Famous Flee Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Fluttered Wings

by Christina Rossetti
 The splendour of the kindling day, 
The splendor of the setting sun, 
These move my soul to wend its way, 
And have done 
With all we grasp and toil amongst and say. 

The paling roses of a cloud, 
The fading bow that arches space, 
These woo my fancy toward my shroud, 
Toward the place 
Of faces veil’d, and heads...Read more of this...

A Tale of Two Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
 On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
 Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
 Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the...Read more of this...

A Dialogue

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I
DEATH, if thou wilt, fain would I plead with thee:
Canst thou not spare, of all our hopes have built,
One shelter where our spirits fain would be,
Death, if thou wit?

No dome with suns and dews impearled and gilt,
Imperial: but some roof of wildwood tree,
Too mean for sceptre's heft or swordblade's hilt.

Some low sweet roof where love might live, set free
From...Read more of this...

They Flee from Me

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
   With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
   That now are wild and do not remember
   That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune,...Read more of this...

Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation of the Christian

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Vicisti, Galilæe
I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of...Read more of this...

Flee On Your Donkey

by Anne Sexton
 Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...

Size and Tears

by Lewis Carroll
 When on the sandy shore I sit,
Beside the salt sea-wave,
And fall into a weeping fit
Because I dare not shave -
A little whisper at my ear
Enquires the reason of my fear.

I answer "If that ruffian Jones
Should recognise me here,
He'd bellow out my name in tones
Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out)."

Ah...Read more of this...

Cleopatra

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.

Her great curled hair makes luminous
Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin.
Shall she not have the hearts of us
To shatter, and the loves therein
To shred between her fingers thus?

Small ruined broken...Read more of this...

Psalm 84 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 God and his church; or, Grace and glory.

Great God, attend, while Zion sings
The joy that from thy presence springs:
To spend one day with thee on earth
Exceeds a thousand days of mirth.

Might I enjoy the meanest place
Within thy house, O God of grace,
Not tents of ease, nor thrones of power,
Should tempt my feet to leave thy door.

God is our sun,...Read more of this...

Dream Song 9: Deprived of his enemy shrugged to a standstill

by John Berryman
 Deprived of his enemy, shrugged to a standstill
horrible Henry, foaming. Fan their way
toward him who will
in the high wood: the officers, their rest,
with p. a. echoing: his girl comes, say,
conned in to test

if he's still human, see,
therefore she get on the Sheriff's mike & howl
'Come down, come down'.
Therefore he un-budge, furious. He'd flee
but only Heaven hangs over him foul.
At...Read more of this...

Broughty Ferry

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ancient Castle of Broughty Ferry
With walls as strong as Londonderry;
Near by the sea-shore,
Where oft is heard and has been heard the cannon's roar
In the present day and days of yore,
Loudly echoing from shore to shore. 

From your impregnable ramparts high
Like the loud thunder in the sky
Enough to frighten a foreign foe away
That would dare to come up the river...Read more of this...

Consort with honest and intelligent men. Flee a thousand

by Omar Khayyam
Consort with honest and intelligent men. Flee a thousand
miles away from the ignorant. If a man of mind
give thee poison, drink it; if an ignorant one present
thee an antidote, pour it upon the ground....Read more of this...

Friendship

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Friend!--the Great Ruler, easily content,
Needs not the laws it has laborious been
The task of small professors to invent;
A single wheel impels the whole machine
Matter and spirit;--yea, that simple law,
Pervading nature, which our Newton saw.

This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein,
Their radiant labyrinths to weave around
Creation's mighty hearts: this made the chain,
Which into interwoven systems bound
All spirits streaming...Read more of this...

My Bear

by Robert William Service
 I never killed a bear because
I always thought them critters was
 So kindo' cute;
Though round my shack they often came,
I'd raise my rifle and take aim,
 But couldn't shoot.
Yet there was one full six-feet tall
Who came each night and gobbled all
 The grub in sight;
On my pet garden truck he'd feast,
Until I thought I must at least
 Give him...Read more of this...

To flee from memory

by Emily Dickinson
 To flee from memory
Had we the Wings
Many would fly
Inured to slower things
Birds with surprise
Would scan the cowering Van
Of men escaping
From the mind of man...Read more of this...

The Song of the Old Guard

by Rudyard Kipling
 Army Reform-.After Boer war "The Army of a Dream"-Traffics and Discoveries.


Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
 And all the clouds are gone--
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
 Good times are coming on"--
The evil that was threatened late
 To all of our degree
Hath passed in discord and debate,
 And,Hey then up go we!

A common people strove in vain
 To...Read more of this...

No Passenger was known to flee --

by Emily Dickinson
 No Passenger was known to flee --
That lodged a night in memory --
That wily -- subterranean Inn
Contrives that none go out again --...Read more of this...

A Humble Heroine

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas at the Seige of Matagarda, during the Peninsular War,
That a Mrs Reston for courage outshone any man there by far;
She was the wife of a Scottish soldier in Matagarda Port,
And to attend to her husband she there did resort. 

'Twas in the Spring of the year 1810,
That General Sir Thomas Graham occupied Matagarda with 150 men;
These consisted of...Read more of this...

Prayer

by Richard Crashaw
 I ASK good things that I detest,
With speeches fair;
Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
But hear my prayer.

I say ill things I would not say -
Things unaware:
Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
And not my prayer.

My heart is evil in Thy sight:
My good thoughts flee:
O Lord, I cannot wish aright -
Wish Thou for me.

O bend my words and...Read more of this...

Sir Richards Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 (A. D. 1066)
 I followed my Duke ere I was a lover,
 To take from England fief and fee;
 But now this game is the other way over--
 But now England hath taken me!

 I had my horse, my shield and banner,
 And a boy's heart, so whole and free;
 But now I sing in another manner--
 But now...Read more of this...

Imperial Revels

by Victor Hugo
 ("Courtisans! attablés dans le splendide orgie.") 
 
 {Bk. I. x., Jersey, December, 1852.} 


 Cheer, courtiers! round the banquet spread— 
 The board that groans with shame and plate, 
 Still fawning to the sham-crowned head 
 That hopes front brazen turneth fate! 
 Drink till the comer last is full, 
 And never hear in revels' lull,...Read more of this...

Before Storm

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 There's a grayness over the harbor like fear on the face of a woman,
The sob of the waves has a sound akin to a woman's cry,
And the deeps beyond the bar are moaning with evil presage
Of a storm that will leap from its lair in that dour north-eastern sky. 

Slowly the pale mists rise, like ghosts of the sea,...Read more of this...

Music

by Charles Baudelaire
 MUSIC doth uplift me like a sea 
Towards my planet pale, 
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity 
I lift my wandering sail. 

With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, 
And through the cordage wail, 
I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me 
Beneath her sombre veil. 

I feel the tremblings of all passions known 
To ships...Read more of this...

The Last Supper

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before...Read more of this...

For thee, that which is best is to flee from the seeking

by Omar Khayyam
For thee, that which is best is to flee from the seeking
of knowledge and devotion; to finger the tresses of
thy ravishing friend; to pour into the cup the blood
of the vine ere time has spilled thine own....Read more of this...

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