Famous Continued Poems by Famous Poets

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

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133. The Brigs of Ayr

...shapeless cairn!
As yet ye little ken about the matter,
But twa-three winters will inform ye better.
When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains,
Wi’ deepening deluges o’erflow the plains;
When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil,
Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil;
Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course.
Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source,
Aroused by blustering winds an’ spotting thowes,
In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes;
While crashin...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


California Plush

...he rest of the family
immobile in their beds with typhoid,
next to the mother, the child having been
dead two days:

he continued to drink, and as if it were the Old West
shot up the town a couple of Saturday nights.

"So now I think I've learned all I want
after I have learned all this: this sure did teach me a lot of things
that I never knew before.
I am a little nervous yet."

It seems to me
an emblem of Bishop--



For watching the room, as the waitresses in their
back-co...Read more of this...
by Bidart, Frank

Captain Craig

...ed and unstung. 
When they were gone the Captain’s tuneful ooze
Of rhetoric took on a change; he smiled 
At me and then continued, earnestly: 
“Your friends have had enough of it; but you, 
For a motive hardly vindicated yet 
By prudence or by conscience, have remained;
And that is very good, for I have things 
To tell you: things that are not words alone— 
Which are the ghosts of things—but something firmer. 
“First, would I have you know, for every gift 
Or sacrifice, there...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Christmas Eve

..., 
blue, yellow, green, red; 
each with its own juice, each hot and alive 
stinging your face. But you did not move. 
I continued to watch, forcing myself, 
waiting, inexhaustible, thirty-five. 

I wanted your eyes, like the shadows 
of two small birds, to change. 
But they did not age. 
The smile that gathered me in, all wit, 
all charm, was invincible. 
Hour after hour I looked at your face 
but I could not pull the roots out of it. 
Then I watched how the sun hit your red ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him,
And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:--
"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors
Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed against us.
What their design may be is unknown; but all are commanded
On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's mandate
Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean time
Many surmises of evil ala...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth


Howl

...ed ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the l...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Inferno (English)

...s I knew, 
 To God and all his foes the futile crew 
 How hateful in their everlasting shame. 

 I saw these victims of continued death 
 - For lived they never - were naked all, and loud 
 Around them closed a never-ceasing cloud 
 Of hornets and great wasps, that buzzed and clung, 
 - Weak pain for weaklings meet, - and where they stung, 
 Blood from their faces streamed, with sobbing breath, 
 And all the ground beneath with tears and blood 
 Was drenched, and crawling in ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Journey Of The Magi

...pen door dicing for 
 pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
 we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
 too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
 satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I 
 remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, 
 certainly, 
We had evidence and no doubt. I had 
 seen birth and death,
But had...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...a broad and beaten way 
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf 
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length, 
From Hell continued, reaching th' utmost orb 
Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse 
With easy intercourse pass to and fro 
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 
God and good Angels guard by special grace. 
 But now at last the sacred influence 
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven 
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night 
A glimmering dawn. H...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 04

...at steep savage hill 
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow; 
But further way found none, so thick entwined, 
As one continued brake, the undergrowth 
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed 
All path of man or beast that passed that way. 
One gate there only was, and that looked east 
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw, 
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt, 
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound 
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...d 
His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim 
That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, 
The space of seven continued nights he rode 
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line 
He circled; four times crossed the car of night 
From pole to pole, traversing each colure; 
On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse 
From entrance or Cherubick watch, by stealth 
Found unsuspected way. There was a place, 
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, 
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...k and moist, 
Sent up amain; and now the thickened sky 
Like a dark cieling stood; down rushed the rain 
Impetuous; and continued, till the earth 
No more was seen: the floating vessel swum 
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow 
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else 
Flood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp 
Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore; and in their palaces, 
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped 
And stabled; of ma...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Part 9 of Trout Fishing in America

...rt fish. Just

lucky. Sometimes that's all you need. "

 "Yeah, " I said. "You're right there. "

 I cast out again and continued talking about Great Falls.

 Then in correct order I recited the twelve least important

things ever said about Great Falls, Montana. For the twelfth

and least important thing of all, I said, "Yeah, the telephone

would ring in the morning. I'd get out of bed. I didn't have to

answer the telephone. That had all been taken care of, years

in advan...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

The Lady of the Lake

...e of the flowing song,
     Till to her lips in measured frame
     The minstrel verse spontaneous came.

     Song Continued.

     'Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done;
          While our slumbrous spells assail ye,
     Dream not, with the rising sun,
          Bugles here shall sound reveille.
     Sleep! the deer is in his den;
          Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying;
     Sleep! nor dream in yonder glen
     How thy gallant steed lay dying.
     Hunts...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Lesson

...ared
"fingers, feet or toes"

He threw the sword at a latecomer
it struck with deadly aim
then pulling out a shotgun
he continued with his game

The first blast cleared the backrow
(where those who skive hang out)
they collapsed like rubber dinghies
when the plug's pulled out

"Please may I leave the room sir?"
a trembling vandal enquired
"Of course you may" said teacher
put the gun to his temple and fired

The Head popped a head round the doorway
to see why a din was being m...Read more of this...
by McGough, Roger

The Star-Apple Kingdom

...e could not kill; 
she shrunk to a bat that hung day and night 
in the back of his brain. He rose in his dream. 
(to be continued)...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

The Story Of Our Lives

...you grow older without me.
Sunlight falls on your silver hair.
The rugs, the furniture,
seem almost imaginary now.
"She continued to read.
She seemed to consider his absence
of no special importance,
as someone on a perfect day will consider
the weather a failure
because it did not change his mind."
You narrow your eyes.
You have the impulse to close the book
which describes my resistance:
how when I lean back I imagine
my life without you, imagine moving
into another life, a...Read more of this...
by Strand, Mark

The Vision of Judgment

...ighty shadow of a shade: 
'If I have kept my secret half an age, 
I scarce shall tell it now.' — 'Canst thou upbraid,' 
Continued Michael, 'George Rex, or allege 
Aught further?' Junius answer'd, 'You had better 
First ask him for his answer to my letter: 

LXXXIII 

'My charges upon record will outlast 
The brass of both his epitaph and tomb.' 
'Repent'st thou not,' said Michael, 'of some past 
Exaggeration? something which may doom 
Thyself if false, as him if true? Thou wa...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

To Think of Time

...1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were flexible, r...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

...t would 
stop.
and it always seemed to 
stop
around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
 drip
 drip


and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m.
there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
Van Gogh yellow-
crazy, blinding!
and then
the roof drains
relieved of the rush of 
water
began to expand in the warmth:
PANG!PANG!PANG!
and everybody got up and looked outside
and there were all the lawns
still soaked
greener than green will ever
be...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

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