
Where human nature in vast ruin lies,
With pensive mind I search the drear abode,
Where the great conqu'ror has his spoils bestow'd;
There there the offspring of six thousand years
In endless numbers to my view appears:
Whole kingdoms in his gloomy den are thrust,
And nations mix with their primeval dust:
Insatiate still he gluts the ample...Read more of this...

No Second Troy

by William Butler Yeats
 Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great.
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is...Read more of this...

Taking Leave of a Friend

by Ezra Pound
 Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.

Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each others
as we are departing....Read more of this...

The bow-leg boy

by Eugene Field
 Who should come up the road one day
But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay!
And he whoaed his horse and he cried "Ahoy!
I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy!
Such a cute little boy!
Such a funny little boy!
Such a dear little bow-leg boy!"

He took out his box and he opened it wide,
And there was the bow-leg boy inside!
And when they...Read more of this...

Bow down, heaven's tyranny to undergo,

by Omar Khayyam
Bow down, heaven's tyranny to undergo,
Quaff wine to face the world, and all its woe;
Your origin and end are both in earth,
But now you are above earth, not below!...Read more of this...

Hymn To Joy

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Joy, thou goddess, fair, immortal,
Offspring of Elysium,
Mad with rapture, to the portal
Of thy holy fame we come!
Fashion's laws, indeed, may sever,
But thy magic joins again;
All mankind are brethren ever
'Neath thy mild and gentle reign.

CHORUS.
Welcome, all ye myriad creatures!
Brethren, take the kiss of love!
Yes, the starry realms above
Hide a Father's smiling features!

He, that noble prize possessing--
He that boasts a friend...Read more of this...

Would'st thou have fortune bow her neck to thee,

by Omar Khayyam
Would'st thou have fortune bow her neck to thee,
Make it thy care to feed thy soul with glee;
And hold a creed like mine, which is to drain
The cup of wine, not that of misery....Read more of this...

A Hundred Collars

by Robert Frost
 Lancaster bore him--such a little town, 
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often 
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead 
And sends the children down there with their mother 
To run wild in the summer--a little wild. 
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two 
And sees old friends he somehow can't get near....Read more of this...

Sonnet CVI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CVI. L' avara Babilonia ha colmo 'l sacco. HE PREDICTS TO ROME THE ARRIVAL OF SOME GREAT PERSONAGE WHO WILL BRING HER BACK TO HER OLD VIRTUE.  Covetous Babylon of wrath divineBy its worst crimes has drain'd the full cup now,And for its future Gods to whom to bowNot Pow'r nor...Read more of this...

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