Famous Creeping Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Noctambule

by Robert William Service
 Zut! it's two o'clock.
See! the lights are jumping.
Finish up your bock,
Time we all were humping.
Waiters stack the chairs,
Pile them on the tables;
Let us to our lairs
Underneath the gables.

Up the old Boul' Mich'
Climb with steps erratic.
Steady . . . how I wish
I was in my attic!
Full am I with cheer;
In my heart the joy stirs;
Couldn't be the beer,
Must have been...Read more of this...

John Ballard

by Edgar Lee Masters
 In the lust of my strength
I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me:
I might as well have cursed the stars.
In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute
And I cursed God for my suffering;
Still He paid no attention to me;
He left me alone, as He had always done.
I might as well have cursed the...Read more of this...

The Battle of Abu Klea

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Mars, come join with me,
And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart's little army,
That made ten thousand Arabs flee
At the charge of the bayonet at Abu Klea. 

General Stewart's force was about fifteen hundred all told,
A brave little band, but, like lions bold,
They fought under their brave and heroic commander,
As gallant and as skilful as the...Read more of this...

When Tulips Bloom

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

When tulips bloom in Union Aquare, 
And timid breaths of vernal air 
Go wandering down the dusty town, 
Like children lost in Vanity Fair; 

When every long, unlovely row 
Of westward houses stands aglow, 
And leads the eyes to sunset skies 
Beyond the hills where green trees grow; 

Then wearly seems the street parade, 
And weary books, and...Read more of this...

493. Song—Contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair

by Robert Burns
 CONTENTED wi’ little, and cantie wi’ mair,
Whene’er I forgather wi’ Sorrow and Care,
I gie them a skelp as they’re creeping alang,
Wi’ a cog o’ gude swats and an auld Scottish sang.
 Chorus.—Contented wi’ little, &c.


I whiles claw the elbow o’ troublesome thought;
But Man is a soger, and Life is a faught;
My mirth and gude humour are coin in my...Read more of this...

Field Thistle

by Judith Skillman
 Herb and spine,
the flat-fisted dream
of stars and dew
formed when he walked
with his telescope
through grasses spotted
by the spit bug.

A raucous noise,
the dawn of great beauty
and he with his tripod
matting the grasses as he walked.

I never saw him dead
on a bed of white down.
Never heard past
the death rattle, 
and so, for me, he lives 
there in the ragged, noxious weeds
that make...Read more of this...

Out in the Garden

by Katherine Mansfield
 Out in the garden,
Out in the windy, swinging dark,
Under the trees and over the flower-beds,
Over the grass and under the hedge border,
Someone is sweeping, sweeping,
Some old gardener.
Out in the windy, swinging dark,
Someone is secretly putting in order,
Someone is creeping, creeping....Read more of this...

Alix

by Carl Sandburg
 THE MARE Alix breaks the world’s trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an Illinois race track on a summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads together over stopwatches, and call to the grand stand a split second is clipped off the old world’s record and a new world’s record fixed.

I...Read more of this...

Growltigers Last Stand

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 GROWLTIGER was a Bravo Cat, who lived upon a barge;
In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large.
From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims,
Rejoicing in his title of "The Terror of the Thames."

His manners and appearance did not calculate to please;
His coat was torn and seedy, he was baggy at the knees;
One ear...Read more of this...

Sea-Gulls of Manhattan

by Henry Van Dyke
 Children of the elemental mother, 
Born upon some lonely island shore 
Where the wrinkled ripples run and whisper,
Where the crested billows plunge and roar; 
Long-winged, tireless roamers and adventurers,
Fearless breasters of the wind and sea,
In the far-off solitary places
I have seen you floating wild and free! 

Here the high-built cities rise around you;
Here the cliffs that tower east and...Read more of this...

The Schoolmaster

by D. H. Lawrence
I

=A Snowy Day in School=

All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,
Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence
Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass
Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--

But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light
Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,
Like full-blown...Read more of this...

