Famous Delving Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Avons Harvest

...ating ghost 
Of a dead friend. The more I pondered it 
The more I knew there was not much to lose,
Albeit for one whose delving hitherto 
Had been a forage of his own affairs, 
The quest, however golden the reward, 
Was irksome—and as Avon suddenly 
And soon was driven to let me see, was needless.
It seemed an age ago that we were there 
One evening in the room that in the days 
When they could laugh he called the Library. 
“He calls it that, you understand,” she said, 
“Beca...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington


Blessing The Cornfields

...with caw and clamor,
Rush of wings and cry of voices,
To their work of devastation,
Settling down upon the cornfields,
Delving deep with beak and talon,
For the body of Mondamin.
And with all their craft and cunning,
All their skill in wiles of warfare,
They perceived no danger near them,
Till their claws became entangled,
Till they found themselves imprisoned
In the snares of Hiawatha.
From his place of ambush came he,
Striding terrible among them,
And so awful was his aspe...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Children of the Moon

...g in darkness,
Little children crying in silent pain,
Little mothers rocking and groping and struggling,
Digging and delving and groveling,
Amid the dying-dead and dead-in-life
And drip and dripping of warm, wet blood,
Far, far beneath the wings,—
The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.
I bent with tears and pitying hands,
Above these dusky star-eyed children,—
Crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices,
Pleading low for light and love and living—
And I croon...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.

Eureka

...s" unto the world;
The men from all the nations in the New World and the Old,
All side by side, like brethren here, are delving after gold.
But suddenly the warning cries are heard on every side
As closing in around the field, a ring of troopers ride,
Unlicensed diggers are the game--their class and want are sins,
And so with all its shameful scenes, the digger hunt begins.
The men are seized who are too poor the heavy tax to pay,
Chained man to man as convicts were, and drag...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

from Venus and Adonis

...es.

"Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer;
Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

"For there his smell with other being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled 
With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;
Then do they spend t...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Honors - Part Ii

...The baby science, born but yesterday,
That in its rash unlearned infancy
      With shells and stones at play,
And delving in the outworks of this world,
  And little crevices that it could reach,
Discovered certain bones laid up, and furled
      Under an ancient beach,
And other waifs that lay to its young mind
  Some fathoms lower than they ought to lie,
By gain whereof it could not fail to find
      Much proof of ancientry,
Hints at a Pedigree withdrawn and ...Read more of this...
by Ingelow, Jean

Hurry Up Please Its Time

...from the fire. 
They rock upon the daybreak 
and amputate the waters. 
They are beating the sea, 
they are hurting it, 
delving down into the inscrutable salt. 

* 

When mother left the room 
and left me in the big black 
and sent away my kitty 
to be fried in the camps 
and took away my blanket 
to wash the me out of it 
I lay in the soiled cold and prayed. 
It was a little jail in which 
I was never slapped with kisses. 
I was the engine that couldn't. 
Cold wigs blew on t...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

John Brown

...end as they began— 
After my sickening doubts and estimations 
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain—
After a weary delving everywhere 
For men with every virtue but the Vision— 
Could I have known, I say, before I left you 
That summer morning, all there was to know— 
Even unto the last consuming word
That would have blasted every mortal answer 
As lightning would annihilate a leaf, 
I might have trembled on that summer morning; 
I might have wavered; and I might have fa...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Love and Black Magic

...I was born, 
Mother was by a wizard wed, 
And oft I wish I had died instead— 
Often I wish I were long time dead. 
But, delving deep in my master’s lore, 
I have won of magic power such store 
I can turn a skull—oh, fiddlededee 
For all this curious craft!” quo’ she.
“A soldier is the lad for me; 
Hey and hither, my lad! 

“To bring my brave boy unto my arms, 
What need have I of magic charms— 
‘Abracadabra!’ and ‘Prestopuff’?
I have but to wish, and that is enough. 
The char...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert

The Blue Water Buffalo

...low

or it might be a woman, up to her thighs
in the lukewarm ooze, bending at the waist
with the plain grace of habit, delving for weeds
in water that receives her wrist and forearm

as she feels for the alien stalk, the foreign blade
beneath that greenest of green coverlets
where brittle pods in their corroding skins
now shift, waiting to salt the fields with horror....Read more of this...
by Taylor, Marilyn L

The Book of Urizen: Chapter VI

...man Child to the light. 

8. A shriek ran thro' Eternity:
And a paralytic stroke;
At the birth of the Human shadow.

9. Delving earth in his resistless way;
Howling, the Child with fierce flames 
Issu'd from Enitharmon.

10. The Eternals, closed the tent
They beat down the stakes the cords
Stretch'd for a work of eternity; 
No more Los beheld Eternity.

11. In his hands he seiz'd the infant
He bathed him in springs of sorrow
He gave him to Enitharmon....Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Hermit of Mont-Blanc

...ursting wildly forth
From its thaw'd prison, sweep the shaggy cliff
Vast and Stupendous ! strength'ning as it fell,
And delving, 'mid the snow, a cavern rude!

So liv'd the HERMIT, like an hardy Tree
Plac'd on a mountain's solitary brow,
And destin'd, thro' the Seasons, to endure
Their wond'rous changes. To behold the face
Of ever-varying Nature, and to mark
In each grand lineament, the work of GOD!
And happier he, in total Solitude
Than the poor toil-worn wretch, whose arden...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

The New Tenants

...undermine and overthrow; 
And it was his no longer to forego 
The sight of them, insidious and serene, 
Where they were delving always and had been 
Left always to be vicious and to grow. 

And there were the new tenants who had come, 
By doors that were left open unawares,
Into his house, and were so much at home 
There now that he would hardly have to guess, 
By the slow guile of their vindictiveness, 
What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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