Famous Fan Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Paper Windmill

by Amy Lowell
 The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane 
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of 
the square
glistened like mica. In the trees, a breeze danced and 
pranced,
and shook drops of sunlight like falling golden coins into the brown 
water
of the canal. Down stream slowly drifted a long string 
of galliots
piled with crimson cheeses. The little...Read more of this...

The Aged Aged Man

by Lewis Carroll
 I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.

He said, "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto...Read more of this...

72. Song—Young Peggy Blooms

by Robert Burns
 YOUNG Peggy blooms our boniest lass,
 Her blush is like the morning,
The rosy dawn, the springing grass,
 With early gems adorning.
Her eyes outshine the radiant beams
 That gild the passing shower,
And glitter o’er the crystal streams,
 And cheer each fresh’ning flower.


Her lips, more than the cherries bright,
 A richer dye has graced them;
They charm th’ admiring gazer’s sight,
 And...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

My Favourite Fan

by Robert William Service
 Being a writer I receive
Sweet screeds from folk of every land;
Some are so weird you'd scarce believe,
And some quite hard to understand:
But as a conscientious man
I type my thanks to all I can. 

So when I got a foreign scrawl
That spider-webbed across the page,
Said I: "This is the worst of all;
No doubt a child of tender age
Has written it,...Read more of this...

Crucible

by Carl Sandburg
 Hot gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl.

Yellow trickles in a fan figure, scatters a line of skirmishers, spreads a chorus of dancing girls, performs blazing ochre evolutions, gathers the whole show into one stream, forgets the past and rolls on.

The sea mist green of the bowl’s bottom is a dark throat of SKY...Read more of this...

Rapture -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 From earth I seem to wing my flight,
And sun myself in Heaven's pure light,
When thy sweet gaze meets mine
I dream I quaff ethereal dew,
When my own form I mirrored view
In those blue eyes divine!

Blest notes from Paradise afar,
Or strains from some benignant star
Enchant my ravished ear:
My Muse feels then the shepherd's hour
When silvery tones of magic power
Escape those lips...Read more of this...

Train Ride

by John Wheelwright
 For Horace Gregory

After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
still white; though dead in its warm bloom;
always the enemy is the foe at home.
And I wondered what surgery could recover
our lost, long stride of indolence and leisure
which is labor...Read more of this...

Summer

by John Clare
 See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here. 
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd, 
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade. 
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours, 
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs; 
When weary reapers quit the sultry field, 
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield. 
This...Read more of this...

Ode to the Memory of Burns

by Thomas Campbell
 Soul of the Poet ! wheresoe'er,
Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality ;
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.

And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and Strife, at Burn's name,
Exorcised by his memory ;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame,
And high delicious revelry.

And...Read more of this...

A Lovers Quarrel

by Robert Browning
 I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit's cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love...Read more of this...

Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress

by Richard Crashaw
 Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my...Read more of this...

New Years Eve

by Robert William Service
 It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear;
 Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow;
And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year,
 Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and gaunt and slow.

They're playing a tune in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there
 (God!...Read more of this...

The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me

by Eavan Boland
 It was the first gift he ever gave her,
buying it for five five francs in the Galeries
in pre-war Paris. It was stifling.
A starless drought made the nights stormy.

They stayed in the city for the summer.
The met in cafes. She was always early.
He was late. That evening he was later.
They wrapped the fan. He looked at his watch.

She looked down...Read more of this...

Exmoor

by Amy Clampitt
 Lost aboard the roll of Kodac-
olor that was to have super-
seded all need to remember
Somerset were: a large flock

of winter-bedcover-thick-
pelted sheep up on the moor;
a stile, a church spire, 
and an excess, at Porlock,

of tenderly barbarous antique
thatch in tandem with flower-
beds, relentlessly pictur-
esque, along every sidewalk;

a millwheel; and a millbrook 
running down brown as beer.
Exempt from the disaster.
however, as...Read more of this...

F was a fan

by Edward Lear
F  was a fanMade of beautiful stuff;And when it was used,It went puffy-puff-puff!  f! Nice little fan....Read more of this...

Fan-Piece For Her Imperial Lord

by Ezra Pound
 O fan of white silk,
clear as frost on the grass-blade,

You also are laid aside....Read more of this...

An Old Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 So long as 'neath the Kalka hills
 The tonga-horn shall ring,
So long as down the Solon dip
 The hard-held ponies swing,
So long as Tara Devi sees
 The lights of Simla town,
So long as Pleasure calls us up,
 Or Duty drivese us down,
 If you love me as I love you
 What pair so happy as we two?

So long as...Read more of this...

Urbs Sacra Aeterna

by Oscar Wilde
 Rome! what a scroll of History thine has been;
In the first days thy sword republican
Ruled the whole world for many an age's span:
Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen,
Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen;
And now upon thy walls the breezes fan
(Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!)
The hated flag of red and white and...Read more of this...

Cascade

by Robert Desnos
 What sort of arrow split the sky and this rock?
It's quivering, spreading like a peacock's fan
Like the mist around the shaft and knot less feathers
Of a comet come to nest at midnight.

How blood surges from the gaping wound,
Lips already silencing murmur and cry.
One solemn finger holds back time, confusing
The witness of the eyes where the deed is written.

Silence? We...Read more of this...

Ai

by Denise Duhamel
 There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five.
There's a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice
just won the National Book Award.
The name "Ai" is pronounced "I"
so that whenever I talk about the poet Ai
such as I'm teaching Ai's poems again this semester
it sounds like I'm teaching my own poems
or when I say I love Ai's work
it...Read more of this...

To Mæcenas

by Phillis Wheatley
 Mæcenas, you, beneath the myrtle shade,
Read o'er what poets sung, and shepherds play'd.
What felt those poets but you feel the same?
Does not your soul possess the sacred flame?
Their noble strains your equal genius shares
In softer language, and diviner airs.

 While Homer paints, lo! circumfus'd in air,
Celestial Gods in mortal forms appear;
Swift as they move hear each recess rebound, 
Heav'n...Read more of this...

Pau-Puk-Keewis

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these...Read more of this...

The Fan

by Dame Edith Sitwell
 LOVELY Semiramis 
Closes her slanting eyes: 
Dead is she long ago. 
From her fan, sliding slow, 
Parrot-bright fire's feathers, 
Gilded as June weathers, 
Plumes bright and shrill as grass 
Twinkle down; as they pass 
Through the green glooms in Hell 
Fruits with a tuneful smell, 
Grapes like an emerald rain, 
Where the full moon has lain, 
Greengages bright as...Read more of this...

Madmen

by Billy Collins
 They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...

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