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Famous Expansion Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Allingham, William
...s 
Out of the storehouse of soil and clime, 
To fashion a Tree in due course of time; 
Tree with rough bark and boughs' expansion, 
Where the Crow can build his mansion, 
Or a Man, in some new May, 
Lie under whispering leaves and say, 
"Are the ills of one's life so very bad 
When a Green Tree makes me deliciously glad?" 
As I do now. But where shall I be 
When this little Seed is a tall green Tree?...Read more of this...



by Donne, John
...lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me,...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...
Look down on ravines.
The vision can travel
From gable to gable,
Italianate mansion
And turretted stable,
A sylvan expansion
So varied and jolly
Where laurel and holly
Commingle their greens.

Serene on a Sunday
The sun glitters hotly
O'er mills that on Monday
With engines will hum.
By tramway excursion
To Dore and to Totley
In search of diversion
The millworkers come;
But in our arboreta
The sounds are discreeter
Of shoes upon stone -
The worshippers wending
To ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...en.
On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye.
To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.

But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;
A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall:
The rich buffet well-colour'd serpents grace,
And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
Is this a dinner? this a genial...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...findeth,
and loving self best, loveth better than himself,
is his own better self, his live lovable idea,
flowering by expansion in the loves of his life.
And in the nobility of our earthly friendships
we hav al grades of attainment, and the best may claim
perfection of kind; and so, since ther be many bonds
other than breed (friendships of lesser motiv, found
even in the brutes) and since our politick is based
on actual association of living men, 'twil come
that the spi...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...o add to Beeston’s five this year. 

Yorkshire Forward advertises nation-wide

The north’s attractions for business expansion

Nothing fits together any more 

Addicts in doorways trying to score

The new Porsches and the new poor

Air-conditioned thirty-foot limos, fibre-optic lit,

Uniformed chauffeurs fully trained in close protection

And anti-hijack techniques, simply the best –

See for yourself in mirrored ceilings.

See for yourself the screaming youth

Soarin...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...ld that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. 

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether? 

And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. 

And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing. 

When you pray y...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...; 40 

But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion  
Clothed with celestial grace; 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 
Shall we behold her face. 

And though at times impetuous with emotion 45 
And anguish long suppressed  
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean  
That cannot be at rest ¡ª 

We will be patient and assuage the feeling 
We may not wholly stay; 50 
By silence sanctifying not concealing  
The grief that must have way....Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
...re sent back off to the frontier. At the border posts, shed blood becomes a sea, The martial emperor's dream of expansion has no end. Have you not seen the two hundred districts east of the mountains, Where thorns and brambles grow in countless villages and hamlets? Although there are strong women to grasp the hoe and the plough, They grow some crops, but there's no order in the fields. What's more, we soldiers of Qin withstand the bitterest fighti...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...nd brushing my face
for the breeze i think is not so fleshless
nor your fingers so earthy as the rose

and then like an expansion in the blood
sometimes in the restless reflections of the boat
leaning in company across the rail i feel
another sea coming in at the elbows of your coat...Read more of this...

by Chatterton, Thomas
...g train, 
Stretch'd to the distant edge of Galca's plain; 
So when arrived at Gaigra's highest steep, 
We view the wide expansion of the deep; 
See in the gilding of her wat'ry robe, 
The quick declension of the circling globe; 
From the blue sea a chain of mountains rise, 
Blended at once with water and with skies; 
Beyond our sight in vast extension curl'd, 
The check of waves, the guardians of the world. 
Strong were the warriors, as the ghost of Cawn, 
Who threw the H...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...h is greater than wisdom. 

It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself, 

While you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days. 

It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave. 

There are no graves here. 

These mountains and plains are a cradle and a stepping-stone. 

Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing h...Read more of this...

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