Famous Deeps Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Last Meeting

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

Because the night was falling warm and still 
Upon a golden day at April’s end, 
I thought; I will go up the hill once more 
To find the face of him that I have lost, 
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long. 

So down the road I went,...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Sailing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 "Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree! 
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree! 
Growing by the rushing river, 
Tall and stately in the valley! 
I a light canoe will build me, 
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing, 
That shall float on the river, 
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
Like a yellow water-lily!
"Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree! 
Lay...Read more of this...

The Buzzards

by Martin Armstrong
When evening came and the warm glow grew deeper
And every tree that bordered the green meadows
And in the yellow cornfields every reaper
And every corn-shock stood above their shadows
Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure,
Serenely far there swam in the sunny height
A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure
Swirling and poising idly in golden light.
On great pied motionless moth-wings...Read more of this...

Long Odds

by Aleister Crowley
 How many million galaxies there are
Who knows? and each has countless stars in it,
And each rolls through eternities afar
Beneath the threshold of the Infinite.

How is it that will all that space to roam
I should have found this mote that spins and leaps
In what unutterable sunlight, foam
Of what unfathomable starry deeps

Who knows!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a...Read more of this...

The Dance

by Friedrich von Schiller
 See how, like lightest waves at play, the airy dancers fleet;
And scarcely feels the floor the wings of those harmonious feet.
Ob, are they flying shadows from their native forms set free?
Or phantoms in the fairy ring that summer moonbeams see?
As, by the gentle zephyr blown, some light mist flees in air,
As skiffs that skim adown the tide, when silver...Read more of this...

An April Night

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 The moon comes up o'er the deeps of the woods,
And the long, low dingles that hide in the hills,
Where the ancient beeches are moist with buds
Over the pools and the whimpering rills; 

And with her the mists, like dryads that creep
From their oaks, or the spirits of pine-hid springs,
Who hold, while the eyes of the world are asleep,
With the...Read more of this...

Psalm 63 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.6-10 
C. M.
Midnight thoughts recollected.

'Twas in the watches of the night
I thought upon thy power,
I kept thy lovely face in sight
Amidst the darkest hour.

My flesh lay resting on my bed,
My soul arose on high:
"My God, my life, my hope," I said,
"Bring thy salvation nigh."

My spirit labors up thine hill,
And climbs the heav'nly road;
But thy right hand upholds me still,
While...Read more of this...

The Quality of Courage

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Black trees against an orange sky, 
Trees that the wind shook terribly, 
Like a harsh spume along the road, 
Quavering up like withered arms, 
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms 
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below 
The iron ice stung like a goad, 
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet, 
And all the air was bitter sleet. 

And...Read more of this...

The Gods Of Greece

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Ah, flourished then your service of delight!
How different, oh, how different, in the day
When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,
O Venus Amathusia!

Then, through a veil of dreams
Woven by song, truth's youthful...Read more of this...

Design

by A R Ammons
 The drop seeps whole
from boulder-lichen
or ledge moss and drops,

joining, to trickle,
run, fall, dash,
sprawl in held deeps,

to rush shallows, spill
thin through heights,
but then, edging,

to eddy aside, nothing
of all but nothing's
curl of motion spent....Read more of this...

Aunt Imogen

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore 
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— 
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one 
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, 
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time 
Made all September a Queen’s Festival; 
And they would strive, informally, to make 
The...Read more of this...

The Winds of Angus

by George William Russell
 THE GREY road whereupon we trod became as holy ground:
The eve was all one voice that breathed its message with no sound:
And burning multitudes pour through my heart, too bright, too blind,
Too swift and hurried in their flight to leave their tale behind.
Twin gates unto that living world, dark honey-coloured eyes,
The lifting of whose lashes flushed the face with...Read more of this...

You ask what is this life so frail, so vain,

by Omar Khayyam
You ask what is this life so frail, so vain,
'Tis long to tell, yet will I make it plain;
'Tis but a breath blown from the vasty deeps,
And then blown back to those same deeps again!...Read more of this...

Before an Examination

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 The little letters dance across the page, 
Flaunt and retire, and trick the tired eyes; 
Sick of the strain, the glaring light, I rise 
Yawning and stretching, full of empty rage 
At the dull maunderings of a long dead sage, 
Fling up the windows, fling aside his lies; 
Choosing to breathe, not stifle and be wise, 
And let the...Read more of this...

Psalm 107 part 4

by Isaac Watts
 Deliverance from storms and shipwreck; or, The seaman's song.

Would you behold the works of God,
His wonders in the world abroad,
Go with the mariners, and trace
The unknown regions of the seas.

They leave their native shores behind,
And seize the favor of the wind;
Till God command, and tempests rise
That heave the ocean to the skies.

Now to the heav'ns they mount amain,
Now sink...Read more of this...

Tortoise Shout

by D. H. Lawrence
 I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?

A...Read more of this...

Loneliness

by John Betjeman
 The last year's leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps byond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief -
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.

Indifferent...Read more of this...

Leisure

by Amy Lowell
 Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor....Read more of this...

Recollection of the Arabian Nights

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 
In the silken sail of infancy, 
The tide of time flow'd back with me, 
The forward-flowing tide of time; 
And many a sheeny summer-morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-walled gardens green and old; 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 
For it was...Read more of this...

Communion

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the silence of my heart,
I will spend an hour with thee,
When my love shall rend apart
All the veil of mystery:
All that dim and misty veil
That shut in between our souls
When Death cried, "Ho, maiden, hail!"
And your barque sped on the shoals.
On the shoals? Nay, wrongly said.
On the breeze of Death that sweeps
Far from life, thy soul has sped
Out into...Read more of this...

Ode To Beauty

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Who gave thee, O Beauty!
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old;
Or what was the service
For which I was sold?
When first my eyes saw thee,
I found me thy thrall,
By magical drawings,
Sweet tyrant of all!
I drank at thy fountain
False waters of thirst;
Thou intimate stranger,
Thou latest and first!
Thy dangerous glances
Make women...Read more of this...

In an Old Farmhouse

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Outside the afterlight's lucent rose
Is smiting the hills and brimming the valleys, 
And shadows are stealing across the snows;
From the mystic gloom of the pineland alleys. 
Glamour of mingled night and day 
Over the wide, white world has sway, 
And through their prisoning azure bars, 
Gaze the calm, cold eyes of the early stars. 

But here, in this long,...Read more of this...

Immortal love forever full

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Immortal love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never ebbing sea!

Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow
The mists of earth away:
Shine out, O Light divine, and show
How wide and far we stray.

We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down;
In...Read more of this...

On Imagination

by Phillis Wheatley
 Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
 How bright their forms! how deck'd with pomp by thee!
Thy wond'rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.

 From Helicon's refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.

 Now here, now there, the...Read more of this...

Mater Triumphalis

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Mother of man's time-travelling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.

Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.

Angels and Gods, spirit...Read more of this...

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