Famous Carry Over Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Spring

by Thomas Carew
 Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost 
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost 
Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream 
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream; 
But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth, 
And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth 
To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree 
The drowsy...Read more of this...

The Lobster

by Howard Nemerov
 Here at the Super Duper, in a glass tank
Supplied by a rill of cold fresh water
Running down a glass washboard at one end
And siphoned off at the other, and so
Perpetually renewed, a herd of lobster
Is made available to the customer
Who may choose whichever one he wants
To carry home and drop into boiling water
And serve with a sauce of melted...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd

by Walt Whitman
 1
OUT of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, 
Whispering, I love you, before long I die, 
I have travel’d a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you, 
For I could not die till I once look’d on you, 
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

2
(Now we have met, we have...Read more of this...

The Discontent

by Anne Killigrew
 I.
HEre take no Care, take here no Care, my Muse,
 Nor ought of Art or Labour use:
 But let thy Lines rude and unpolisht go,
Nor Equal be their Feet, nor Num'rous let them flow.
 The ruggeder my Measures run when read,
They'l livelier paint th'unequal Paths fond Mortals tread.
 Who when th'are tempted by the smooth Ascents,
 Which flatt'ring Hope...Read more of this...

Tomlinson

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way...Read more of this...

A Kiss

by Thomas Lux
 One wave falling forward meets another wave falling
forward. Well-water,
hand-hauled, mineral, cool, could be
a kiss, or pastures
fiery green after rain, before
the grazers. The kiss -- like a shoal of fish whipped
one way, another way, like the fever dreams
of a million monkeys -- the kiss
carry me -- closer than your carotid artery -- to you...Read more of this...

The Pencil Seller

by Robert William Service
 A pencil, sir; a penny -- won't you buy?
I'm cold and wet and tired, a sorry plight;
Don't turn your back, sir; take one just to try;
I haven't made a single sale to-night.
Oh, thank you, sir; but take the pencil too;
I'm not a beggar, I'm a business man.
Pencils I deal in, red and black and blue;
It's hard, but still I...Read more of this...

Finnish Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IF the loved one, the well-known one,
Should return as he departed,
On his lips would ring my kisses,
Though the wolf's blood might have dyed them;
And a hearty grasp I'd give him,
Though his finger-ends were serpents.

Wind! Oh, if thou hadst but reason,
Word for word in turns thou'dst carry,
E'en though some perchance might perish
'Tween two lovers so far distant.

All choice morsels I'd...Read more of this...

Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack

by Rudyard Kipling
 (From The Jungle Book) 
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
 Once, twice, and again!
And a doe leaped up -- and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,
 Once, twice, and again!

As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled
 Once, twice, and again!
And a wolf stole back...Read more of this...

The Ballad of East and West

by Rudyard Kipling
 Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the...Read more of this...

To the Hills!

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The tremulous morning is breaking
     Against the white waste of the sky,
   And hundreds of birds are awaking
     In tamarisk bushes hard by.
   I, waiting alone in the station,
     Can hear in the distance, grey-blue,
   The sound of that...Read more of this...

My Mothers Body

by Marge Piercy
 1. 

The dark socket of the year 
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down 
and threatens never to rise, 
when despair descends softly as the snow 
covering all paths and choking roads: 

then hawkfaced pain seized you 
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the...Read more of this...

As for me, without limpid wine I cannot live; my body

by Omar Khayyam
As for me, without limpid wine I cannot live; my body
is a burden which I cannot carry without drinking of the
juice of the vine. Oh! might I be the slave of that
delicious moment when the cupbearer said to me: Another
cup! and that I had no longer strength to take it!
394...Read more of this...

The Alcázar

by Robert William Service
 The General now lives in town;
He's eighty odd, they say;
You'll see him strolling up and down
The Prada any day.
He goes to every football game,
The bull-ring knows his voice,
And when the people cheer his name
Moscardo must rejoice.

Yet does he, in the gaiety
Of opera and ball,
A dingy little cellar see,
A picture on a wall?
A portrait of a laughing boy
Of sixteen singing...Read more of this...

Now take thy cup, carry away the gourd, O Charm of

by Omar Khayyam
Now take thy cup, carry away the gourd, O Charm of
my Heart! and go, explore the plains, the borders of
the brooks, for indeed idols, like to the moon in the light
of their beautiful countenances, have a hundred times
been transformed into cups, a hundred times have they
become gourds....Read more of this...

The face I carry with me -- last

by Emily Dickinson
 The face I carry with me -- last --
When I go out of Time --
To take my Rank -- by -- in the West --
That face -- will just be thine --

I'll hand it to the Angel --
That -- Sir -- was my Degree --
In Kingdoms -- you have heard the Raised --
Refer to -- possibly.

He'll take it --...Read more of this...

Those Dancing Days Are Gone

by William Butler Yeats
 Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are...Read more of this...

i carry your heart with me

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                 ...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...

Ego Dominus Tuus

by William Butler Yeats
 Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.

Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I...Read more of this...

Redbud Trail - Winter

by James Lee Jobe
 It??™s two muddy miles from Highway 20,
just past the north fork of Cache Creek,
across the broad meadow, through 
blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge,
and back down to the creek bank,
the crossing point, me striding with
mud caking my old hiking boots.



For a millennia the Miwok people walked 
these canyons and ridges. Pomo, too.
Gathering acorns to trade, the sweetest...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

A Tale of Starvation

by Amy Lowell
 There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,
And he cursed eternally.
He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,
And he blasted the winds in the sky.
He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,
And he raved at the birds as they fly.
His oaths were many,...Read more of this...

Carry On

by Robert William Service
 It's easy to fight when everything's right,
 And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
 And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
 When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
 Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't...Read more of this...

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