Famous Enclose Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Long I Thought that Knowledge

by Walt Whitman
 LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me—O if I could but obtain
 knowledge! 
Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio’s land, the southern
 savannas,
 engrossed me—For them I would live—I would be their orator; 
Then I met the examples of old and new heroes—I heard of warriors, sailors, and all
 dauntless persons—And it seemed to...Read more of this...

An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwells Return from Ireland

by Andrew Marvell
 The forward youth that would appear 
Must now forsake his Muses dear, 
Nor in the shadows sing 
His numbers languishing. 
'Tis time to leave the books in dust, 
And oil th' unused armour's rust, 
Removing from the wall 
The corslet of the hall. 
So restless Cromwell could not cease 
In the inglorious arts of peace, 
But through advent'rous war...Read more of this...

With Mercy For The Greedy

by Anne Sexton
 for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an
appointment for the Sacrament of Confesson

Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose --

I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it...Read more of this...

Dear Reader

by Billy Collins
 Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs 
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing 
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the...Read more of this...

Sonnet 95: How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

by William Shakespeare
 How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
O, what a...Read more of this...

Germs

by Walt Whitman
 FORMS, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, 
The ones known, and the ones unknown—the ones on the stars, 
The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, 
Wonders as of those countries—the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may
 be, 
Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects;
Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided...Read more of this...

Dungeon

by Rabindranath Tagore
 He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. 
I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into 
the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. 

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand...Read more of this...

An Appeal

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
England, art thou of them too
That drink of the poisonous flood,
That hide under poisonous trees?



Nay, thy name from of old,
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed
Purer we held thee than this,
Purer fain would we hold;
So goodly a glory it seemed,
A fame...Read more of this...

The Trolls Nosegay

by Robert Graves
 A simple nosegay! Was that much to ask?
(Winter still nagged, with scarce a bud yet showing.)
He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.
'Somewhere,' she cried, 'there must be blossom blowing.'
It seems my lady wept and the troll swore
By Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen -
Where she had begged one flower he'd shower fourscore,
A bunch fit to...Read more of this...

Turns And Movies: Dancing Adairs

by Conrad Aiken
 Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel, 
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight, 
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!— 
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.

Firefly's your name. You are evanescent. 
But I follow you as remorselessly as darkness, 
And shut you in and enclose you, at last, and always, 
Till you are lost,—as a...Read more of this...

Sonnet VI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET VI. Datemi pace, o duri miei pensieri. HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO A BESIEGED CITY, AND ACCUSES HIS OWN HEART OF TREASON.  O tyrant thoughts, vouchsafe me some repose!Sufficeth not that Love, and Death, and Fate,Make war all round me to my very gate,But I must in me armèd hosts enclose?Read more of this...

Dedication

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 The morn arrived; his footstep quickly scared

The gentle sleep that round my senses clung,
And I, awak'ning, from my cottage fared,

And up the mountain side with light heart sprung;
At every step I felt my gaze ensnared

By new-born flow'rs that full of dew-drops hung;
The youthful day awoke with ecstacy,
And all things quicken'd were, to quicken me.

And as I mounted, from the...Read more of this...

Now Bare To The Beholders Eye

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 NOW bare to the beholder's eye
Your late denuded bindings lie,
Subsiding slowly where they fell,
A disinvested citadel;
The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe,
The Dutchman's breeches frilled below.
Those that the lover notes to note,
And white and crackling petticoat.

From these, that on the ground repose,
Their lady lately re-arose;
And laying by the lady's name,
A living woman re-became.
Of her, that from the public eye
They do enclose...Read more of this...

Skies like a zone our weary lives enclose,

by Omar Khayyam
Skies like a zone our weary lives enclose,
And from our tear-stained eyes a Jihun flows;
Hell is a fire enkindled of our griefs;
Heaven but a moment's peace, stolen from our woes....Read more of this...

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

by Rg Gregory
  (i) introduction

  his home in ruins
  his parents gone
  frederick seeks
  to reclaim his throne

   to the golden mountain
   he sets his path
   the enchantress listening
   schemes with wrath

  four desperate trials
  which she takes from store
  to silence frederick
  for ever...Read more of this...

Looking Down in a Spring-rain

by Wang Wei
 Round a turn of the Qin Fortress winds the Wei River, 
And Yellow Mountain foot-hills enclose the Court of China; 
Past the South Gate willows comes the Car of Many Bells 
On the upper Palace-Garden Road-a solid length of blossom; 
A Forbidden City roof holds two phoenixes in cloud; 
The foliage of spring shelters multitudes from rain; 
And now,...Read more of this...

A Benediction Of The Air

by John Williams
 In every presence there is absence.

When we're together, the spaces between
Threaten to enclose our bodies
And isolate our spirits.
The mirror reflects what we are not,
And we wonder if our mate
Suspects a fatal misreading
Of our original text,
Not to mention the dreaded subtext.
Reality, we fear, mocks appearance.
Or is trapped in a hall of mirrors
Where infinite regress prevents
A grateful egress. That is,
We can...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLV: Muses Which Sadly Sit

by Michael Drayton
 Muses, which sadly sit about my chair, 
Drown'd in the tears extorted by my lines, 
With heavy sighs whilst thus I break the air, 
Painting my passions in these sad designs, 
Since she disdains to bless my happy verse, 
The strong-built trophies to her living fame, 
Ever henceforth my bosom be your hearse, 
Wherein the world shall now entomb...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

179. To Miss Ferrier enclosing Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair

by Robert Burns
 NAE heathen name shall I prefix,
 Frae Pindus or Parnassus;
Auld Reekie dings them a’ to sticks,
 For rhyme-inspiring lasses.


Jove’s tunefu’ dochters three times three
 Made Homer deep their debtor;
But, gien the body half an e’e,
 Nine Ferriers wad done better!


Last day my mind was in a bog,
 Down George’s Street I stoited;
A creeping cauld prosaic fog
 My very sense...Read more of this...

Statuary

by Nick Flynn
 Bees may be trusted, always, 
 to discover the best, nay, the only 

human, solution. Let me cite 

 an instance; an event, that, 

though occurring in nature, is still 
 in itself wholly abnormal. I refer 

to the manner in which the bees 

 will dispose of a mouse 
 or a slug 

 that may happen to...Read more of this...

Even-song

by George Herbert
 Blest be the God of love, 
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day, 
Both to be busy, and to play.
But much more blest be God above, 
Who gave me sight alone, 
Which to himself he did deny: 
For when he sees my ways, I die: 
But I have got his son, and he hath none.

What have...Read more of this...

One Perfect Rose

by Dorothy Parker
 A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's...Read more of this...

somewhere

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i...Read more of this...

Sonnet XCV

by William Shakespeare
 How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
O, what a...Read more of this...

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