Famous Breathing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Breathing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous breathing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous breathing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...d ease
And temp'rate mirth in social intercourse
Convey rich pleasure to the mind; and oft
The sacred muse in heaven-breathing song
Doth wrap the soul in extasy divine,
Inspiring joy and sentiment which not
The tale of war or song of Druids gave.
The song of Druids or the tale of war
With martial vigour every breast inspir'd,
With valour fierce and love of deathless fame;
But here a rich and splendid throng conven'd
From many a distant city and fair town,
Or r...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ow me—
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality—
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone—
1027
My Heart upon a little Plate
Her Palate to delight
A Berry or a Bun, would be,
Might it an Apricot!
1129
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth mus...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...re,
But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here,
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewel!
And air of visions, and the monstrous swell
Of visionary seas! No, never more
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore
Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.
Adieu, my daintiest Dream! although so vast
My love is still for thee. The hour may come
When we shall meet in pure el...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ly look of its master.
Round about him were numberless herds of kine, that were grazing
Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the vapory freshness
That uprose from the river, and spread itself over the landscape.
Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, and expanding
Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, that resounded
Wildly and sweet and far, through the still damp air of the evening.
Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle
Ros...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
wh...Read more of this...
by
Brown, Fleda
... Her eyes are unfocused, everything's root beer.
I write root beer, root beer, to make her happy.
from Breathing In, Breathing Out, Anhinga Press, 2002
© 2000, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Southern Review, 36 [2000])
...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...>
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall'n which could befall,
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurled;
A thing of dark imaginings, that shaped
By choice the perils he by chance escaped;
But 'scaped in vain, for in their memory yet
His mind would half exult and half regret:
With more capacity for love than earth
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth,
His early dreams of good outstripp'd the tru...Read more of this...
by
Lewis, C S
...begin,
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us
-An angel has no skin.
They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it?
An angel has no nose.
The nourishing of...Read more of this...
by
Soto, Gary
...d her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I d...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...t, rock me in billowy drowse;
Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you.
Sea of stretch’d ground-swells!
Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths!
Sea of the brine of life! sea of unshovell’d yet always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea!
I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases.
Partaker of influx and efflux I—extoller of hate and conciliation;
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in eac...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...rnace, and the user of iron after him,
The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,
The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge with his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle, and sets it firmly in the socket;
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,
The Roman lictors preceding the cons...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...und her shone
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone;
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the Music breathing from her face, [6]
The heart whose softness harmonised the whole —
And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!
Her graceful arms in meekness bending
Across her gently-budding breast;
At one kind word those arms extending
To clasp the neck of him who blest
His child caressing and carest,
Zuleika came — Giaffir felt
His purpose half within him ...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...s if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when amid no earthly moans
Down down that town shall settle hence
Hell rising from a thousand thrones
Shall do it reverence....Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...stempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences. Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sheets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing, Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized&...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...nature, when my heart was small,
Nor dream'd what fearful searchings underlay
The flowers and leafy ecstasy of May,
The breathing summer sloth, the scented fall:
Could I forget, then were the fight not hard,
Press'd in the mêlée of accursed things,
Having such help in love and such reward:
But that 'tis I who once--'tis this that stings--
Once dwelt within the gate that angels guard,
Where yet I'd be had I but heavenly wings.
42
When I see childhood on the threshold se...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ay whatever comes.
And let the ladies sing us, if they will,
From time to time, some ballad or a song
To give us breathing-space.'
So I began,
And the rest followed: and the women sang
Between the rougher voices of the men,
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind:
And here I give the story and the songs....Read more of this...
by
Strand, Mark
...ill not survive.
We are the living proof of that.
It is dark outside, in the room it is darker.
I hear your breathing.
You are asking me if I am tired,
if I want to keep reading.
Yes, I am tired.
Yes, I want to keep reading.
I say yes to everything.
You cannot hear me.
"They sat beside each other on the couch.
They were the copies, the tired phantoms
of something they had been before.
The attitudes they took were jaded.
They sta...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...dumb shrieks that fill the air;
See mouths that gape, and eyes that stare
And redden in the dusky glare?
"The meadows breathing amber light,
The darkness toppling from the height,
The feathery train of granite Night?
"Shall he, grown gray among his peers,
Through the thick curtain of his tears
Catch glimpses of his earlier years,
"And hear the sounds he knew of yore,
Old shufflings on the sanded floor,
Old knuckles tapping at the door?
"Yet still before him as he flie...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...t round the circumfluous ocean.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
Couched on the fountain--like a panther tame
(One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit,
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame,
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought--
In joyous expectation lay the boat.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...red arm lay.
And the thrown-over predatory profile
Became horribly heavy and stark,
And one could not hear the breathing
Through the bitten-up lips turned dark.
But suddenly the last bit of strength
Came alive in the eyes of blue:
"It is good that you released me,
Not always kind were you."
And then the face became younger,
And I recognized him once more.
And then I said, "Holy Father,
Accept a slave of yours."
x x x
I came ov...Read more of this...
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