Famous Branching Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Suggested by the Cover of a Volume of Keatss Poems

by Amy Lowell
 Wild little bird, who chose thee for a sign
To put upon the cover of this book?
Who heard thee singing in the distance dim,
The vague, far greenness of the enshrouding wood,
When the damp freshness of the morning earth
Was full of pungent sweetness and thy song?
Who followed over moss and twisted roots,
And pushed through the wet leaves of trailing vines
Where slanting...Read more of this...

The Road to Gundagai

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The mountain road goes up and down 
From Gundagai to Tumut Town 
And, branching off, there runs a track 
Across the foothills grim and black, 

Across the plains and ranges grey 
To Sydney city far away. 

It came by chance one day that I 
From Tumut rode to Gundagai, 

And reached about the evening tide 
The crossing where the...Read more of this...

A Runnable Stag

by John Davidson
 When the pods went pop on the broom, green broom, 
And apples began to be golden-skinn'd, 
We harbour'd a stag in the Priory coomb, 
And we feather'd his trail up-wind, up-wind, 
We feather'd his trail up-wind- 
A stag of warrant, a stag, a stag, 
A runnable stag, a kingly crop, 
Brow, bay and tray and three on top, 
A...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIX: Prepare Your Wreaths

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Prepare your wreaths, Aonian maids divine,
To strew the tranquil bed where I shall sleep;
In tears, the myrtle and the laurel steep,
And let Erato's hand the trophies twine.
No parian marble, there, with labour'd line,
Shall bid the wand'ring lover stay to weep;
There holy silence shall her vigils keep.
Save, when the nightingale such woes as mine
Shall sadly sing; as twilight's curtains spread,
There...Read more of this...

No Swan So Fine

by Marianne Moore
 "No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chinz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was. 

Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea-urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers--at ease and tall. The king...Read more of this...

The Snow

by Emile Verhaeren
Uninterruptedly falls the snow,
Like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow,
O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate.
Cold with lovelessness, warm with hate.


Infinite, infinite falls the snow.
Like a moment's time.
Monotonously, in a moment's time;
On the houses it falls and drops, the snow.
Monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime;
It falls on the sheds and their palings below.
And myriad-wise, it falls and lies
In ridgèd waves
In the...Read more of this...

The West Wind

by William Cullen Bryant
 Beneath the forest's skirts I rest,
Whose branching pines rise dark and high,
And hear the breezes of the West
Among the threaded foliage sigh.

Sweet Zephyr! why that sound of wo?
Is not thy home among the flowers?
Do not the bright June roses blow,
To meet thy kiss at morning hours?

And lo! thy glorious realm outspread--
Yon stretching valleys, green and gay,
And yon free hilltops,...Read more of this...

Endimion and Phoebe (excerpts)

by Michael Drayton
 In Ionia whence sprang old poets' fame,
From whom that sea did first derive her name,
The blessed bed whereon the Muses lay,
Beauty of Greece, the pride of Asia,
Whence Archelaus, whom times historify,
First unto Athens brought philosophy:
In this fair region on a goodly plain,
Stretching her bounds unto the bord'ring main,
The mountain Latmus overlooks the sea,
Smiling to see the ocean billows play:
Latmus,...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter V

by William Blake
 1. In terrors Los shrunk from his task: 
His great hammer fell from his hand:
His fires beheld, and sickening,
Hid their strong limbs in smoke.
For with noises ruinous loud;
With hurtlings & clashings & groans 
The Immortal endur'd his chains,
Tho' bound in a deadly sleep.

2. All the myriads of Eternity:
All the wisdom & joy of life:
Roll like a sea around him,...Read more of this...

Chopin

by Emma Lazarus
 I

A dream of interlinking hands, of feet 
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof 
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet, 
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof. 
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow 
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms 
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow 
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms. 
Hark...Read more of this...

Journeys End

by J R R Tolkien
 In western lands beneath the Sun
The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night,
And swaying branches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for...Read more of this...

from Asphodel That Greeny Flower

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 like a buttercup
 upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you.
We lived long together
 a life filled,
 if you will,
with flowers. So that
 I was cheered
 when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
 in hell.
 Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of...Read more of this...

March

by Boris Pasternak
 The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath;
The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below.
Spring -- that corn-fed, husky milkmaid --
Is busy at her chores with never a letup.

The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia --
See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?)
Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming,
And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health.

These days...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

The Tale Of The Forest

by Mihai Eminescu
Mighty emperor is the forest, 
High dominion does he wield, 
And a thousand races prosper 
'Neath the shelter of his shield. 

The moon, the sun and Lucifer 
Do round his kingdom ever sphere;  
While lords and ladies of his court 
Are of the noble race of deer. 

Hares, his heralds and his postmen, 
Carry rapidly his mails; 
Birds his...Read more of this...

Two In The Campagna

by Robert Browning
 I wonder how you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

Help me to...Read more of this...

Leudemans-on-the-River

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Toward even when the day leans down, 
To kiss the upturned face of night, 
Out just beyond the loud-voiced town 
I know a spot of calm delight. 
Like crimson arrows from a quiver 
The red rays pierce the water flowing, 
While we go dreaming, singing, rowing, 
To Leudeman's-on-the-River.

The hills, like some glad mocking-bird, 
Send back our laughter and our...Read more of this...

Arcades

by John Milton
 Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of
Darby at Harefield, by som Noble persons of her Family, who
appear on the Scene in pastoral habit, moving toward the seat
of State with this Song.

I. SONG.

Look Nymphs, and Shepherds look,
What sudden blaze of majesty
Is that which we from hence descry
Too divine to be mistook:
This this is she
To whom our vows...Read more of this...

In the High Leaves of a Walnut

by Laurence Binyon
 In the high leaves of a walnut, 
On the very topmost boughs, 
A boy that climbed the branching bole 
His cradled limbs would house.

On the airy bed that rocked him 
Long, idle hours he'd lie 
Alone with white clouds sailing 
The warm blue of the sky.

I remember not what his dreams were; 
But the scent of a leaf's enough...Read more of this...

The Pangolin

by Marianne Moore
 Another armored animal--scale
 lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
 tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped
 gizzard,
the night miniature artist engineer is,
 yes, Leonardo da Vinci's replica--
 impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
 Armor seems extra. But for him,
 the closing ear-ridge--
 or bare ear lacking even this small
...Read more of this...

Praise In Summer

by Richard Wilbur
 Obscurely yet most surely called to praise,
As sometimes summer calls us all, I said
The hills are heavens full of branching ways
Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead;
I said the trees are mines in air, I said
See how the sparrow burrows in the sky!
And then I wondered why this mad instead
Perverts our praise to uncreation, why
Such savour's in this wrenching...Read more of this...

The Sword of Suprise

by G K Chesterton
 Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God 
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees; 
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods 
May marvel as much at these. 

Sunder me from my blood that in the dark 
I hear that red ancestral river run 
Like branching buried floods that find the sea...Read more of this...

The Mermaid

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 I

Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?

II

I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb'd I would sing and say,
'Who is it loves me? who loves not me?'
I...Read more of this...

South of my Days

by Judith Wright
 South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country, 
rises that tableland, high delicate outline 
of bony slopes wincing under the winter, 
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite- 
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced, 
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple 
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen; 
and the old...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Branching poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace