Famous Diffused Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Be once more merciful

by Emile Verhaeren
Be once more merciful and cheering to us, light, pale brightness of winter that will bathe our brows when of an afternoon we both go into the garden to breathe in one last warmth.
We loved you long ago with so great a pride, with so great a love springing from our hearts, that one supreme and gentle and kindly flame...Read more of this...

To Perenna

by Robert Herrick
 When I thy parts run o'er, I can't espy
In any one, the least indecency;
But every line and limb diffused thence
A fair and unfamiliar excellence;
So that the more I look, the more I prove
There's still more cause why I the more should love....Read more of this...

When I read the Book

by Walt Whitman
 WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, 
And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? 
And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? 
(As if any man really knew aught of my life; 
Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real...Read more of this...

All is Truth

by Walt Whitman
 O ME, man of slack faith so long! 
Standing aloof—denying portions so long; 
Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; 
Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as
 inevitably
 upon
 itself as the truth does upon itself, 
Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the...Read more of this...

Juvenilia An Ode to Natural Beauty

by Alan Seeger
 There is a power whose inspiration fills 
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought, 
Like airy dew ere any drop distils, 
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught 
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole 
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul. 
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing, 
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field, 
When...Read more of this...

The Widows Tears; Or Dirge Of Dorcas

by Robert Herrick
 Come pity us, all ye who see
Our harps hung on the willow-tree;
Come pity us, ye passers-by,
Who see or hear poor widows' cry;
Come pity us, and bring your ears
And eyes to pity widows' tears.
CHOR. And when you are come hither,
Then we will keep
A fast, and weep
Our eyes out all together,

For Tabitha; who dead lies here,
Clean wash'd, and laid out for...Read more of this...

To The Handsome Mistress Grace Potter

by Robert Herrick
 As is your name, so is your comely face
Touch'd every where with such diffused grace,
As that in all that admirable round,
There is not one least solecism found;
And as that part, so every portion else
Keeps line for line with beauty's parallels....Read more of this...

The Tear

by George (Lord) Byron
 When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear:

Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear:

Mild Charity's glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity...Read more of this...

A Way to Love God

by Robert Penn Warren
 Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.

I cannot recall what I started to tell...Read more of this...

The Violet

by Jane Taylor
 Down in a green and shady bed, 
A modest violet grew; 
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head
As if to hide from view. 
And yet it was a lovely flower, 
Its colour bright and fair; 
It might have graced a rosy bower, 
Instead of hiding there. 

Yet thus it was content to bloom, 
In modest tints arrayed; 
And...Read more of this...

The Ideals

by Friedrich von Schiller
 And wilt thou, faithless one, then, leave me,
With all thy magic phantasy,--
With all the thoughts that joy or grieve me,
Wilt thou with all forever fly?
Can naught delay thine onward motion,
Thou golden time of life's young dream?
In vain! eternity's wide ocean
Ceaselessly drowns thy rolling stream.

The glorious suns my youth enchanting
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIV

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 253] SONNET XXIV. Gli occhi di ch' io parlai sì caldamente. HIS LYRE IS NOW ATTUNED ONLY TO WOE.  The eyes, the face, the limbs of heavenly mould,So long the theme of my impassion'd lay,Charms which so stole me from myself away,That strange to other men the course...Read more of this...

How To Kill

by Keith Douglas
 Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch...Read more of this...

The Choir Invisible

by George Eliot
 Oh, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge men's search 
To...Read more of this...

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