Babys World

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I wish I could take a quiet corner in the heart of my baby's very
own world.
I know it has stars that talk to him, and a sky that stoops
down to his face to amuse him with its silly clouds and rainbows.
Those who make believe to be dumb, and look as if they never
could move, come creeping to his window...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

Borderland

by Amy Levy
 Am I waking, am I sleeping?
As the first faint dawn comes creeping
Thro' the pane, I am aware
Of an unseen presence hovering,
Round, above, in the dusky air:
A downy bird, with an odorous wing,
That fans my forehead, and sheds perfume,
As sweet as love, as soft as death,
Drowsy-slow through the summer-gloom.
My heart in some dream-rapture saith,
It is she. Half in a swoon,
I...Read more of this...

The Flaâneur

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I love all sights of earth and skies, 
From flowers that glow to stars that shine; 
The comet and the penny show, 
All curious things, above, below, 
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: 
I claim the Christian Pagan's line, 
Humani nihil, -- even so, -- 
And is not human life divine? 
When soft the western breezes blow, 
And...Read more of this...

Strayed Reveller The

by Matthew Arnold
 The Youth

Faster, faster,
O Circe, Goddess,
Let the wild, thronging train
The bright procession
Of eddying forms,
Sweep through my soul!
Thou standest, smiling
Down on me! thy right arm,
Lean'd up against the column there,
Props thy soft cheek;
Thy left holds, hanging loosely,
The deep cup, ivy-cinctured,
I held but now.
Is it, then, evening
So soon? I see, the night-dews,
Cluster'd in thick beads, dim
The agate brooch-stones
On thy white shoulder;
The cool...Read more of this...

All the Worlds a Stage

by William Shakespeare
 All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like...Read more of this...

The Italian In England

by Robert Browning
 That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,— 
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping throuoh the moss they love.
—How long it...Read more of this...

Picture-Writing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In those days said Hiawatha,
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
"Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish...Read more of this...

Webster Ford

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Do you remember, O Delphic Apollo,
The sunset hour by the river, when Mickey M'Grew
Cried, "There's a ghost," and I, "It's Delphic Apollo";
And the son of the banker derided us, saying, "It's light
By the flags at the water's edge, you half-witted fools."
And from thence, as the wearisome years rolled on, long after
Poor Mickey fell down in the water tower to...Read more of this...

Road and Hills

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 I shall go away 
To the brown hills, the quiet ones, 
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling, 
Sun-fired and drowsy! 

My horse snuffs delicately 
At the strange wind; 
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs tramp the dust. 
The road winds, straightens, 
Slashes a marsh, 
Shoulders out a bridge, 
Then -- 
Again the hills. 
Unchanged, innumerable, 
Bowing huge,...Read more of this...

The Daughter Goes To Camp

by Sharon Olds
 In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing,...Read more of this...

The Watching Angel

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dans l'alcôve sombre.") 
 
 {XX., November, 1831.} 


 In the dusky nook, 
 Near the altar laid, 
 Sleeps the child in shadow 
 Of his mother's bed: 
 Softly he reposes, 
 And his lid of roses, 
 Closed to earth, uncloses 
 On the heaven o'erhead. 
 
 Many a dream is with him, 
 Fresh...Read more of this...

179. To Miss Ferrier enclosing Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair

by Robert Burns
 NAE heathen name shall I prefix,
 Frae Pindus or Parnassus;
Auld Reekie dings them a’ to sticks,
 For rhyme-inspiring lasses.


Jove’s tunefu’ dochters three times three
 Made Homer deep their debtor;
But, gien the body half an e’e,
 Nine Ferriers wad done better!


Last day my mind was in a bog,
 Down George’s Street I stoited;
A creeping cauld prosaic fog
 My very sense...Read more of this...

The Pilgrims

by John McCrae
 An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers,
Where every beam that broke the leaden sky
Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours;
Some clustered graves where half our memories lie;
And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh:
And this was Life.

Wherein we did another's burden seek,
The tired feet we helped upon the road,
The hand we gave the weary and the weak,
The miles we...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Creeping poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace