Famous Expanses Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Devils

by Alexander Pushkin
 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.

-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We...Read more of this...

Maktoob

by Alan Seeger
 A shell surprised our post one day 
And killed a comrade at my side. 
My heart was sick to see the way 
He suffered as he died. 

I dug about the place he fell, 
And found, no bigger than my thumb, 
A fragment of the splintered shell 
In warm aluminum. 

I melted it, and made a mould, 
And poured...Read more of this...

Carillon

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

Then, with deep sonorous clangor
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck...Read more of this...

El Extraviado

by Alan Seeger
 Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. 


I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes 
On the way of...Read more of this...

Human Knowledge

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Since thou readest in her what thou thyself hast there written,
And, to gladden the eye, placest her wonders in groups;--
Since o'er her boundless expanses thy cords to extend thou art able,
Thou dost think that thy mind wonderful Nature can grasp.
Thus the astronomer draws his figures over the heavens,
So that he may with more ease traverse the infinite space,
Knitting together...Read more of this...

Au Bal

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to Horace Sheridan-Bickers]

A vision of flushed faces, shining limbs,
The madness of the music that entrances
All life in its delirium of dances!
The white world glitters in the void, and swims
Through the infinite seas of transcendental trances.
Yea! all the hoarded seed of all my fancies
Bursts in a shower of suns! The wine-cup brims
And bubbles over; I drink deep hymns
Of sorceries,...Read more of this...

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