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Famous Contain Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...nt 
Each eye is raised to him, whose temple is 
Th' infinitude of space, whom earth, sea, sky 
And heav'n itself cannot contain. No more 
The noise of battle shall be heard, or shout 
Of war by heathen princes wag'd; There's nought 
Shall injure or destroy; they shall not hurt 
In all my holy mountain saith the Lord. 
The earth in peace and ev'ry shadow fled, 
Bespeaks Emmanuel's happy reign when Jew, 
And kindred Gentile shall no more contend, 
Save in the holier str...Read more of this...



by Neruda, Pablo
...ou were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bod...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...(he answers in a Rage)
Knights, Squires, and Steeds, must enter on the Stage.
So vast a Throng the Stage can ne'er contain.
Then build a New, or act it in a Plain.

Thus Criticks, of less Judgment than Caprice,
Curious, not Knowing, not exact, but nice,
Form short Ideas; and offend in Arts
(As most in Manners) by a Love to Parts.

Some to Conceit alone their Taste confine,
And glitt'ring Thoughts struck out at ev'ry Line;
Pleas'd with a Work where nothing's j...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ties, 
The strong connections, nice dependencies, 
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul 
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole? 
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, 
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, 
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind! 
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less! 
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 
Taller or...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...s its kingdom to the rude control
Of what should be its servitor, - for sure
Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea
Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ''Tis not in me.'

To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect
In natural honour, not to bend the knee
In profitless prostrations whose effect
Is by itself condemned, what alchemy
Can teach me this? what herb Medea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harm...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...
 Stretched the wide lawns we midmost found, for there, 
 Intolerant of itself, was Hell made fair 
 To accord with its containing. 
 Grave,
 austere, 
 Quiet-voiced and slow, of seldom words were they 
 That walked that verdure. 
 To a
 place aside 
 Open, and light, and high, we passed, and here 
 Looked downward on the lawns, in clear survey 
 Of such great spirits as are my glory and pride 
 That once I saw them. 
 There, direct in
 view, 
 Electra passed, amo...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...isn't by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are ver...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...tive,
the paragraph in which the names of flowers,
ostensibly to indicate travel,
make a bed for lovers,
the parts that contain spit and phlegm,
the words only a wet tongue can manage,
hissing sounds and letters of the alphabet
which can only be formed
by biting down on the bottom lip.
In the next-to-last paragraph, some hair
came off in the comb. Then clothes
were gathered from everywhere in the room
in one sentence, and the sun rose
while a door closed with sincerit...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...en 
To us perhaps he brings, and will vouchsafe 
This day to be our guest. But go with speed, 
And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour 
Abundance, fit to honour and receive 
Our heavenly stranger: Well we may afford 
Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow 
From large bestowed, where Nature multiplies 
Her fertile growth, and by disburthening grows 
More fruitful, which instructs us not to spare. 
To whom thus Eve. Adam, earth's hallowed mould, 
O...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...bright infers not excellence: the Earth 
Though, in comparison of Heaven, so small, 
Nor glistering, may of solid good contain 
More plenty than the sun that barren shines; 
Whose virtue on itself works no effect, 
But in the fruitful Earth; there first received, 
His beams, unactive else, their vigour find. 
Yet not to Earth are those bright luminaries 
Officious; but to thee, Earth's habitant. 
And for the Heaven's wide circuit, let it speak 
The Maker's high magni...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...t as lucky to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not
 contain’d between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good; 
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 

I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth; 
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as
 myself; 
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...h borne — 
Minstrel! with thee to muse, to mourn, 
To trace again those fields of yore, 
Believing every hillock green 
Contains no fabled hero's ashes, 
And that around the undoubted scene 
Thine own "broad Hellespont" still dashes, [23] 
Be long my lot! and cold were he 
Who there could gaze denying thee! 

IV. 

The night hath closed on Helle's stream, 
Nor yet hath risen on Ida's hill 
That moon, which shoon on his high theme: 
No warrior chides her peaceful beam, 
Bu...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...taken, Frau Altgelt
Adhered to it, and suffered no regret.
She found her husband all that she had felt
His music to contain. Her days were set
In his as though she were an amulet
Cased in bright gold. She joyed in her confining;
Her eyes put out her looking-glass with shining.
Charlotta was so gay that old, dull tasks
Were furbished up to seem like rituals.
She baked and brewed as one who only asks
The right to serve. Her daily manuals
Of prayer were d...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn't the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...
but we live like our names and you would have
to be colonial to know the difference,
to know the pain of history words contain,
to love those trees with an inferior love,
and to believe: "Those casuarinas bend
like cypresses, their hair hangs down in rain
like sailors' wives. They're classic trees, and we,
if we live like the names our masters please,
by careful mimicry might become men."


7 The Flight Anchors in
 Castries Harbor

When the stars self were young over...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...his breast and hands crost on his chain?"
"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
"The world, and lost all it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
"Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
"Fall'n as Napoleon fell."--I felt my cheek
Alter to see the great form pass away
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...th; but in the Merchant's Tale there is
internal proof that it was told after the jolly Dame's. Several
manuscripts contain verses designed to serve as a connexion;
but they are evidently not Chaucer's, and it is unnecessary to
give them here. Of this Prologue, which may fairly be regarded
as a distinct autobiographical tale, Tyrwhitt says: "The
extraordinary length of it, as well as the vein of pleasantry that
runs through it, is very suitable to the character of the...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...-
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of love--let the profane
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.

And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her Father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone
In their own golden beams--each like a flower
Out of whose depth a firefly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a sta...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...nd is wearing the fur coat
 with a sable collar over his robe
 and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
 and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason 
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika 
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky 
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars 
I love them too
whether I'...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...eel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in pla...Read more of this...

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