Famous Fast Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Fast poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous fast poems. These examples illustrate what a famous fast poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...en, the hatred of the hall-stalker.
Afterwards he who wished to escape from the fiend
held himself aloof, farther and faster from the hall. (ll. 138-43)
So ruled Grendel, and struggled against the right,
alone against all, until the best of halls stood idle.
The time was great, a season of twelve winters,
that the friend of the Scyldings suffered misery,
every woe, the broadest sorrows. Therefore it became
an open secret to men, to the sons of humanity,
through mis...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...s of flying dawn,
Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn.
Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed,
And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran
Like a young fawn unto an olive wood
Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;
And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
For oftentimes with boyish careless shout
The green and crested grebe he would pu...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...he poor, or the blessed image of Mary.
Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its moss-grown
Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the horses.
Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the barns and the farm-yard,
There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;
There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,
Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame
Voic...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry on.
The world moves fast and it would rather pass by.
Then to stop and see what makes one cry,
so painful and sad.
And sometimes...
I Cry
and no one cares about why. ...Read more of this...
by
Shakur, Tupac
...ot long before:
No train is his beyond a single page,
Of foreign aspect, and of tender age.
Years had roll'd on, and fast they speed away
To those that wander as to those that stay;
But lack of tidings from another clime
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time.
They see, they recognise, yet almost deem
The present dubious, or the past a dream.
He lives, nor yet is past his manhood's prime,
Though sear'd by toil, and something touch'd by time;
His faults, whate'er t...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...
by
Ali, Muhammad
...able month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 45
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mus¨¨d rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...n through his side, press’d deep, turn’d in the wound,
Again we back off—I see him settle again—the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises, he spouts blood—I see him swim in circles narrower and narrower, swiftly
cutting the water—I see him die;
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls flat and still in
the
bloody foam.
10
O the old manhood of me, my joy!
My children and grand-children—my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, maj...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...mples and ribs.
The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the
sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them;
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
in the market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuffle and break-down.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...irt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;
"He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
And burn our beards in hell.
"But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam
Than rise with all your gods.
"What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne
And asks if he is dead?
"Sirs, I ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
... The tears into his eyes were brought, And thanks and praises seemed to run So fast out of his heart, I thought They never would have done. —I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning. Alas! the gratitude of men Has oftner left me mourning. LINES Written in early Spring. I heard a thousand blended notes,&n...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...On earth, till heaven were open to enter in."
67
Dreary was winter, wet with changeful sting
Of clinging snowfall and fast-flying frost;
And bitterer northwinds then withheld the spring,
That dallied with her promise till 'twas lost.
A sunless and half-hearted summer drown'd
The flowers in needful and unwelcom'd rain;
And Autumn with a sad smile fled uncrown'd
From fruitless orchards and unripen'd grain.
But could the skies of this most desolate year
In its last month lear...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...t, Sir Percivale,
Whom Arthur and his knighthood called The Pure,
Had passed into the silent life of prayer,
Praise, fast, and alms; and leaving for the cowl
The helmet in an abbey far away
From Camelot, there, and not long after, died.
And one, a fellow-monk among the rest,
Ambrosius, loved him much beyond the rest,
And honoured him, and wrought into his heart
A way by love that wakened love within,
To answer that which came: and as they sat
Beneath a world-old y...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ts are bent on deadly sin; A green-grown pond she just has pass'd, And from the brink she hurries fast, Lest she should drown herself therein. And now she sits her down and weeps; Such tears she never shed before; "Oh dear, dear pony! my sweet joy! Oh carry back my idiot boy! And we will ne'er o'erload thee more." A thought it come into her head; "The ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...he right way thither,
And to a drunken man the way is slither*. *slippery
And certes in this world so fare we.
We seeke fast after felicity,
But we go wrong full often truely.
Thus we may sayen all, and namely* I, *especially
That ween'd*, and had a great opinion, *thought
That if I might escape from prison
Then had I been in joy and perfect heal,
Where now I am exiled from my weal.
Since that I may not see you, Emily,
I am but dead; there is no remedy."
Upon that other side...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ained full in view.
Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed,
Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,
Fast on his flying traces came,
And all but won that desperate game;
For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch,
Vindictive toiled the bloodhounds stanch;
Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
Nor farther might the quarry strain
Thus up the margin of the lake,
Between the precipice and brake,
O'er stock and rock ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...“what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fanc...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...e first, grey, Glances of the Dawn,
Looks wild, and wonders at the wintry Waste.
THE Year, yet pleasing, but declining fast,
Soft, o'er the secret Soul, 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...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...ven,
I'll try to coax our Cerberus up to heaven!'
LI
Here Michael interposed: 'Good saint! and devil!
Pray, not so fast; you both outrun discretion.
Saint Peter! you were wont to be more civil!
Satan! excuse this warmth of his expression,
And condescension to the vulgar's level:
Event saints sometimes forget themselves in session.
Have you got more to say?' — 'No.' — If you please
I'll trouble you to call your witnesses.'
LII
Then Satan turn'd and waved his swa...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...not so;
I was defrauded even of the past.
Our days had been so pitifully few,
Fight as I would, I found the dead go fast.
I had lost all—had lost not love alone,
But the bright knowledge it had been my own.
XLI
Oh, sad people, buy not your past too dearly,
Live not in dreams of the past, for understand,
If you remember too much, too long, too clearly,
If you grasp memory with too heavy a hand,
You will destroy memory in all its glory
For the sake of the dream...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
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