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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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by Burns, Robert
...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.


C...Read more of this...



by Herrick, Robert
...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 Browning, Robert
...ilight-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.Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...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 oppres...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...dRush'd in hot haste, and dream'd the perilous mainWith scourge and fetter to chastise and chain,—What see'st? Wild wailing o'er their husbands dead,Persia's pale matrons wrapt in weeds of woe,And red with gore the gulf of Salamis!To prove our triumph certain, to foreshowThe utter ruin of our East...Read more of this...



by Levy, Amy
...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 the...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...ty 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 Moore, Thomas
...thing 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 ladi...Read more of this...

by Teasdale, Sara
...h 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 Marvell, Andrew
...n 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...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...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 Crowley, Aleister
...nd 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;
Th...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...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 Service, Robert William
...hout 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 ...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one's life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
To cede what was superfluously given.

Let me then feel no more the fateful t...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...n 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 Whittier, John Greenleaf
...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 Masefield, John
...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...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...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 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...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...

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