Famous Bursts Poems by Famous Poets

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

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St. Agnes Eve

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
DEEP on the convent-roof the snows 
Are sparkling to the moon: 
My breath to heaven like vapour goes: 
May my soul follow soon! 
The shadows of the convent-towers 5 
Slant down the snowy sward, 
Still creeping with the creeping hours 
That lead me to my Lord: 
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 
As are the frosty skies, 10 
Or...Read more of this...

Lost Mistress

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
        I.
 
All's over, then: does truth sound bitter
  As one at first believes?
Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
  About your cottage eaves!

        II.

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
  I noticed that, to-day;
One day more bursts them open fully
  ---You...Read more of this...

The Lost Mistress

by Robert Browning
 All's over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that today;
One day more bursts them open fully
—You know the red turns grey.

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we,—well, friends the merest
Keep much...Read more of this...

avalanche

by Rg Gregory
 all is still on this starless night
the mountain waits
quiescent as a cat
smoothing crag and chasm
to a white fur

then against the black sky
puffs of snow
flutter from a jutting cliff
into obscurity

a drumroll utters
from the mountain's throat
and stops
reprehended by a silence so intense
that even night
seems shallow in its presence

high up a front of snow
crumples and cascades down
plashing from rock to rock
spawning further...Read more of this...

To the Muse of Poetry

by Mary Darby Robinson
 EXULT MY MUSE! exult to see 
Each envious, waspish, jealous thing, 
Around its harmless venom fling, 
And dart its powerless fangs at THEE! 
Ne'er shalt THOU bend thy radiant wing, 
To sweep the dark revengeful string; 
Or meanly stoop, to steal a ray, 
E'en from RINALDO'S glorious lay, 
Tho' his transcendent Verse should twine 
About thy heart, each bliss...Read more of this...

A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness

by Richard Wilbur
 The tall camels of the spirit
Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud
With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the 
arid
Sun. They are slow, proud, 

And move with a stilted stride
To the land of sheer horizon, hunting Traherne's
Sensible emptiness, there where the brain's lantern-slide
Revels in vast returns.

O connoisseurs of thirst, 
Beasts of my...Read more of this...

The Hero

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Mother, let us imagine we are travelling, and passing through a
strange and dangerous country.
You are riding in a palanquin and I am trotting by you on a
red horse.
It is evening and the sun goes down. The waste of Joradighi
lies wan and grey before us. The land is desolate and barren.
You are frightened and thinking-"I know not where we have...Read more of this...

Into the Dusk-Charged Air

by John Ashbery
 Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near where it joined the Cher.
The St. Lawrence prods among black stones
And mud. But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson's
Surface. The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber
Is contained...Read more of this...

Philomela

by Matthew Arnold
 Hark! ah, the nightingale— 
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!

O wanderer from a Grecian shore,
Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
That wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain— 
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To...Read more of this...

From ‘Paracelsus'

by Robert Browning
 I

TRUTH is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate’er you may believe. 
There is an inmost centre in us all, 
Where truth abides in fullness; and around, 
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, 
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth. 
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to...Read more of this...

Botany Bay Eclogues 05 - Frederic

by Robert Southey
 (Time Night. Scene the woods.)


Where shall I turn me? whither shall I bend
My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint
How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood
Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry
That rings along the forest seems to sound
My parting knell: it is the midnight howl
Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey!
Again! oh save me--save me gracious...Read more of this...

The Eruption Of Vesuvius

by Victor Hugo
 ("Quand longtemps a grondé la bouche du Vésuve.") 
 
 {I. vii.} 


 When huge Vesuvius in its torment long, 
 Threatening has growled its cavernous jaws among, 
 When its hot lava, like the bubbling wine, 
 Foaming doth all its monstrous edge incarnadine, 
 Then is alarm in Naples. 
 
 With dismay, 
 Wanton and wild...Read more of this...

Sudden Fine Weather

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Reader! what soul that laoves a verse can see 
The spring return, nor glow like you and me? 
Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill, 
Nor long to utter his melodious will? 

This more than ever leaps into the veins, 
When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains, 
And coming with a burst, comes like a...Read more of this...

Calmly We Walk Through This Aprils Day

by Delmore Schwartz
 Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the...Read more of this...

The Negro Boy

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Paupertas onus visa est grave.


Cold blows the wind, and while the tear
Bursts trembling from my swollen eyes,
The rain's big drop, quick meets it there,
And on my naked bosom flies!
O pity, all ye sons of Joy,
The little wand'ring *****-boy.

These tatter'd clothes, this ice-cold breast
By Winter harden'd into steel,
These eyes, that know not soothing rest,
But speak the half of what I...Read more of this...

A Blue Valentine

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Aline)

Monsignore,
Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Ferni,
Now of the delightful Court of Heaven,
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.
It is not, Monsignore,
The fragrant memory of your holy life,
Nor that of your shining and joyous martyrdom,
Which causes me now to address you.
But since this is your august festival, Monsignore,
It seems appropriate to me...Read more of this...

Infantile Influence

by Victor Hugo
 ("Lorsque l'enfant parait.") 
 
 {XIX., May 11, 1830.} 


 The child comes toddling in, and young and old 
 With smiling eyes its smiling eyes behold, 
 And artless, babyish joy; 
 A playful welcome greets it through the room, 
 The saddest brow unfolds its wrinkled gloom, 
 To greet the happy boy. 
 
 If June...Read more of this...

This Compost

by Walt Whitman
 1
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; 
I withdraw from the still woods I loved; 
I will not go now on the pastures to walk; 
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; 
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.

O how...Read more of this...

Au Bal

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers]

A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies
Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims
And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns
Of sorceries,...Read more of this...

What The Thunder Said

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With...Read more of this...

Parabola

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Year after year the princess lies asleep 
Until the hundred years foretold are done, 
Easily drawing her enchanted breath. 
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep, 
Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one 
Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.

But when the Destined Lover at last shall come, 
For whom alone Fortune reserves the...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I
The everlasting universe of things 
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods...Read more of this...

Apollo Musagetes

by Matthew Arnold
 Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame. 

Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea, 

Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice! 

On the sward at the cliff-top
Lie strewn the white flocks,
On the cliff-side the...Read more of this...

The Wild Common

by D. H. Lawrence
 The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, 
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; 
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping: 
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie 
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick. 
Are they asleep? -- Are they alive? --...Read more of this...

Lines inscribed to P. de Loutherbourg Esq. R. A

by Mary Darby Robinson
 WHERE on the bosom of the foamy RHINE,
In curling waves the rapid waters shine;
Where tow'ring cliffs in awful grandeur rise,
And midst the blue expanse embrace the skies;
The wond'ring eye beholds yon craggy height,
Ting'd with the glow of Evening's fading light:
Where the fierce cataract swelling o'er its bound,
Bursts from its source, and dares the depth profound.
On ev'ry side the headlong...Read more of this...

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