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Famous Braid Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...rse the time and place
When ye begat the base degen’rate race!
Nae langer rev’rend men, their country’s glory,
In plain braid Scots hold forth a plain braid story;
Nae langer thrifty citizens, an’ douce,
Meet owre a pint, or in the Council-house;
But staumrel, corky-headed, graceless Gentry,
The herryment and ruin of the country;
Men, three-parts made by tailors and by barbers,
Wha waste your weel-hain’d gear on d—’d new brigs and harbours!”


NEW BRIG “Now haud you there! fo...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...s is good, and to forgive. 
Out of the mystic and the mournful garden 
 Where all day through thine hands in barren braid 
 Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, 
Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray, 
 Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, 
 Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, 
Shall death not bring us all as thee one day 
 Among the days departed? 

For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, 
 Take at my hands this g...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...es, of dominations.

"I know only sorrow is unequaled,
It cannot be encroached on from Hell or Earth
And if I am to braid my mystic wreath,
May I impose it on the universe.

"But the ancient jewels of lost Palmyra,
The unknown metals, pearls from the ocean
By Your hand mounted, they do not suffice,
They cannot dazzle as clearly as this crown

"For it will not be made except from halos
Drawn of pure light in a holy portal
Whose entire splendor, in the eyes of mortals
I...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...his chamber in the east.
Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Braid your locks with rosy twine,
Dropping odours, dropping wine.
Rigour now is gone to bed;
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We, that are of purer fire,
Imitate the starry quire,
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
Lead in swift round the months and years.
The sounds and s...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ry's son, who has loved thee
Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy!
Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's tresses."
Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, "I cannot!
Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere.
For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway,
Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness."
Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-con...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...mber in the East. 
Mean while welcom Joy, and Feast, 
Midnight shout, and revelry, 
Tipsie dance, and Jollity. 
Braid your Locks with rosie Twine 
Dropping odours, dropping Wine. 
Rigor now is gon to bed, 
And Advice with scrupulous head, 
Strict Age, and sowre Severity, 
With their grave Saws in slumber ly. 
We that are of purer fire 
Imitate the Starry Quire, 
Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears, 
Lead in swift round the Months and Years. 
The Sounds,...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...your laughter. 
How will it be, lady, when there is none left to remember you 
Even as long as this? 
Will the dust braid your hair?

VII

The day opens with the brown light of snowfall 
And past the window snowflakes fall and fall. 
I sit in my chair all day and work and work 
Measuring words against each other. 
I open the piano and play a tune 
But find it does not say what I feel, 
I grow tired of measuring words against each other, 
I grow tired of these four...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. 

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; 

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: 

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world and all the wo...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...to tickle as well as fly,
And a fun-house mirror that turns the tragic muse
To the beheaded head of a sullen doll, one braid,
A bedraggled snake, hanging limp as the absurd mouth
Hangs in its lugubious pout. Where are
The classic limbs of stubborn Antigone?
The red, royal robes of Phedre? The tear-dazzled
Sorrows of Malfi's gentle duchess?
 Gone
In the deep convulsion gripping your face, muscles
And sinews bunched, victorious, as the cosmic
Laugh does away with the unsti...Read more of this...

by Muldoon, Paul
...wonder where and why
We might have altogether disappeared,
Only to glimpse us here and there
As one fair strand in her braid,
The blue in an Indian girl's dead eye. 

I am stretched out under the lean-to
Of an old tobacco-shed
On a farm in North Carolina,
When someone or other, warm, naked,
Stirs within my own skeleton
And stands on tip-toe to look out
Over the horizon,
Through the zones, across the Ocean.
The cardinal sings from a redbud
For the love of one slender ...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ste,
Polychrome chests and cabinets inwrought
With pearl and ivory etched and interlaced;
Pendant brocades with massive braid were caught,
And chain-slung, oriental lamps so placed
To light the lounger on some low divan,
Sunken in swelling down and silks from Hindustan.

And there was spread, upon the ample floors,
Work of the Levantine's laborious loom,
Such as by Euxine or Ionian shores
Carpets the dim seraglio's scented gloom.
Each morn renewed, the garden's flower...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
b...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...his dark hair fall,
That pale brow wildly wreathing round,
As if the Gorgon there had bound
The sablest of the serpent-braid
That o'er her fearful forehead strayed:
For he declines the convent oath
And leaves those locks unhallowed growth,
But wears our garb in all beside;
And, not from piety but pride,
Gives wealth to walls that never heard 
Of his one holy vow nor word.
Lo! - mark ye, as the harmony
Peals louder praises to the sky,
That livid cheek, that stony air
Of m...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...me now--
The shroud-like robe hell's destined victim wears;
Still shall the fillet bind this burning brow--
That sable braid the Doomsman's hand prepares!

Weep ye, who never fell-for whom, unerring,
The soul's white lilies keep their virgin hue,
Ye who when thoughts so danger-sweet are stirring,
Take the stern strength that Nature gives the few!
Woe, for too human was this fond heart's feeling--
Feeling!--my sin's avenger doomed to be;
Woe--for the false man's arm around me...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ly form was hid,
     The guardian in her bosom chid,—
     'Thy Malcolm! vain and selfish maid!'
     'T was thus upbraiding conscience said,—
     'Not so had Malcolm idly hung
     On the smooth phrase of Southern tongue;
     Not so had Malcolm strained his eye
     Another step than thine to spy.'—
     'Wake, Allan-bane,' aloud she cried
     To the old minstrel by her side,—
     'Arouse thee from thy moody dream!
     I 'll give thy harp heroic theme,
    ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...neeling, piteously to him she said
"Peace, little son, I will do thee no harm:"
With that her kerchief off her head she braid,* *took, drew
And over his little eyen she it laid,
And in her arm she lulled it full fast,
And unto heav'n her eyen up she cast.

"Mother," quoth she, "and maiden bright, Mary,
Sooth is, that through a woman's eggement* *incitement, egging on
Mankind was lorn,* and damned aye to die; *lost
For which thy child was on a cross y-rent:* *torn, pierced...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...answer'd; Alein, *avise thee*: *have a care*
The miller is a perilous man," he said,
"And if that he out of his sleep abraid*, *awaked
He mighte do us both a villainy*." *mischief
Alein answer'd; "I count him not a fly.
And up he rose, and by the wench he crept.
This wenche lay upright, and fast she slept,
Till he so nigh was, ere she might espy,
That it had been too late for to cry:
And, shortly for to say, they were at one.
Now play, Alein, for I will speak...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...faces 
Standing rigidly in their places, 
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid 
In powder and breeches and bright gold braid; 
And high above them on the wall 
Hung other English faces-all 
Part of the pattern of English life—
General Sir Charles, and his pretty wife, 
Admirals, Lords-Lieutenant of Shires, 
Men who were served by these footmen's sires 
At their great parties-none of them knowing 
How soon or late they would all be going 
In plainer dress to a sterner strife-...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...And when he saw how still that there I lay,
He was aghast, and would have fled away,
Till at the last out of my swoon I braid,* *woke
"Oh, hast thou slain me, thou false thief?" I said
"And for my land thus hast thou murder'd me?
Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee."
And near he came, and kneeled fair adown,
And saide", "Deare sister Alisoun,
As help me God, I shall thee never smite:
That I have done it is thyself to wite,* *blame
Forgive it me, and that I thee beseek.Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...prophets may spit into the wind 
till anger sleets their eyes shut, 
where this house that dances the seasons 
and the braid of all living 
and the joy of a man making his new good thing 
is strange, irrelevant as a meteor, 
in Chicago, in flat America 
in this year of our burning....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things