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Famous Downy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Poe, Edgar Allan
...faith to one love- and one moon adore-
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountains and dim plain
Her way, but left not yet her Therasaean reign.
PART II

High on a mountain of enamell'd head-
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgi...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...rsued its flight:--'Thou hast a home, 
Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,
Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.
And what am I that I should linger here,
With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?' A...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...through a Naples bonnet- 
Trash of all trash!- how can a lady don it? 
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff- 
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff 
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it." 
And, veritably, Sol is right enough. 
The general tuckermanities are arrant 
Bubbles- ephemeral and so transparent- 
But this is, now- you may depend upon it- 
Stable, opaque, immortal- all by dint 
Of the dear names that he concealed within 't....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...nd nine pale moons had breathed their orisons
To the chaste stars their confessors, or told
Their dearest secret to the downy moth
That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth

Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes
And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked
As though the lading of three argosies
Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked,
And darkness straightway stole across the deep,
Sheathed was Orion's sword, dread Mars himself fled ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...eat wits in Spanish, Tuscan, and Malay.

XVIII.
How was it these same ledger-men could spy
Fair Isabella in her downy nest?
How could they find out in Lorenzo's eye
A straying from his toil? Hot Egypt's pest
Into their vision covetous and sly!
How could these money-bags see east and west?--
Yet so they did--and every dealer fair
Must see behind, as doth the hunted hare.

XIX.
O eloquent and famed Boccaccio!
Of thee we now should ask forgiving boon,
And of thy ...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Mary Darby
...show'r, 
All nature, feels the renovating hour, 
All, but the sorrowing child of cold ADVERSITY; 
For her, the linnet's downy throat 
Breathes harmony in vain; 
Unmov'd, she hears the warbling note 
In all the melody of song complain; 
By her unmark'd the flowret's bloom, 
In vain the landscape sheds perfume; 
Her languid form, on earth's damp bed, 
In coarse and tatter'd garb reclines; 
In silent agony she pines; 
Or, if she hears some stranger's tread, 
To a dark nook, asha...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...pine; 
Make not your rosary of yew-berries 5 
Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be 
Your mournful Psyche nor the downy owl 
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; 
For shade to shade will come too drowsily  
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10 

But when the melancholy fit shall fall 
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud  
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all  
And hides the green hill in an April shroud; 
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...dly turn to thee;
And thou shalt deck my couch with flow'rs, 
And wing with joy my silent hours. 

When Sleep, with downy hand, shall spread
A wreath of poppies round my head; 
Then, FANCY, on her wing sublime,
Shall waft me to the sacred clime
Where my enlighten'd sense shall view,
Thro' ether realms of azure hue, 
That flame, where SHAKESPEARE us'd to fill, 
With matchless fire, his "golden quill." 
While, from its point bright Genius caught
The wit supreme, the glo...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ruits they fell, 
Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs 
Yielded them, side-long as they sat recline 
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers: 
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind, 
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream; 
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles 
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems 
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league, 
Alone as they. About them frisking played 
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
With regal ornament; the middle pair 
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round 
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold 
And colours dipt in Heaven; the third his feet 
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail, 
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood, 
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled 
The circuit wide. Straight knew him all the bands 
Of Angels under watch; and to his state, 
And to his message high, in honour rise; 
For on ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...emn nightingale 
Ceased warbling, but all night tun'd her soft lays: 
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed 
Their downy breast; the swan with arched neck, 
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows 
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit 
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower 
The mid aereal sky: Others on ground 
Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds 
The silent hours, and the other whose gay train 
Adorns him, coloured with the florid hu...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...knowledge he must pass; there he her met, 
Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand 
A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled, 
New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused. 
To him she hasted; in her face excuse 
Came prologue, and apology too prompt; 
Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed. 
Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay? 
Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived 
Thy presence; agony of love till now 
Not felt, nor shall be twic...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...ots;
For that, to tell the sober truth
Sould be the privilege of youth;
But aged bones are better sped
To heaven from a downy bed.

So prop me up with pillows two,
And serve me with the barley brew;
And put a pencil in my hand,
A copy book at my command;
And let my final effort be
To ring a rhyme of homely glee.

For since I've loved it oh so long,
Let my last labour be in song;
And when my pencil falters down,
Oh may a final couplet crown
The years of striving I have...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...the boy who came out here
To breathe the air one winter—had a room
Down at the Averys’? Well, one sunny morning
After a downy storm, he passed our place
And found me banking up the house with snow.
And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,
Piling it well above the window-sills.
The snow against the window caught his eye.
‘Hey, that’s a pretty thought’—those were his words.
‘So you can think it’s six feet deep outside,
While you sit warm and read up balanced rati...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...s tribes!
--Tranquil seclusion I have vainly sought;
Peace, who delights solitary shade,
No more will spread for me her downy wings,
But, like the fabled Danaïds--or the wretch,
Who ceaseless, up the steep acclivity,
Was doom'd to heave the still rebounding rock,
Onward I labour; as the baffled wave,
Which yon rough beach repulses, that returns
With the next breath of wind, to fail again.--
Ah! Mourner--cease these wailings: cease and learn,
That not the Cot sequester'd, ...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...ods
Of chesnut, pine, and oak: as on these hills
Is yonder little thoughtless shepherd lad,
Who, on the slope abrupt of downy turf
Reclin'd in playful indolence, sends off
The chalky ball, quick bounding far below;
While, half forgetful of his simple task,
Hardly his length'ning shadow, or the bells'
Slow tinkling of his flock, that supping tend
To the brown fallows in the vale beneath,
Where nightly it is folded, from his sport
Recal the happy idler.--While I gaze
On his...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...pare,
     To seek my true love through the air!
     I will not lend that savage groom,
     To break his fall, one downy plume!
     No!—deep amid disjointed stones,
     The wolves shall batten on his bones,
     And then shall his detested plaid,
     By bush and brier in mid-air stayed,
     Wave forth a banner fail and free,
     Meet signal for their revelry.'
     XXIV

     'Hush thee, poor maiden, and be still!'
     'O! thou look'st kindly, and I will....Read more of this...

by Alcott, Louisa May
...and fictions of 
The goose with golden eggs. 

But best of all the little fowls 
Still playing on the shore, 
Soft downy chicks and goslings gay, 
Chirped out, "Dear Goose, lay more." 

But goosey all these weary years 
Had toiled like any ant, 
And wearied out she now replied 
"My little dears, I can't. 

"When I was starving, half this corn 
Had been of vital use, 
Now I am surfeited with food 
Like any Strasbourg goose." 

So to escape too many friends, 
W...Read more of this...

by Killigrew, Anne
...usick is harsh, all Mirth is an offence, 
The Choicest Meats cannot delight his Sense, 

Hard as the Earth he feels his Downy Bed,
His Pillow stufft with Thornes, that bears his Head, 
He rolls from side to side, in vain seeks Rest;
For if sleep comes at last to the Distrest, 
His Troubles then cease not to vex him too, 
But Dreams present, what he does waking do. 
On th'other side, if he obtains the Prey, 
And Fate to his impetuous Sute gives way, 
Be he or Rich, or Amor...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ice rung the Bell, the Slipper knock'd the Ground,
And the press'd Watch return'd a silver Sound.
Belinda still her downy Pillow prest, 
Her Guardian Sylph prolong'd the balmy Rest. 
'Twas he had summon'd to her silent Bed
The Morning-Dream that hover'd o'er her Head.
A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau,
(That ev'n in Slumber caus'd her Cheek to glow)
Seem'd to her Ear his winning Lips to lay,
And thus in Whispers said, or seem'd to say.

Fairest o...Read more of this...

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