Famous Cast Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Audley Court

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 ‘The Bull, the Fleece are cramm’d, and not a room
For love or money. Let us picnic there
At Audley Court.’

I spoke, while Audley feast

Humm’d like a hive all round the narrow quay,
To Francis, with a basket on his arm,
To Francis just alighted from the boat,
And breathing of the sea. ‘With all my heart,’
Said Francis. Then we shoulder’d thro’ the swarm,
And...Read more of this...

Go to! Cast dust on those deaf skies, who spurn

by Omar Khayyam
Go to! Cast dust on those deaf skies, who spurn
Thy orisons and bootless prayers, and learn
To quaff the cup, and hover round the fair;
Of all who go, did ever one return?...Read more of this...

Be not cast down by the troubles which we call vicissitudes

by Omar Khayyam
Be not cast down by the troubles which we call vicissitudes
here below. Let us occupy ourselves only in
drinking pure wine, limpid wine, the color of a rose.
Wine, friend, is the blood of the world. The world is
our murderer; how shall we resist drinking the blood of
the heart of him who spills ours?...Read more of this...

The Last Rhyme of True Thomas

by Rudyard Kipling
 The King has called for priest and cup,
 The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
 And all for the sake o' the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
 They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
 That guards the gates...Read more of this...

Psalm LXXIV: Will God For Ever Cast Us Off?

by Isaac Watts
 Will God for ever east us off?
His wrath for ever smoke
Against the people of' his love,
His little chosen flock?

Think of the tribes so dearly bought
With their Redeemer's blood;
Nor let thy Zion be forgot,
Where once thy glory stood.

Lift up thy feet and march in haste,
Aloud our ruin calls;
See what a wide and fearful waste
Is made within thy walls.

Where once thy...Read more of this...

Adam Cast Forth

by Jorge Luis Borges
 Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?
Amid the fleeting light, I have slowed myself and queried,
Almost for consolation, if the bygone period
Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,

Might not have been just a magical illusion
Of that God I dreamed. Already it's imprecise
In my memory, the clear Paradise,
But I know it exists, in flower and...Read more of this...

For Thee I vow to cast repute away,

by Omar Khayyam
For Thee I vow to cast repute away,
And, if I shrink, the penalty to pay;
Though life might satisfy Thy cruelty,
'Twere naught, I'll bear it till the judgment-day!...Read more of this...

Before A Crucifix

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
To which they bring their pains and prayers;
Lean...Read more of this...

Cast off dull care, O melancholy brother!

by Omar Khayyam
Cast off dull care, O melancholy brother!
Woo the sweet daughter of the grape, no other;
The daughter is forbidden, it is true,
But she is nicer than her lawful mother!...Read more of this...

A Curse For A Nation

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said 'Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.'

I faltered, taking up the word:
'Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.

'For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to...Read more of this...

Mariana In The South

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 With one black shadow at its feet,
The house thro' all the level shines,
Close-latticed to the brooding heat,
And silent in its dusty vines:
A faint-blue ridge upon the right,
An empty river-bed before,
And shallows on a distant shore,
In glaring sand and inlets bright.
But "Aye Mary," made she moan,
And "Aye Mary," night and morn,
And "Ah," she sang, "to be all alone,
To live forgotten,...Read more of this...

Ode to Despair

by Mary Darby Robinson
 TERRIFIC FIEND! thou Monster fell, 
Condemn'd in haunts profane to dwell, 
Why quit thy solitary Home, 
O'er wide Creation's paths to roam? 
Pale Tyrant of the timid Heart, 
Whose visionary spells can bind 
The strongest passions of the mind, 
Freezing Life's current with thy baneful Art. 

Nature recoils when thou art near, 
For round thy form all plagues are...Read more of this...

If I should cast off this tattered coat

by Stephen Crane
 If I should cast off this tattered coat,
And go free into the mighty sky;
If I should find nothing there
But a vast blue,
Echoless, ignorant --
What then?...Read more of this...

