Famous Compound Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...I pour your ocean all among:
I strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong,
Must for your victory us all congest,
As compound love to physic your cold breast.

''My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,
Who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace,
Believed her eyes when they to assail begun,
All vows and consecrations giving place:
O most potential love! vow, bond, nor space,
In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,
For thou art all, and all things else are thine.

''When...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford

...ft, but after all
It may be thrift that saves him from the devil;
God gave it, anyhow, -- and we'll suppose
He knew the compound of his handiwork.
To-day the clouds are with him, but anon
He'll out of 'em enough to shake the tree
Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of, -- 
And, throwing in the bruised and whole together,
Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder;
And if he live, there'll be a sunset spell
Thrown over him as over a glassed lake
That yesterday was all...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Beowulf (Old English)

...assacre, many a year,
feud unfading, -- refused consent
to deal with any of Daneland’s earls,
make pact of peace, or compound for gold:
still less did the wise men ween to get
great fee for the feud from his fiendish hands.
But the evil one ambushed old and young
death-shadow dark, and dogged them still,
lured, or lurked in the livelong night
of misty moorlands: men may say not
where the haunts of these Hell-Runes {2c} be.
Such heaping of horrors the hater of men,
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Captain Craig

...erness your buoyance of the world.
And at the fairest and the frenziedest 
Alike of your God-fearing festivals, 
You so compound the truth to pamper fear 
That in the doubtful surfeit of your faith 
You clamor for the food that shadows eat.
You call it rapture or deliverance,— 
Passion or exaltation, or what most 
The moment needs, but your faint-heartedness 
Lives in it yet: you quiver and you clutch 
For something larger, something unfulfilled,
Some wiser kind of joy that y...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Exposure

...me on meteorite!
Instead I walk through damp leaves,
Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

Imagining a hero
On some muddy compound,
His gift like a slingstone
Whirled for the desperate.

How did I end up like this?
I often think of my friends'
Beautiful prismatic counselling
And the anvil brains of some who hate me

As I sit weighing and weighing
My responsible tristia.
For what? For the ear? For the people?
For what is said behind-backs?

Rain comes down through the alders,
It...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus


Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

...ster
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
 Both one and many; in the brown baked features
 The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
 So I assumed a double part, and cried
 And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
 Knowing myself yet being someone other—
 And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
 And so, compliant to the common wind,
...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Honey Harvest

...all day long the plundering hordes go round
And every overweighted blossom nods.
But from that gathered essence they compound
Honey more sweet than nectar of the gods.

Those blossoms fall ere June, warm June that brings
The small white Clover. Field by scented field,
Round farms like islands in the rolling weald,
It spreads thick-flowering or in wildness springs
Short-stemmed upon the naked downs, to yield
A richer store of honey than the Rose,
The Pink, the Hone...Read more of this...
by Armstrong, Martin

Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book

...ze?

"Who lasts a century can have no flaw,
I hold that wit a classic, good in law."

Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?
And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,
Or damn to all eternity at once,
At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

"We shall not quarrel for a year or two;
By courtesy of England, he may do."

Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,
I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
While you, to meas...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Lancelot

...“What else, Gawaine?
What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say; 
Destruction, dissolution, desolation, 
I say,—should I compound with jeopardy now. 
For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine: 
The way that we have gone so long together
Has underneath our feet, without our will, 
Become a twofold faring. Yours, I trust, 
May lead you always on, as it has led you, 
To praise and to much joy. Mine, I believe, 
Leads off to battles that are not yet fought,
And to the Light t...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

MFingal - Canto IV

..."


"There see how fate, great Malcolm cried,
Strikes with its bolts the tow'rs of pride!
Behold that martial Macaroni,
Compound of Phoebus and Bellona,
Equipp'd alike for feast or fray,
With warlike sword and singsong lay,
Where equal wit and valour join!
This, this is he--the famed Burgoyne!
Who pawn'd his honor and commission,
To coax the patriots to submission,
By songs and balls secure allegiance,
And dance the ladies to obedience.
Oft his Camp-Muses he'll parade
At Bost...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Music To Me Is Like Days

...pnotic one like weed-smoke at a party 
and the muscular one out of farty 
cars that goes Whudda Whudda 
Whudda like the compound oil heart 
of a warrior not of this planet....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

My Springs

...ves for spidery lace
And broideries and supple grace

And diamonds and the whole sweet round
Of littles that large life compound,
And loves for God and God's bare truth,
And loves for Magdalen and Ruth,

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete --
Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet,
-- I marvel that God made you mine,
For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

One Crucifixion is recorded -- only --

...e -- in the Being's Centre --
Judea --
For Journey -- or Crusade's Achieving --
Too near --

Our Lord -- indeed -- made Compound Witness --
And yet --
There's newer -- nearer Crucifixion
Than That --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Sonnet CXXV

...ort than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent,
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,
Which is not mix'd with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render, only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborn'd informer! a true soul
When most impeach'd stands least in thy control....Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

The Discontent

...
 That Dross for Gold is often paid.
 And for one Grain of Friendship that is found,
 Falshood and Interest do the Mass compound,
Or coldness, worse than Steel, the Loyal heart doth wound.
 Love in no Two was ever yet the same,
 No Happy Two ere felt an Equal Flame. 

VI.
 Is there that Earth by Humane Foot ne're prest?
 That Aire which never yet by Humane Breast
 Respir'd, did Life supply?
 Oh, thither let me fly!
 Where from the World at such a distance set,
All that's past...Read more of this...
by Killigrew, Anne

The Ladys Dressing Room

...ds,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin takes whatever comes,
The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
A nasty compound of all hues,
For here she spits, and here she spews.
But oh! it turned poor Strephon's bowels,
When he beheld and smelt the towels,
Begummed, besmattered, and beslimed
With dirt, and sweat, and ear-wax grimed.
No object Strephon's eye escapes:
Here petticoats in frowzy heaps;
Nor be the handkerchiefs forgot
All varnished o'er with snuff and snot.
Th...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan

The Power of the Dog

...e sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept'em, the more do we grieve;

For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long --
So why in -- Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Vision of Judgment

...hty years in gold. 

XI 

So mix his body with the dust! It might 
Return to what it must far sooner, were 
The natural compound left alone to fight 
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; 
But the unnatural balsams merely blight 
What nature made him at his birth, as bare 
As the mere million's base unmarried clay — 
Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 

XII 

He's dead — and upper earth with him has done; 
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, 
Or lapidary scrawl,...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Whole Soul

...c and wonder -- 
noodle, onion, lump, double 
yolked egg on two legs, 
a star as perfect as salt -- 
and my own shape a compound 
of so many lengths, lumps, 
and flat palms. And while I'm 
here at the shore I bow to 
take a few handfuls of water 
which run between my fingers, 
those poor noodles good for 
holding nothing for long, and 
I speak in a tongue hungering 
for salt and water without salt, 
I give a shape to the air going 
out and the air coming in, 
and the sea wind...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

...t us now go and stand under the school
Water tap, thrashing water to and fro.
Then steal through the towkay's
Barbed compound to pluck the hairy
Eyeing rambutans, blood red, parang in hand,
And caoutchouc pungent with peeling.
Now scurrying through the estate glades
Crunching, kicking autumnal rubber leavings,
Kneading, rolling milky latex balls,
Now standing to water by the corner garden post.

III
This is the land of the convectional rains
Which vie on the mons...Read more of this...
by Wignesan, T

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