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Famous Busy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilde, Oscar
...ngled web of crimson cloud,
Clomb the high hill, and with swift silent feet
Crept to the fane unnoticed by the crowd
Of busy priests, and from some dark retreat
Watched the young swains his frolic playmates bring
The firstling of their little flock, and the shy shepherd fling

The crackling salt upon the flame, or hang
His studded crook against the temple wall
To Her who keeps away the ravenous fang
Of the base wolf from homestead and from stall;
And then the clear-voiced mai...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...e comes a welcome summons - hope revives,
And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken. 

Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion -
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean. 

And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of sh...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...despite of godlike curb,
To this result: "O dreams of day and night!
O monstrous forms! O effigies of pain!
O spectres busy in a cold, cold gloom!
O lank-eared phantoms of black-weeded pools!
Why do I know ye? why have I seen ye? why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new?
Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?
Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
These crysta...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord — 
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored: 
There be bright faces in the busy hall, 
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; 
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays 
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze; 
And gay retainers gather round the hearth, 
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 

II. 

The chief of Lara is return'd again: 
And why had Lara cross'd the bounding main? 
Left by his sire, t...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...se the keels begun. 
The timber rots, and useless axe doth rust, 
Th' unpracticed saw lies buried in its dust, 
The busy hammer sleeps, the ropes untwine, 
The stores and wages all are mine and thine. 
Along the coast and harbours they make care 
That money lack, nor forts be in repair. 
Long thus they could against the House conspire, 
Load them with envy, and with sitting tire. 
And the loved King, and never yet denied, 
Is brought to beg in public and to ch...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...ks, the spars, the hackmatack-roots for knees, 
The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the workmen busy outside and
 inside,
The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze, bolt, line, square,
 gouge,
 and
 bead-plane. 

10
The shapes arise! 
The shape measur’d, saw’d, jack’d, join’d, stain’d, 
The coffin-shape for the dead to lie within in his shroud; 
The shape got out in posts, in the bedstead posts, in the posts of the bride’s ...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...ach scene;
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made;
How often have I blessed the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree:
While many a pastime circl...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...amp-lighter Dick had passed the turning. 
And all the Homend lamps were burning, 
The windows shone, the shops were busy, 
But that strange Heaven made me dizzy. 
The sky had all God's warning writ 
In bloody marks all over it, 
And over all I thought there was 
A ghastly light besides the gas. 
The Devil's tasks and Devil's rages 
Were giving me the Devil's wages.

In Market-place it's always light, 
The big shop windows make it bright; 
And in the press of p...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...beds, complain  Of many things which never troubled me;  Of feet still bustling round with busy glee,  Of looks where common kindness had no part.  Of service done with careless cruelty,  Fretting the fever round the languid heart,  And groans, which, as they said, would make a dead man start.   These things just served to stir the torpid sense,  Nor pain no...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...d, as do I, all mortal things at strife. 

47
Since then 'tis only pity looking back,
Fear looking forward, and the busy mind
Will in one woeful moment more upwind
Than lifelong years unroll of bitter or black;
What is man's privilege, his hoarding knack
Of memory with foreboding so combined,
Whereby he comes to dream he hath of kind
The perpetuity which all things lack? 

Which but to hope is doubtful joy, to have
Being a continuance of what, alas,
We mourn, and scarcely...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...rest joy,
 The heart-love of a child!

Away, fond thoughts, and vex my soul no more!
 Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
 Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!


PREFACE


If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.18) 

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.<...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...turn to Arcita again,
That little wist how nighe was his care,
Till that Fortune had brought him in the snare.
The busy lark, the messenger of day,
Saluteth in her song the morning gray;
And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright,
That all the orient laugheth at the sight,
And with his streames* drieth in the greves** *rays **groves
The silver droppes, hanging on the leaves;
And Arcite, that is in the court royal
With Theseus, his squier principal,
Is ris'n, and looketh on th...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ll
     For wild lament o'er those that fell.
      XVIII.

     The war-pipes ceased, but lake and hill
     Were busy with their echoes still;
     And, when they slept, a vocal strain
     Bade their hoarse chorus wake again,
     While loud a hundred clansmen raise
     Their voices in their Chieftain's praise.
     Each boatman, bending to his oar,
     With measured sweep the burden bore,
     In such wild cadence as the breeze
     Makes through December's...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...Soudan hath caught so great pleasance* *pleasure
To have her figure in his remembrance,
That all his lust*, and all his busy cure**, *pleasure **care
Was for to love her while his life may dure.

Paraventure in thilke* large book, *that
Which that men call the heaven, y-written was
With starres, when that he his birthe took,
That he for love should have his death, alas!
For in the starres, clearer than is glass,
Is written, God wot, whoso could it read,
The death of every...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. 
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high. if he soars with his own wings. 

A dead body. revenges not injuries.

The most ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...led
Those Dreams of Greatness? those unsolid Hopes
Of Happiness? those Longings after Fame?
Those restless Cares? those busy, bustling Days?
Those Nights of secret Guilt? those veering Thoughts,
Flutt'ring 'twixt Good, and Ill, that shar'd thy Life?
All, now, are vanish'd! Vertue, sole, survives,
Immortal, Mankind's never-failing Friend,
His Guide to Happiness on high -- and see!
'Tis come, the Glorious Morn! the second Birth
Of Heaven, and Earth! -- awakening Nature hears
Th...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...orted, seemed to be
"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
"As the sun shapes the clouds--thus, on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the day
"Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
"And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
Those soonest from...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ives me,--with carpet far away reaching,
Over its friendly green wanders the pathway along.
Round me is humming the busy bee, and with pinion uncertain
Hovers the butterfly gay over the trefoil's red flower.
Fiercely the darts of the sun fall on me,--the zephyr is silent,
Only the song of the lark echoes athwart the clear air.
Now from the neighboring copse comes a roar, and the tops of the alders
Bend low down,--in the wind dances the silvery grass;
Night ambrosi...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...
They loved me so well, by God above,
That I *tolde no dainty* of their love. *cared nothing for*
A wise woman will busy her ever-in-one* *constantly
To get their love, where that she hath none.
But, since I had them wholly in my hand,
And that they had me given all their land,
Why should I take keep* them for to please, *care
But* it were for my profit, or mine ease? *unless
I set them so a-worke, by my fay,
That many a night they sange, well-away!
The bacon was not ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...nd, ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which with busy murmur vain
They has aroused from that full heart and brain.

And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The cal...Read more of this...

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