Famous Escape From Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Escape

by Robert William Service
 Tell me, Tramp, where I may go
To be free from human woe;
Say where I may hope to find
Ease of heart and peace of mind;
Is thee not some isle you know
Where I may leave Care behind?

So spoke one is sore distress,
And I answered softly: "Yes,
There's an isle so sweet and kind
So to clemency inclined,
So serene in loveliness
That the blind may...Read more of this...

I never hear the word escape

by Emily Dickinson
 I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!

I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!...Read more of this...

Intention To Escape From Him

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Edna St. Vincent Millay - Intention To Escape From Him 

I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
(Shun meditation, though; invite the controversial:
Is the world flat? Do bats eat cats?) By digging hard I might
deflect...Read more of this...

Escape

by Robert Graves
 August 6, 1916.—Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)


…but I was dead, an hour or more. 
I woke when I’d already passed the door 
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road 
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. 
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in...Read more of this...

Life in a Bottle

by Robert Browning
 Escape me?
Never--
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose...Read more of this...

Low Barometer

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.

On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;

And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their...Read more of this...

Escape is such a thankful Word

by Emily Dickinson
 Escape is such a thankful Word
I often in the Night
Consider it unto myself
No spectacle in sight

Escape -- it is the Basket
In which the Heart is caught
When down some awful Battlement
The rest of Life is dropt --

'Tis not to sight the savior --
It is to be the saved --
And that is why I lay my Head
Upon this trusty word --...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

The Miraculous Escape of Robert Allan the Fireman

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1858, and on October the fourteenth day,
That a fire broke out in a warehouse, and for hours blazed away;
And the warehouse, now destroyed, was occupied by the Messrs R. Wylie, Hill & Co.,
Situated in Buchanan Street, in the City of Glasgow. 

The flames burst forth about three o'clock in the afternoon,
And intimation of the...Read more of this...

In the Stable

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and...Read more of this...

The Tree of Laughing Bells

by Vachel Lindsay
 [A Poem for Aviators]


How the Wings Were Made

From many morning-glories 
That in an hour will fade, 
From many pansy buds 
Gathered in the shade, 
From lily of the valley 
And dandelion buds, 
From fiery poppy-buds 
Are the Wings of the Morning made. 


The Indian Girl Who Made Them

These, the Wings of the Morning, 
An Indian Maiden wove, 
Intertwining subtilely...Read more of this...

Little Sleeps-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

by Galway Kinnell
1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...Read more of this...

To One Shortly to Die

by Walt Whitman
 1
FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: 
You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, 
I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you. 

Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it, 
I do not argue—I bend my head close,...Read more of this...

The Disastrous Fire at Scarborough

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1898, and on the 8th of June,
A mother and six children met with a cruel doom
In one of the most fearful fires for some years past
And as the spectators gazed upon them they stood aghast 

The fire broke out in a hairdresser's, in the town of Scarborough,
And as the fire spread it filled the...Read more of this...

The Lay of a Golden Goose

by Louisa May Alcott
 Long ago in a poultry yard 
One dull November morn, 
Beneath a motherly soft wing 
A little goose was born. 

Who straightway peeped out of the shell 
To view the world beyond, 
Longing at once to sally forth 
And paddle in the pond. 

"Oh! be not rash," her father said, 
A mild Socratic bird; 
Her mother begged her not...Read more of this...

To prevent the escape

by Emile Verhaeren
To prevent the escape of any part of us from our embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to let love shine clear through the body itself, we go down together to the garden of the flesh.
Your breasts are there like offerings and your two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is of so much...Read more of this...

Escape

by Elinor Wylie
 When foxes eat the last gold grape, 
And the last white antelope is killed, 
I shall stop fighting and escape 
Into a little house I'll build.

But first I'll shrink to fairy size, 
With a whisper no one understands, 
Making blind moons of all your eyes, 
And muddy roads of all your hands.

And you may grope for me in vain...Read more of this...

From The Testament of Beauty

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...

Sestina VII

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VII. Non ha tanti animali il mar fra l' onde. HE DESPAIRS OF ESCAPE FROM THE TORMENTS BY WHICH HE IS SURROUNDED.  Nor Ocean holds such swarms amid his waves,Not overhead, where circles the pale moon,Were stars so numerous ever seen by night,Nor dwell so many birds among the woods,Read more of this...

Escape at Bedtime

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out 
Through the blinds and the windows and bars; 
And high overhead and all moving about, 
There were thousands of millions of stars. 
There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree, 
Nor of people in church or the Park, 
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon...Read more of this...

Peach Blossom Journey

by Wang Wei
 Fishing boat pursue water love hill spring
Both banks peach blossom arrive ancient river crossing
Travel look red tree not know far
Travel furthest blue stream not see people
Mountain mouth stealthy move begin cave profound
Mountain open spacious view spin flat land
Far see one place accumulate cloud tree
Nearby join 1000 homes scattered flower bamboo
Firewood person first express Han surname given name
Reside person not...Read more of this...

519. Ballad on Mr. Heron's Election—No. 2

by Robert Burns
 FY, let us a’ to Kirkcudbright,
 For there will be bickerin’ there;
For Murray’s light horse are to muster,
 And O how the heroes will swear!
And there will be Murray, Commander,
 And Gordon, the battle to win;
Like brothers they’ll stand by each other,
 Sae knit in alliance and kin.


And there will be black-nebbit Johnie,
 The tongue o’ the trump to...Read more of this...

Poor Earth

by Elinor Wylie
 It is not heaven: bitter seed 
Leavens its entrails with despair 
It is a star where dragons breed: 
Devils have a footing there.

The sky has bent it out of shape; 
The sun has strapped it to his wheel; 
Its course is crooked to escape 
Traps and gins of stone and steel.

It balances on air, and spins 
Snared by strong...Read more of this...

The Metamorphosis Of Plants

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THOU art confused, my beloved, at, seeing the thousandfold 
union

Shown in this flowery troop, over the garden dispers'd;
any a name dost thou hear assign'd; one after another

Falls on thy list'ning ear, with a barbarian sound.
None resembleth another, yet all their forms have a likeness;

Therefore, a mystical law is by the chorus proclaim'd;
Yes, a sacred enigma! Oh, dearest friend, could...Read more of this...

The Sin Of Hamlet

by Delmore Schwartz
 The horns in the harbor booming, vaguely,
Fog, forgotten, yesterday, conclusion,
Nostalgic, noising dim sorrow, calling
To sleep is it? I think so, and childhood,
Not the door opened and the stair descended,
The voice answered, the choice announced, the
Trigger touched in the sharp declaration!

And when it comes, escape is small; the door
Creaks; the worms of fear spread veins; the furtive
Fugitive, looking backward, sees...Read more of this...

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