Famous Brooded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Star in a Stoneboat

...e one thing palpable besides the soul
To penetrate the air in which we roll.

He did not see how like a flying thing
It brooded ant eggs, and bad one large wing,
One not so large for flying in a ring,

And a long Bird of Paradise's tail
(Though these when not in use to fly and trail
It drew back in its body like a snail);

Nor know that be might move it from the spot—
The harm was done: from having been star-shot
The very nature of the soil was hot

And burning to yield flowe...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


An Evening in Dandaloo

...ans funny, 
Made us rather blue; 
When the racing was concluded, 
Of our hard-earned coin denuded 
Dandaloonies sat and brooded 
There in Dandaloo. 

* * * * * 

Night came down on Johnson's shanty 
Where the grog was no way scanty, 
And a tumult grew 
Till some wild, excited person 
Galloped down the township cursing, 
"Sydney push have mobbed Macpherson, 
Roll up, Dandaloo!" 

Great St Denis! what commotion! 
Like the rush of stormy ocean 
Fiery horsemen flew. 
Dust and smo...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Children of the Moon

...en and free!"
Dumbly they shrank,
Muttering they pointed toward that peak,
Than vastness vaster,
Whereon a darkness brooded,
"Who shall look and live," they sighed;
And I sensed
The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood;
We built a day, a year, a thousand years,
Blood was the mortar,—blood and tears,
And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings,
The wingéd, folding Wing of Things
Did furnish much mad mortar
For that tower...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.

Endymion: Book II

...poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewel!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."

 Hereat, she vanished from Endymion's gaze,
Who brooded o'er the water in amaze:
The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool
Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool,
Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still,
And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill
Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer,
Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr
Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down;
And, while beneath...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Frost at Midnight

...to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor


Ghoti

...
semantic antic in the distance, is it
whiskered fish, finned cat? Don't settle
just for two. Some bottomographies are

brooded over, and some skies swum through. . ....Read more of this...
by McHugh, Heather

Guinevere

...nced at him, thought him cold, 
High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him, 
`Not like my Lancelot'--while she brooded thus 
And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again, 
There rode an armd warrior to the doors. 
A murmuring whisper through the nunnery ran, 
Then on a sudden a cry, `The King.' She sat 
Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armd feet 
Through the long gallery from the outer doors 
Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell, 
And grovelled with her fac...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

He fell among Thieves

...ver down the slope,
He climb’d alone to the Eastward edge of the trees;
All night long in a dream untroubled of hope
He brooded, clasping his knees.

He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills
The ravine where the Yass?n river sullenly flows;
He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills,
Or the far Afghan snows.

He saw the April noon on his books aglow,
The wistaria trailing in at the window wide;
He heard his father’s voice from the terrace below
Calling him down to...Read more of this...
by Newbolt, Sir Henry

Howl

...nity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads a...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Isabella or The Pot of Basil

...weeps alone for pleasures not to be;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, O misery!
She brooded o'er the luxury alone:
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring, "Where? O where?"

XXXI.
But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long
Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Upon the time with feveri...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Loud Music

...h to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors....Read more of this...
by Dobyns, Stephen

Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon

...on reaches
Rises the hymn of triumph and courage and comfort,
Adeste Fideles.

Tones that were fashioned when the faith brooded in darkness,
Joined with sonorous vowels in the noble Latin,
Now are married with the long-drawn Ojibwa,
Uncouth and mournful.

Soft with the silver drip of the regular paddles
Falling in rhythm, timed with the liquid, plangent
Sounds from the blades where the whirlpools break and are carried 
Down into darkness;

Each long cadence, flying like a dov...Read more of this...
by Scott, Duncan Campbell

Renascence

...e of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight 
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;
He moved his eyes and loo...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Success

...Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, 
The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. 
These I ignore to-day and only long 
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, 
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, 
For all the victories of man's high endeavor, 
Palm-bearing, laurel deeds that live forever, 
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong. 
Hast thou beh...Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

...there were crimson moments when I felt I'd o to hell
To have a single cigarette again.
And so I lay day after day, and brooded dark and deep,
Until one night I thought I'd end it all;
Then rough I roused the preacher, where he stretched pretending sleep,
With his map of horror turned towards the wall.

"See here, my pious pal," says I, "I've stood it long enough...
Behold! I've mixed some strychnine in a cup;
Enough to kill a dozen men - believe me it's no bluff;
Now watch m...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Book of Annandale

...he become transformed 
And hardened through long watches and long grief 
Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing 
That brooded like a man, breathed like a man,— 
Did everything but ache? And was a day
To come some time when feeling should return 
Forever to drive off that other face— 
The lineless, indistinguishable face— 
That once had thrilled itself between his own 
And hers there on the pillow,—and again
Between him and the coffin-lid had flashed 
Like fate before it clo...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Eve Of St. Agnes

...th triumphs gay
 Of old romance. These let us wish away,
 And turn, sole-thoughted, to one Lady there,
 Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
 On love, and wing'd St. Agnes' saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

 They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,
 Young virgins might have visions of delight,
 And soft adorings from their loves receive
 Upon the honey'd middle of the night,
 If ceremonies due they did aright;
 As, supperless to bed th...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

The Glove

...ollow
Which led where the eye scarce dared follow,
And shelved to the chamber secluded
Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.
The King bailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,*1
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster.
They opened a hole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled,
The blackness and silence so utter,...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...the stars and hills
Bandied the grief o' the ghost 'twixt heaven and earth.
The spectre sank, and lay upon the air,
And brooded, level, close upon the earth,
With all the myriad heads just over me.
I glanced in all the eyes and marked that some
Did glitter with a flame of lunacy,
And some were soft and false as feigning love,
And some were blinking with hypocrisy,
And some were overfilmed by sense, and some
Blazed with ambition's wild, unsteady fire,
And some were burnt i' th...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Triumph Of Fame

...th beams of cloudless day;Yet fail'd to chase the darkness of the mind,That brooded still on loftier hopes behind.From him a nobler line in two degreesReduced Numidia to reluctant peace.Crete, Spain, and Macedonia's conquer'd lordAdorn'd their triumphs and their treasures stored.Vespasian, with his son, I next survey'd,Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

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