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Famous Divided Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Walcott, Derek
...s with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?...Read more of this...



by Gibran, Kahlil
...eart. 

Substantial things deaden a man without suffering; love awakens him with enlivening pains. 

Humans are divided into different clans and tribes, and belong to countries and towns. But I find myself a stranger to all communities and belong to no settlement. The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe. 

Men are weak, and it is sad that they divide amongst themselves. The world is narrow and it is unwise to cleave it into kingdoms...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests; and still as the divided frame 
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With Nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still;
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:--till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in hi...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...me to reach the cavern of thine azure home.'

Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air
Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas
Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,
And like a flame a barbed reed flew whizzing down the glade.

And where the little flowers of her breast
Just brake into their milky blossoming,
This murderous paramour, this unbidden guest,
Pi...Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...ng among the pines and tulip trees—
Mercedes Benz and Cadillac Republicans.
There was another stream further along 
Divided through a marsh, lined by the fence
We stretched to posts with Mister Garner’s help
The time he needed cash for his son’s bail
And offered all his place. A noble spring
Under the oak root cooled his milk and butter.
He called me “honey,” working with us there
(My father bought three acres as a gift),
His wife pale, hair a country orange, voic...Read more of this...



by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself, when into known delight
His unaccomplisht joy he would put fo...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...square and wall'd:
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it:
But Enoch shunn'd the middle walk and stole
Up by the wall, behind the yew; and thence
That which he better might have shunn'd, if griefs
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw. 

For cups and silver on the burnish'd board
Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth:
And on the right hand of the hearth he saw
Philip, the slighted suitor of...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...f no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revi...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
And bide my doom.' So Lancelot got her horse, 
Set her thereon, and mounted on his own, 
And then they rode to the divided way, 
There kissed, and parted weeping: for he past, 
Love-loyal to the least wish of the Queen, 
Back to his land; but she to Almesbury 
Fled all night long by glimmering waste and weald, 
And heard the Spirits of the waste and weald 
Moan as she fled, or thought she heard them moan: 
And in herself she moaned `Too late, too late!' 
Till in the cold...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...e, they thought, 
Where Venice twenty years the Turk had fought, 
While the first year our navy is but shown, 
The next divided, and the third we've none. 
They, by the name, mistook it for that isle 
Where Pilgrim Palmer travelled in exile 
With the bull's horn to measure his own head 
And on Pasipha?'s tomb to drop a bead. 
But Morice learn'd dem?nstrates, by the post, 
This Isle of Candy was on Essex' coast. 

Fresh messengers still the sad news assure; 
More t...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...pe; and with hope farewell, fear; 
Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost; 
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least 
Divided empire with Heaven's King I hold, 
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign; 
As Man ere long, and this new world, shall know. 
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face 
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair; 
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed 
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld. 
For heavenly minds from...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...! Fond wish!couldst thou support 
That burden, heavier than the earth to bear; 
Than all the world much heavier, though divided 
With that bad Woman? Thus, what thou desirest, 
And what thou fearest, alike destroys all hope 
Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable 
Beyond all past example and future; 
To Satan only like both crime and doom. 
O Conscience! into what abyss of fears 
And horrours hast thou driven me; out of which 
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged! ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...roach and scorn, 
The grand-child, with twelve sons encreased, departs 
From Canaan, to a land hereafter called 
Egypt, divided by the river Nile; 
See where it flows, disgorging at seven mouths 
Into the sea: To sojourn in that land 
He comes, invited by a younger son 
In time of dearth; a son, whose worthy deeds 
Raise him to be the second in that realm 
Of Pharaoh: There he dies, and leaves his race 
Growing into a nation, and now grown 
Suspected to a sequent king, who se...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...nly for the Music,
then us'd with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the Poem, and
therefore not material; or being divided into Stanza's or Pauses
they may be call'd Allaeostropha. Division into Act and Scene
referring chiefly to the Stage (to which this work never was
intended) is here omitted.

 It suffices if the whole Drama be found not produc't beyond the
fift Act, of the style and uniformitie, and that commonly call'd the
Plot, whether intricate or explicit...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...r, such as is used by barbers . . .
He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made
By a turner, and having divided it in half and
Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself
With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass,"
Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection once removed.
The glass chose to reflect only what he saw
Which was enough for his purpose: his image
Glazed, embalmed, p...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...m his deadly quiver 
When flies that shaft, and fly it must, 
That parts all else, shall doom for ever 
Our hearts to undivided dust!" 

XII. 

He lived — he breathed — he moved — he felt; 
He raised the maid from where she knelt; 
His trance was gone — his keen eye shone 
With thoughts that long in darkness dwelt; 
With thoughts that burn — in rays that melt. 
As the streams late conceal'd 
By the fringe of its willows, 
When it rushes reveal'd 
In the light of its b...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
..., 
And had puffed away forever,
Blown into the air with sighing. 
Ah! deluded Shawondasee!
Thus the Four Winds were divided 
Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis 
Had their stations in the heavens, 
At the corners of the heavens; 
For himself the West-Wind only 
Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis....Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ye see, that wisdom nor richess,
Beauty, nor sleight, nor strength, nor hardiness
Ne may with Venus holde champartie*, *divided possession 
For as her liste the world may she gie*. *guide
Lo, all these folk so caught were in her las* *snare
Till they for woe full often said, Alas!
Suffice these ensamples one or two,
Although I could reckon a thousand mo'.

The statue of Venus, glorious to see
Was naked floating in the large sea,
And from the navel down all cover'd...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...Anglo-Saxon was their name--
Till out of blossomed Normandy another pirate came;
For Duke William conquered England and divided with his men,
And our Lower River-field he gave to William of Warenne.

But the Brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy autumn night 
And tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right.
So, said William to his Bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds:
"Hob, what about that River-bit--the Brook's got up no bounds? "

 And that age...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...br> from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearanc...Read more of this...

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