Famous Cobweb Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I had not minded -- Walls

by Emily Dickinson
 I had not minded -- Walls --
Were Universe -- one Rock --
And far I heard his silver Call
The other side the Block --

I'd tunnel -- till my Groove
Pushed sudden thro' to his --
Then my face take her Recompense --
The looking in his Eyes --

But 'tis a single Hair --
A filament -- a law --
A Cobweb -- wove in Adamant...Read more of this...

Beloved Let Us Once More Praise The Rain

by Conrad Aiken
 Beloved, let us once more praise the rain. 
Let us discover some new alphabet, 
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves, 
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf, 
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone, 
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion, 
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain...Read more of this...

The Cobweb

by Raymond Carver
 A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that's happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I...Read more of this...

The Lily In A Crystal

by Robert Herrick
 You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
Tomb'd in a crystal stone,
More fair in this transparent case
Than when it grew alone,
And had but single grace.

You see how cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry;
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by...Read more of this...

Crumbling is not an instants Act

by Emily Dickinson
 Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust --

Ruin is formal -- Devil's work
Consecutive and slow --
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping -- is Crash's law....Read more of this...

Pollys Tree

by Sylvia Plath
 A dream tree, Polly's tree:
 a thicket of sticks,
 each speckled twig

ending in a thin-paned
 leaf unlike any
 other on it

or in a ghost flower
 flat as paper and
 of a color

vaporish as frost-breath,
 more finical than
 any silk fan

the Chinese ladies use
 to stir robin's egg
 air. The silver-

haired seed of the milkweed
 comes to roost there, frail
...Read more of this...

What Is Life?

by John Clare
 And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.
Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of...Read more of this...

Jennie MGrew

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Not, where the stairway turns in the dark,
A hooded figure, shriveled under a flowing cloak!
Not yellow eyes in the room at night,
Staring out from a surface of cobweb gray!
And not the flap of a condor wing,
When the roar of life in your ears begins
As a sound heard never before!
But on a sunny afternoon,
By a country road,
Where purple rag-weeds bloom...Read more of this...

The Thread

by Denise Levertov
 Something is very gently, 
invisibly, silently, 
pulling at me-a thread 
or net of threads 
finer than cobweb and as 
elastic. I haven't tried 
the strength of it. No barbed hook 
pierced and tore me. Was it 
not long ago this thread 
began to draw me? Or 
way back? Was I 
born with its knot about my 
neck, a bridle?...Read more of this...

Dedication To A Book Of Stories Selected From The Irish Novelists

by William Butler Yeats
 There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.

It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.

Ah,...Read more of this...

The Fairy Temple; Or Oberons Chapel

by Robert Herrick
 THE FAIRY TEMPLE; OR, OBERON'S CHAPEL

DEDICATED TO MR JOHN MERRIFIELD,
COUNSELLOR AT LAW

RARE TEMPLES THOU HAST SEEN, I KNOW,
AND RICH FOR IN AND OUTWARD SHOW;
SURVEY THIS CHAPEL BUILT, ALONE,
WITHOUT OR LIME, OR WOOD, OR STONE.
THEN SAY, IF ONE THOU'ST SEEN MORE FINE
THAN THIS, THE FAIRIES' ONCE, NOW THINE.

THE TEMPLE

A way enchaced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel...Read more of this...

Range-Finding

by Robert Frost
 The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had...Read more of this...

This Beautiful Black Marriage

by Diane Wakoski
 Photograph negative
her black arm: a diving porpoise,
sprawled across the ice-banked pillow.
Head: a sheet of falling water.
Her legs: icicle branches breaking into light.

This woman, 
photographed sleeping.
The man,
making the photograph in the acid pan of his brain.
Sleep stain them both,
as if cloudy semen
rubbed shiningly over the surface
will be used to develop their images.

 on the desert
 the porpoises curl up,
 their...Read more of this...

Vehicles

by W S Merwin
 This is a place on the way after the distances
 can no longer be kept straight here in this dark corner
of the barn a mound of wheels has convened along
 raveling courses to stop in a single moment
and lie down as still as the chariots of the Pharaohs
 some in pairs that rolled as one over the same roads
to...Read more of this...

Improvisations: Light And Snow

by Conrad Aiken
 I

The girl in the room beneath 
Before going to bed 
Strums on a mandolin 
The three simple tunes she knows. 
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! 
When she has finished them several times 
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails 
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

II

I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...

The Carver

by Conrad Aiken
 See, as the carver carves a rose, 
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye, 
In cruel granite, to disclose 
The soft things that in hardness lie, 
So this one, taking up his heart, 
Which time and change had made a stone, 
Carved out of it with dolorous art, 
Laboring yearlong and alone, 
The thing there hidden—rose, toad, wing? 
A...Read more of this...

To hang our head -- ostensibly

by Emily Dickinson
 To hang our head -- ostensibly --
And subsequent, to find
That such was not the posture
Of our immortal mind --

Affords the sly presumption
That in so dense a fuzz --
You -- too -- take Cobweb attitudes
Upon a plane of Gauze!...Read more of this...

How many times these low feet staggered

by Emily Dickinson
 How many times these low feet staggered --
Only the soldered mouth can tell --
Try -- can you stir the awful rivet --
Try -- can you lift the hasps of steel!

Stroke the cool forehead -- hot so often --
Lift -- if you care -- the listless hair --
Handle the adamantine fingers
Never a thimble -- more -- shall wear --

Buzz the...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

Amandas Painting

by Les Murray
 In the painting, I'm seated in a shield,
coming home in it up a shadowy river.
It is a small metal boat lined in eggshell
and my hands grip the gunwale rims. I'm
a composite bow, tensioning the whole boat,
steering it with my gaze. No oars, no engine,
no sails. I'm propelling the little craft with speech.
The faded rings around the loose bulk shirt
are...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

The Haunted House

by Thomas Hood
 Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The...Read more of this...

Insomnia

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the...Read more of this...

To Fine Grand

by Ben Jonson
LXXIII. — TO FINE GRAND. What is't, FINE GRAND, makes thee my friendship fly, Or take an Epigram so fearfully, As 'twere a challenge, or a borrower's letter: The world must know your greatness is my debtor.Imprimis, Grand, you owe me for a jest I lent you, on mere acquaintance, at a feast.Item, a tale or two some fortnight after, That...Read more of this...

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