Famous Continual Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Epode

by Ben Jonson
  XI. — EPODE.                                   And her black spite expel, Which to effect (since no breast is so sure,                  Or safe, but she'll procure Some way of entrance) we must plant a guard                  Of thoughts to watch, and ward At the eye and ear, the ports unto the mind,                 Give knowledge instantly, To wakeful reason, our affections' king :                  Who, in th' examining,...Read more of this...

Sonnet FOUND IN LAURA'S TOMB

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 406] SONNET FOUND IN LAURA'S TOMB. Qui reposan quei caste e felice ossa.  Here peaceful sleeps the chaste, the happy shadeOf that pure spirit, which adorn'd this earth:Pure fame, true beauty, and transcendent worth,Rude stone! beneath thy rugged breast are laid.Death sudden snatch'd the dear lamented maid!Read more of this...

Sonnet 123: No Time thou shalt not boast that I do change

by William Shakespeare
 No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change.
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy...Read more of this...

Julian Scott

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Toward the last
The truth of others was untruth to me;
The justice of others injustice to me;
Their reasons for death, reasons with me for life;
Their reasons for life, reasons with me for death;
I would have killed those they saved,
And save those they killed.
And I saw how a god, if brought to earth,
Must act out what he saw and thought,
And could...Read more of this...

A Forest Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant
The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his...Read more of this...

From 'LES VILLAGES ILLUSOIRES' RAIN

by Emile Verhaeren
Long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain
Interminably, with its nails of grey,
Athwart the dull grey day,
Rakes the green window-pane—
So infinitely, endlessly, the rain,
The long, long rain.
The rain.

Since yesternight it keeps unravelling
Down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling
About the sullen sky.
The low black sky;
Since yesternight, so slowly, patiently.
Unravelling its threads upon the roads.
Upon the roads and lanes, with even...Read more of this...

A Plain Song For Comadre

by Richard Wilbur
 Though the unseen may vanish, though insight
 fails
And doubter and downcast saint
Join in the same complaint,
What holy things were ever frightened off
By a fly's buzz, or itches, or a cough?
Harder than nails

They are, more warmly constant than the sun,
At whose continual sign
The dimly prompted vine
Upbraids itself to a green excellence.
What evening, when the slow and forced 
 expense
Of sweat...Read more of this...

I am in continual war with my passions, but what can

by Omar Khayyam
I am in continual war with my passions, but what can
I do? The memory of my deeds causes me a thousand
regrets, but what can I do? I admit that in Thy clemency
Thou mayest pardon my faults, but the shame of
knowing that Thou knowest what I have done, that shame
will remain, and what can I do?...Read more of this...

City of Orgies

by Walt Whitman
 CITY of orgies, walks and joys! 
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst will one day make you illustrious, 
Not the pageants of you—not your shifting tableaux, your spectacles, repay me; 
Not the interminable rows of your houses—nor the ships at the wharves, 
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows, with goods...Read more of this...

I Have Longed To Move Away

by Dylan Thomas
 I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away...Read more of this...

Sweeney Erect

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!


PAINT me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne’s hair
And swell with haste the perjured...Read more of this...

Myself and Mine

by Walt Whitman
 MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever, 
To stand the cold or heat—to take good aim with a gun—to sail a boat—to
 manage
 horses—to beget superb children, 
To speak readily and clearly—to feel at home among common people, 
And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea. 

Not for an embroiderer;
(There will always be plenty of embroiderers—I welcome...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXI. Io non fu' d' amar voi lassato unquanco. UNLESS LAURA RELENT, HE IS RESOLVED TO ABANDON HER.  Yet was I never of your love aggrieved,Nor never shall while that my life doth last:But of hating myself, that date is past;And tears continual sore have me wearied:I will not yet...Read more of this...

Reportless Subjects to the Quick

by Emily Dickinson
 Reportless Subjects, to the Quick
Continual addressed --
But foreign as the Dialect
Of Danes, unto the rest.

Reportless Measures, to the Ear
Susceptive -- stimulus --
But like an Oriental Tale
To others, fabulous --...Read more of this...

Miracles

by Walt Whitman
 WHY! who makes much of a miracle? 
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk...Read more of this...

St. Peter and the Angel

by Denise Levertov
 Delivered out of raw continual pain,
smell of darkness, groans of those others
to whom he was chained--

unchained, and led
past the sleepers,
door after door silently opening--
out!
 And along a long street's
majestic emptiness under the moon:

one hand on the angel's shoulder, one
feeling the air before him,
eyes open but fixed...

And not till he saw the angel had left him,
alone and free to resume
the...Read more of this...

They Flee from Me

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
   With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
   That now are wild and do not remember
   That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune,...Read more of this...

Sestina III

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA III. L' aere gravato, e l' importuna nebbia. HE COMPARES LAURA TO WINTER, AND FORESEES THAT SHE WILL ALWAYS BE THE SAME.  The overcharged air, the impending cloud,Compress'd together by impetuous winds,Must presently discharge themselves in rain;Already as of crystal are the streams,And, for the fine grass late that clothed...Read more of this...

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

by Wallace Stevens
 The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the...Read more of this...

The Execution of James Graham Marquis of Montrose

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,
The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay
By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,
That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose. 

Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,
Then the officer told him, as he...Read more of this...

A Chorus

by Elizabeth Jennings
 Over the surging tides and the mountain kingdoms,
Over the pastoral valleys and the meadows,
Over the cities with their factory darkness,
Over the lands where peace is still a power,
Over all these and all this planet carries
A power broods, invisible monarch, a stranger
To some, but by many trusted. Man's a believer
Until corrupted. This huge trusted power
Is spirit. He moves in the...Read more of this...

Who Court obtain within Himself

by Emily Dickinson
 Who Court obtain within Himself
Sees every Man a King --
And Poverty of Monarchy
Is an interior thing --

No Man depose
Whom Fate Ordain --
And Who can add a Crown
To Him who doth continual
Conspire against His Own...Read more of this...

A Secret told

by Emily Dickinson
 A Secret told --
Ceases to be a Secret -- then --
A Secret -- kept --
That -- can appal but One --

Better of it -- continual be afraid --
Than it --
And Whom you told it to -- beside --...Read more of this...

Ephemera

by William Butler Yeats
 'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'
 And then She:
'Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXIII

by William Shakespeare
  No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:
Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather make them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them...Read more of this...

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