Famous Checks Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Checks poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous checks poems. These examples illustrate what a famous checks poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...r ADORATION seasons change,
And order, truth, and beauty range,
Adjust, attract, and fill:
The grass the polyanthus checks;
And polish'd porphyry reflects,
By the descending rill.
LIII
rich almonds color to the prime
For ADORATION; tendrils climb,
And fruit-trees pledge their gems;
And Ivis with her gorgeous vest,
Builds for her eggs her cunning nest,
And bell-flowers bow their stems.
LIV
With vinous syrup cedars spout;
From rocks pure honey gushing out,...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heavens' light.
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...World Wars of the 20th century)
--- This is the city self, looking from window to lighted
window
When the squares and checks of faintly yellow light
Shine at night, upon a huge dim board and slab-like tombs,
Hiding many lives. It is the city consciousness
Which sees and says: more: more and more: always more....Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish-hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brothe...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...corn'd to draw:
But when t'examine ev'ry Part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same:
Convinc'd, amaz'd, he checks the bold Design,
And Rules as strict his labour'd Work confine,
As if the Stagyrite o'er looked each Line.
Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem;
To copy Nature is to copy Them.
Some Beauties yet, no Precepts can declare,
For there's a Happiness as well as Care.
Musick resembles Poetry, in each
Are nameless Graces which no Methods teach,
And wh...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...he arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking,
In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous
towns,
encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the Soul, health,
immortality, government;
In war, he is the best backer of the war—he fetches artillery as good as the
engineer’s—he can make every word he speak...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...to make the most of your life's scheme
As I of mine, live up to its full law
Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.
Put natural religion to the test
You've just demolished the revealed with--quick,
Down to the root of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence--
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woma...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life. ...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
XL.
Intrepid warrior and skilled diplomate,
In his strong hands he holds the red man's fate.
The craftiest plot he checks with counterplot,
Till tribe by tribe the tricky foe is brought
To fear his vengeance and to know his power.
As man's fixed gaze will make a wild beast cower,
So these crude souls feel that unflinching will
Which draws them by its force, yet does not deign to kill.
XLI.
And one by one the hostile Indians send
Their chiefs to seek a peaceful treat...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...him blows;
A greenish gloom, dense overcast,
Each moment denser grows.
He nothing knowsnor clearly sees,
Resistance checks his breath,
The high, impetuous, ceaseless breeze
Blows on him. cold as death.
And still the undulating gloom
Mocks sight with formless motion;
Was such sensation Jonah's doom,
Gulphed in the depths of ocean ?
Streaking the air, the nameless vision,
Fast-driven, deep-sounding, flows;
Oh ! whence its source, and what its mission ?
How will its terro...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...Diocles also, -- awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.
[Line 483] But when the bright goddess had taught them all, they went to Olympus to the gathering of the other gods. And there they dwell b...Read more of this...
by
Homer,
...twould be to dwell!
How the breeze on yonder height
Must the heart with rapture swell!
Yet the stream that hems my path
Checks me with its angry frown,
While its waves, in rising wrath,
Weigh my weary spirit down.
See--a bark is drawing near,
But, alas, the pilot fails!
Enter boldly--wherefore fear?
Inspiration fills its sails,
Faith and courage make thine own,--
Gods ne'er lend a helping-hand;
'Tis by magic power alone
Thou canst reach the magic land!...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...th,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky,
Seres Spring's maturity, checks Summer's birth,
Leaves linnet's pipe as sad as plover's cry,
And makes me in abundance find but dearth.
But when thy feet flutter the dark, and thou
With orient eyes dawnest on my distress,
Suddenly sings a bird on every bough,
The heavens expand, the earth grows less and less,
The ground is buoyant as the ether now,
And all looks lovely in th...Read more of this...
by
Austin, Alfred
...f this mountain.
When the spirit moves, I wander alone
Amid beauty that is all for me....
I will walk till the water checks my path,
Then sit and watch the rising clouds --
And some day meet an old wood-cutter
And talk and laugh and never return....Read more of this...
by
Wei, Wang
...
With borrowed light her countenance triform
Hence fills and empties to enlighten the Earth,
And in her pale dominion checks the night.
That spot, to which I point, is Paradise,
Adam's abode; those lofty shades, his bower.
Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires.
Thus said, he turned; and Satan, bowing low,
As to superiour Spirits is wont in Heaven,
Where honour due and reverence none neglects,
Took leave, and toward the coast of earth beneath,
Down from the e...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...--anon her mate comes winging back
From hunting, and a great way off descries
His huddling young left sole; at that, he checks
His pinion, and with short uneasy sweeps
Circles above his eyry, with loud screams
Chiding his mate back to her nest; but she
Lies dying, with the arrow in her side,
In some far stony gorge out of his ken,
A heap of fluttering feathers--never more
Shall the lake glass her, flying over it;
Never the black and dripping precipices
Echo her stormy scream ...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...y the rising wind, unheeded foam
Near her cold rugged seat:--To call her thence
A fellow-sufferer comes: dejection deep
Checks, but conceals not quite, the martial air,
And that high consciousness of noble blood,
Which he has learn'd from infancy to think
Exalts him o'er the race of common men:
Nurs'd in the velvet lap of luxury,
And fed by adulation--could he learn,
That worth alone is true Nobility?
And that the peasant who, "amid 5 the sons
"Of Reason, Valour, Liberty, and...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...remote.
NOW, when the Western Sun withdraws the Day,
And humid Evening, gliding o'er the Sky,
In her chill Progress, checks the straggling Beams,
And robs them of their gather'd, vapoury, Prey,
Where Marshes stagnate, and where Rivers wind,
Cluster the rolling Fogs, and swim along
The dusky-mantled Lawn: then slow descend,
Once more to mingle with their Watry Friends.
The vivid Stars shine out, in radiant Files;
And boundless Ether glows, till the fair Moon
Shows her broa...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...truth, by no peculiar taste confin'd,
Whose universal pattern strikes mankind;
To truth, whose bold and unresisted aim
Checks frail caprice, and fashion's fickle claim;
To truth, whose charms deception's magic quell,
And bind coy Fancy in a stronger spell.
Ye brawny Prophets, that in robes so rich,
At distance due, possess the crisped niche;
Ye rows of Patriarchs, that sublimely rear'd
Diffuse a proud primeval length of beard:
Ye Saints, who clad in crimson's bright array,
...Read more of this...
by
Warton, Thomas
...streets erased the footprints
of tired mothers who waited in line
under the red and gold transom
to cash their welfare checks.
And maybe we're all feeling the same rage,
seeing the up-turned fish tanks stacked against the parakeet cages,
sunlight catching on the twisted wire between the shabbiness
of an emptied storefront, rays of sunlight poking in
to finger the dusty hollowness of barren shelves.
Or maybe it's the cheap Plexiglas above the Chinese lettering
or the sound o...Read more of this...
by
Hillringhouse, Mark
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