Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Fancy Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Shakespeare, William
...the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew--
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,
And, privileged by age, desires to know
In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis p...Read more of this...



by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...gave sweet serenity, 
And sunshine to the soul, of each wise sage, 
Fam'd patriarch, and holy man of God, 
Who in the infancy of time did walk 
With step unerring, through those dreary shades, 
Which veil'd the world e'er yet the golden sun 
Of revelation beam'd. Seth, Enos, and 
The family of him preserv'd from death 
By flood of waters. Abram and that swain 
Who erst exil'd in Midian did sing 
The world from chaos rising, and the birth 
Of various nature in the eart...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...on?
Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?"
Then, with a blush, she added, "Alas for my credulous fancy!
Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning."
But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he answered,--
"Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me without meaning.
Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.
Therefore tru...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...
It made it seem as if there must be something
She must have missed herself. So they were married,
And took the fancy home with them to live by.

 They went on pilgrimage once to her father's
(The house one story high in front, three stories
On the side it presented to the road)
To see if there was not some special tree
She might have overlooked. They could find none,
Not so much as a single tree for shade,
Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard.
She t...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...nds forlorn. 70 

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell 
To toll me back from thee to my sole self! 
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 75 
Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep 
In the next valley-glades: 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 
Fled is that music:¡ªdo I wake or sleep? 80 ...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...sed through ways 
That brought me on a sudden to the tree 
Of interdicted knowledge: fair it seemed, 
Much fairer to my fancy than by day: 
And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood 
One shaped and winged like one of those from Heaven 
By us oft seen; his dewy locks distilled 
Ambrosia; on that tree he also gazed; 
And 'O fair plant,' said he, 'with fruit surcharged, 
'Deigns none to ease thy load, and taste thy sweet, 
'Nor God, nor Man? Is knowledge so despised? 
'Or envy...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
..., the more to sooth 
Him with her loved society; that now, 
As with new wine intoxicated both, 
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel 
Divinity within them breeding wings, 
Wherewith to scorn the earth: But that false fruit 
Far other operation first displayed, 
Carnal desire inflaming; he on Eve 
Began to cast lascivious eyes; she him 
As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn: 
Till Adam thus 'gan Eve to dalliance move. 
Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste, 
And e...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...dream,' she said,
`Not sad, but sweet.' 

`So sweet, I lay,' said he,
`And mused upon it, drifting up the stream
In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced
The broken vision; for I dream'd that still
The motion of the great deep bore me on,
And that the woman walk'd upon the brink:
I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it:
"It came," she said, "by working in the mines:"
O then to ask her of my shares, I thought;
And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head.
And ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...o no such length.
At the same time you can’t deny it makes
It not a mite worse, sitting here, we three,
Playing our fancy, to have the snowline run
So high across the pane outside. There where
There is a sort of tunnel in the frost
More like a tunnel than a hole—way down
At the far end of it you see a stir
And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift
Blown in the wind. I like that—I like that.
Well, now I leave you, people.”

“Come, Meserve,
We thought you...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion; 
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker; 
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

I resist anything better than my own diversity; 
I breathe the air, but leave plenty after me, 
And am not stuck up, and am in my place. 

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place; 
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpabl...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ce by the Greek unguesst,
That bloom'd to immortalize the Tuscan style 
When first the angel-song that faith hath ken'd
Fancy pourtray'd, above recorded oath
Of Israel's God, or light of poem pen'd;
The very countenance of plighted troth
'Twixt heaven and earth, where in one moment blend
The hope of one and happiness of both. 

8
For beauty being the best of all we know
Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
Of nature, and on joys whose earthly names
Were never told can...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ing in vain
 That the Beaver's lace-making was wrong,
Fell asleep, and in dreams saw the creature quite plain
 That his fancy had dwelt on so long.

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
 Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
 On the charge of deserting its sty.

The Witnesses proved, without error or flaw,
 That the sty was deserted when found:
And the Judge kept explaining the state of the law
 In a sof...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...RD.

The Gathering.

     I.

     Time rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore,
          Who danced our infancy upon their knee,
     And told our marvelling boyhood legends store
          Of their strange ventures happed by land or sea,
     How are they blotted from the things that be!
          How few, all weak and withered of their force,
     Wait on the verge of dark eternity,
          Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoarse,
     To swee...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...t liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it


A Memorable Fancy.

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garme...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...Pallas just above my chamber door: 
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,¡ª 
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, 45 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore: 
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" 
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 

Much I marvelled this un...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...in gentle Gales, 
A Philosophic Melancholly breathes,
And bears the swelling Thought aloft to Heaven.
Then forming Fancy rouses to conceive,
What never mingled with the Vulgar's Dream:
Then wake the tender Pang, the pitying Tear, 
The Sigh for suffering Worth, the Wish prefer'd
For Humankind, the Joy to see them bless'd,
And all the Social Off-spring of the Heart!

OH! bear me then to high, embowering, Shades;
To twilight Groves, and visionary Vales; 
To weeping Grottos,...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...e fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self same bough, & heard as the...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ilent,
Over the centuries' stream bears it the eloquent page.
Then to the wondering gaze dissolves the cloud of the fancy,
And the vain phantoms of night yield to the dawning of day.
Man now breaks through his fetters, the happy one! Oh, let him never
Break from the bridle of shame, when from fear's fetters he breaks
Freedom! is reason's cry,--ay, freedom! The wild raging passions
Eagerly cast off the bonds Nature divine had imposed.

Ah! in the tempest the anchor...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...garter!' and clapped my hands like a child.

Some one beside me turned and smiled,
And looking down at me said: "I fancy,
You're Bertie's Australian cousin Nancy.
He toId me to tell you that he'd be late 
At the Foreign Office and not to wait 
Supper for him, but to go with me, 
And try to behave as if I were he." 
I should have told him on the spot 
That I had no cousin—that I was not 
Australian Nancy—that my name 
Was Susan Dunne, and that I came 
From a small...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;
There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song,--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Fancy poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things