Famous Clustered Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Pilgrims

by John McCrae
 An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
Where every beam that broke the leaden sky
Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;
Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;
And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
And this was Life.

Wherein we did another's burden seek,
The tired feet we helped upon the road,
The hand we gave the weary and the weak,
The miles we...Read more of this...

Gravelly Run

by A R Ammons
 I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
 of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
 by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 10: Sudden Death

by Conrad Aiken
 'Number four—the girl who died on the table—
The girl with golden hair—'
The purpling body lies on the polished marble.
We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . .

One, who held the ether-cone, remembers
Her dark blue frightened eyes.
He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast
More hurriedly fall and rise.
Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her...Read more of this...

Rio Grandes Last Race

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now this was what Macpherson told 
While waiting in the stand; 
A reckless rider, over-bold, 
The only man with hands to hold 
The rushing Rio Grande. 

He said, `This day I bid good-bye 
To bit and bridle rein, 
To ditches deep and fences high, 
For I have dreamed a dream, and I 
Shall never ride again. 

`I dreamt last...Read more of this...

Homing Swallows

by Claude McKay
 Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main, 
O rain-birds racing merrily away 
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain 
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say-- 

When at the noon-hour from the chapel school 
The children dash and scamper down the dale, 
Scornful of teacher's rod and binding rule 
Forever broken and without avail, 

Do they still stop...Read more of this...

Why Is This Age Worse...?

by Anna Akhmatova
 Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in....Read more of this...

Lillies in the Fire

by D. H. Lawrence
I

Ah, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without form
Or having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your cold

White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me to-night,
And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped...Read more of this...

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

by Larry Levis
 --The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
 --for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...

Sampan Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   You will be mine; those lightly dancing feet,
     Falling as softly on the careless street
   As the wind-loosened petals of a flower,
     Will bring you here, at the Appointed Hour.

   And all the Temple's little links and laws
     Will not for...Read more of this...

Lilacs

by Amy Lowell
Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,
Your great puffs of flowers
Are everywhere in this my New England.
Among your heart-shaped leaves
Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing
Their little weak soft songs;
In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a...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...

Rio Grande

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now this was what Macpherson told 
While waiting in the stand; 
A reckless rider, over-bold, 
The only man with hands to hold 
The rushing Rio Grande. 
He said, “This day I bid good-bye 
To bit and bridle rein, 
To ditches deep and fences high, 
For I have dreamed a dream, and I 
Shall never ride again. 

“I dreamt last...Read more of this...

Lament For Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

by Federico García Lorca
 1. Cogida and death 

At five in the afternoon. 
It was exactly five in the afternoon. 
A boy brought the white sheet 
at five in the afternoon. 
A frail of lime ready prepared 
at five in the afternoon. 
The rest was death, and death alone. 

The wind carried away the cottonwool 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the oxide...Read more of this...

At Loafing-holt

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Since I left the city's heat
For this sylvan, cool retreat,
High upon the hill-side here
Where the air is clean and clear,
I have lost the urban ways.[Pg 264]
Mine are calm and tranquil days,
Sloping lawns of green are mine,
Clustered treasures of the vine;
Long forgotten plants I know,
Where the best wild berries grow,
Where the greens and grasses sprout,
When the elders blossom out.
Now...Read more of this...

The Evening Sky was as Green as Jade

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The evening sky was as green as Jade,
      As Emerald turf by Lotus lake,
   Behind the Kafila far she strayed,
      (The Pearls are lost if the Necklace break!)

   A lingering freshness touched the air
      From palm-trees, clustered around...Read more of this...

Jasmines

by Claude McKay
 Your scent is in the room. 
Swiftly it overwhelms and conquers me! 
Jasmines, night jasmines, perfect of perfume, 
Heavy with dew before the dawn of day! 
Your face was in the mirror. I could see 
You smile and vanish suddenly away, 
Leaving behind the vestige of a tear. 
Sad suffering face, from parting grown so dear! 
Night jasmines cannot...Read more of this...

Transformations

by D. H. Lawrence
I

=The Town=

Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethes
About you: only last night you were
A Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;
To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke-wreaths.

To-morrow swimming in evening's vague, dim vapour
Like a weeded city in shadow under the sea,
Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:
Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon's white taper.

And when...Read more of this...

In the Black Forest

by Amy Levy
 I lay beneath the pine trees,
And looked aloft, where, through
The dusky, clustered tree-tops,
Gleamed rent, gay rifts of blue.

I shut my eyes, and a fancy
Fluttered my sense around:
"I lie here dead and buried,
And this is churchyard ground.

"I am at rest for ever;
Ended the stress and strife."
Straight I fell to and sorrowed
For the pitiful past life.

Right wronged, and knowledge wasted;
Wise labour...Read more of this...

Palm Trees by the Sea

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

                            Throb, throb, throb,
   Far away in the blue transparent Night,
   On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
  ...Read more of this...

The Equilibrists

by John Crowe Ransom
 Full of her long white arms and milky skin 
He had a thousand times remembered sin. 
Alone in the press of people traveled he, 
Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory. 

Mouth he remembered: the quaint orifice 
From which came heat that flamed upon the kiss, 
Till cold words came down spiral from the head. 
Grey doves from the...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...

The House That Was

by Laurence Binyon
 Of the old house, only a few, crumbled 
Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock, 
Or a shaped stone lying mossy where it tumbled! 
Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock 
What once was fire-lit floor and private charm, 
Whence, seen in a windowed picture, were hills fading 
At night, and all was memory-coloured and warm, 
And voices talked,...Read more of this...

The Message

by George William Russell
 Wind of the gentle summer night,
Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
Then blow over to me.

Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,
You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
Out of the lilac tree,

Wind you must waver a gossamer sail
To ferry a scent so light,
Will you carry my love a message as frail
Through the hawk-haunted...Read more of this...

Only A Boche

by Robert William Service
 We brought him in from between the lines: we'd better have let him lie;
For what's the use of risking one's skin for a tyke that's going to die?
What's the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,
When he's shot in the head, and worse than dead, and all messed up on the wire?
However, I say, we brought him...Read more of this...

Voyages

by Philip Levine
 Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart -- 
I walk by sedge and brown river rot 
to where the old lake boats went daily out. 
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen 
in upon itself. Even the channel's 
grown over. Once we set sail here 
for Bob-Lo, the Brewery Isles, Cleveland. 
We would have gone as far...Read more of this...

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