Famous Fetter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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230. The Fête Champêtre

...flowers, and busking bowers,
 They heard the blackbird’s sang, man:
A vow, they sealed it with a kiss,
 Sir Politics to fetter;
As their’s alone, the patent bliss,
 To hold a Fête Champêtre.


Then mounted Mirth, on gleesome wing
 O’er hill and dale she flew, man;
Ilk wimpling burn, ilk crystal spring,
 Ilk glen and shaw she knew, man:
She summon’d every social sprite,
 That sports by wood or water,
On th’ bonie banks of Ayr to meet,
 And keep this Fête Champêtre.


Cauld Bor...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


An Ode To Sir Clipsby Crew

...ve Knight, and see the cell
Wherein I dwell;
And my enchantments too;
Which love and noble freedom is:--
And this
Shall fetter you.

Take horse, and come; or be so kind
To send your mind,
Though but in numbers few:--
And I shall think I have the heart
Or part
Of Clipsby Crew....Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert

Andrea del Sarto

...do,
A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.
How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example--turn your head--
All that's behind us! You don't understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak:
And that cartoon, the second from the door
--It is the thing, Love! so such things should be--
Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say.
I...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Before A Crucifix

...d beat
Bosoms too lean to suckle sons
And fruitless as their orisons?

It was for this, that men should make
Thy name a fetter on men's necks,
Poor men's made poorer for thy sake,
And women's withered out of sex?
It was for this, that slaves should be,
Thy word was passed to set men free?

The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls
Now deathward since thy death and birth.
Hast thou fed full men's starved-out souls?
Hast thou brought freedom upon earth?
Or are there less oppression...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Beowulf (Modern English)

...e more greatly that you might
have seen him yourself, the fiend in his fittings,
wearied and frightened. I thought to fetter him
forthwith with tight bonds on his death-bed
so that he lay here, struggling for life in my hand-grip,
unless he should relinquish his body…
I could not entrap him, when the Measurer didn’t consent,
delaying his departure. I didn’t apply myself to him
strongly enough, my deadly opponent—
Too savagely strong was the fiend in his foot-power.
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Captivity

...st,
The lion in chains;
To the bird that is captive a vision
Of woodland remains.

One strains with his strength at the fetter,
In impotent rage;
One flutters in flights of a moment,
And beats at the cage.

If the lion were loosed from the fetter,
To wander again;
He would seek the wide silence and shadow
Of his jungle in vain.

He would rage in his fury, destroying;
Let him rage, let him roam!
Shall he traverse the pitiless mountain,
Or swim through the foam?

If they opened...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy

Clothes chapter X

...odesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean. 

And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind? 

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair....Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

Dialogue Between a Sovereign and a One-Pound Note

...g nothing but old rags at home, Sir.

Your scampering began from the moment Parson Van,
Poor man, made us one in Love's fetter;
"For better or for worse"
Is the usual marriage curse,
But ours is all "worse" and no "better."

In vain are laws pass'd,
There's nothing holds you fast
Tho' you know, sweet Sovereign, I adore you --
At the smallest hint in life,
Your forsake your lawful wife,
As other Sovereigns did before you.

I flirt with Silver, true --
But what can ladies do,
W...Read more of this...
by Moore, Thomas

Enough

...with him;
Enough that over us by night
 The same great roof of stars is dim.

I do not hope to bind the wind
 Or set a fetter on the sea --
It is enough to feel his love
 Blow by like music over me....Read more of this...
by Teasdale, Sara

Eyes And Tears

...r own Dew.

So Magdalen, in Tears more wise
Dissolv'd those captivating Eyes,
Whose liquid Chains could flowing meet
To fetter her Redeemers feet.

Not full sailes hasting loaden home,
Nor the chast Ladies pregnant Womb,
Nor Cynthia Teeming show's so fair,
As two Eyes swoln with weeping are.

The sparkling Glance that shoots Desire,
Drench'd in these Waves, does lose it fire.
Yea oft the Thund'rer pitty takes
And here the hissing Lightning slakes.

The Incense was to Heaven d...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

Freedom XIV

...des and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light. 

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom....Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

Hymn to Pan

...n, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan ! Io Pan !
Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Iam awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The go...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister

Little Of Me

...my love every moment. 

Let only that little be left of me 
whereby I may never hide thee. 
Let only that little of my fetters be left 
whereby I am bound with thy will, 
and thy purpose is carried out in my life---and that is the fetter of thy love....Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

My Typewriter

...a shout bang gaily out
The 'word unique' you sought.

"I've heard you groan and grunt and moan
That rhyme's a wretched fetter;
That after all you're just a small
Fat-headed verse-begetter;
You'd balance me upon your knee
Like any lady friend,
Then with a sigh you'd lay me by
For weeks and weeks on end.

"I've known when you were mighty blue
And hammered me till dawn,
Dire poverty! But I would be
The last thing you would pawn.
Days debt-accurst! Then at its worst
The sky, beh...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Sestina VIII

...soft moan to vex the pitying wind?In baffling nets the light-wing'd galeI'd fetter as it blows,The vernal rose that scents the valeI'd cull on wintery snows;Still I'd ne'er hope that mind to moveWhich dares defy the wiles of verse, and Love. Anon. 1777....Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Stanzas for the Times

...y whom are borne 
The mantles which the dead have worn? 

And shall we crouch above these graves, 
With craven soul and fettered lip? 
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves, 
And tremble at the driver's whip? 
Bend to the earth our pliant knees, 
And speak but as our masters please? 

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? 
Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow? 
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, 
The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, 
Turn back the spirit roused to sa...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The City of Sleep

...us! --
 We must go back with Policeman Day--
 Back from the City of Sleep!

Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
 Fetter and prayer and plough--
They that go up to the Merciful Town,
 For her gates are closing now.
It is their right in the Baths of Night
 Body and soul to steep,
But we--pity us! ah, pity us!
 We wakeful; oh, pity us!--
We must go back with Policeman Day--
 Back from the City of Sleep!

Over the edge of the purple down,
 Ere the tender dreams begin,
Look...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Everlasting Mercy

...not the whole. 

This state is dull and evil, both, 
I keep it in the path of growth; 
You think the Church an outworn fetter; 
Kane, keep it, till you've built a better. 
And keep the existing social state; 
I quite agree it's out of date, 
One does too much, another shirks, 
Unjust, I grant; but still. . . it works. 
To get the whole world out of bed 
And washed, and dressed, and warmed, and fed, 
To work, and back to bed again, 
Believe me, Saul, costs worlds of pain. 
Th...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Prisoner

...ove the blinding sand, 
The sweeping rapture of the desert blast
Across long ranges of untrodden land! 

Yet still they fetter not my thought! In dreams
I, desert-born, tread the hot wastes once more, 
Quench my deep thirst in cool, untainted streams,
And shake the darkness with my kingly roar!...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

The Slaves Dream

...er's whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;
For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep,
And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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