The Flask

by Charles Baudelaire
 THERE are some powerful odours that can pass 
Out of the stoppard flagon; even glass 
To them is porous. Oft when some old box 
Brought from the East is opened and the locks 
And hinges creak and cry; or in a press 
In some deserted house, where the sharp stress 
Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; 
An...Read more of this...

Nocturne Of Remembered Spring

by Conrad Aiken
 I. 

Moonlight silvers the tops of trees,
Moonlight whitens the lilac shadowed wall
And through the evening fall,
Clearly, as if through enchanted seas,
Footsteps passing, an infinite distance away,
In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue,
Moonlight leaves the fountain hoar and old,
And the boughs of elms grow green and cold,
Our footsteps echo on gleaming stones,
The leaves are stirred to...Read more of this...

Rapids at Night

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Here at the roots of the mountains,
Between the sombre legions of cedars and tamaracks,
The rapids charge the ravine:
A little light, cast by foam under starlight,
Wavers about the shimmering stems of the birches:
Here rise up the clangorous sounds of battle,
Immense and mournful.
Far above curves the great dome of darkness
Drawn with the limitless lines of the stars and the planets.
Deep at...Read more of this...

Reservations Confirmed

by Charles Webb
 The ticket settles on my desk: a paper tongue
pronouncing "Go away;" a flattened seed
from which a thousand-mile leap through the air can grow.

It's pure potential: a vacation-to-be
the way an apple is a pie-to-be,
a bullet is a death-to-be. Or is the future

pressed into it inalterably—woven between
the slick fibers like secret threads
from the U.S. Treasury? Is my flight number

already flashing as...Read more of this...

Zummer An Winter

by William Barnes
 When I led by zummer streams
The pride o' Lea, as naighbours thought her,
While the zun, wi' evenen beams,
Did cast our sheades athirt the water;
Winds a-blowen,
Streams a-flowen,
Skies a-glowen,
Tokens ov my jay zoo fleeten,
Heightened it, that happy meeten.

Then, when maid an' man took pleaces,
Gay in winter's Chris'mas dances,
Showen in their merry feaces
Kindly smiles an' glisnen glances;
Stars a-winken,
Day a-shrinken,
Sheades a-zinken,
Brought anew the...Read more of this...

Yield not to grief, though fortune prove unkind,

by Omar Khayyam
Yield not to grief, though fortune prove unkind,
Nor call sad thoughts of parted friends to mind;
Devote thy heart to sugary lips, and wine,
Cast not thy precious life unto the wind!...Read more of this...

A Lovers Call XXVII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little 
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you 
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? 


Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of 
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon 
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? 


Or amongst the books,...Read more of this...

The Summer Rain

by Henry David Thoreau
 My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large 
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, 
And will not mind to hit their proper targe. 
Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, 
Our Shakespeare's life were rich to live again, 
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor...Read more of this...

Psalm 74

by Isaac Watts
 The church pleading with God under sore persecutions.

Will God for ever cast us off?
His wrath for ever smoke
Against the people of his love,
His little chosen flock?

Think of the tribes so dearly bought
With their Redeemer's blood;
Nor let thy Zion be forgot,
Where once thy glory stood.

Lift up thy feet and march in haste,
Aloud our ruin calls;
See what a wide and fearful...Read more of this...

Poem To Be Placed In A Bottle And Cast Out To Sea

by Barry Tebb
 for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further...’





Dear _______ and here’s where the problem begins

For who shall I address this letter to?

Friends are few and very special, muses in the main

I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago.

Perhaps the best.



I searched for years and wrote en route

‘Bridge Over the Aire’ after that...Read more of this...

Everywhere I cast my eyes I believe I see the sod of

by Omar Khayyam
Everywhere I cast my eyes I believe I see the sod of
Paradise and the brook of Koocer. They say the field
outside of Hell is transformed into a celestial sojourn.
Rest then in that celestial place near some celestial fair.
384...Read more of this...

From The Testament of Beauty

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...

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