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Famous Fleeing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...eaming,
Spreading and sweeping and shading and flaming—
Wings, wings, eternal wings,
'Til the hot, red blood,
Flood fleeing flood,
Thundered through heaven and mine ears,
While all across a purple sky,
The last vast pinion.
Trembled to unfold.
I rose upon the Mountain of the Moon,—
I felt the blazing glory of the Sun;
I heard the Song of Children crying, "Free!"
I saw the face of Freedom—
And I died....Read more of this...



by Breton, Andre
...ife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...uncurtain's behind the great windows of space
Heav'n's jewel'd company circleth unapproachably-
'Twas at sunset that I, fleeing to hide my soul
in refuge of beauty from a mortal distress,
walk'd alone with the Muse in her garden of thought,
discoursing at liberty with the mazy dreams
that came wavering pertinaciously about me; as when
the small bats, issued from their hangings, flitter o'erhead
thru' the summer twilight, with thin cries to and fro
hunting in muffled flight at...Read more of this...

by Lazarus, Emma
...atriarch with his flocks,
The purple seas, the hot blue sky o'erhead,
The slaves of Egypt, -- omens, mysteries, --
Dark fleeing hosts by flaming angels led.

A wondrous light upon a sky-kissed mount,
A man who reads Jehovah's written law,
'Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare,
Unto a people prone with reverent awe.

The pride of luxury's barbaric pomp,
In the rich court of royal Solomon --
Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains, --
The exiles by the streams of Bab...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. 
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on 
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. 
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell 
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, 
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign-- 
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) 
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted p...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...rne
To that silent isle, which lies
Mid remembered agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be
In the sea of Life and Agony:
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit
For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a w...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow,
the distinguishable flakes
blowing sideways,
looked like krill
fleeing the maw of an advancing whale.

At least they looked that way to me
from the taxi window,
and since I happened to be sitting
that fading Sunday afternoon
in the very center of the universe,
who was in a better position
to say what looked like what,
which thing resembled some other?

Yes, it was a run of white plankton
borne down the Avenue of the...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...reath of Autumn's being¡ª 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!¡ªO thou 5 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The wing¨¨d seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 10 
(Driving sweet buds like...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...er then to do.
What was this dreadful illness solitude Had 
tortured her into?
Her hours went by in a long constant fleeing
The thought of that one morning. And her being
Bruised itself on a happening so rude.

XXXIX
It grew ripe Summer, when one morning came Her 
tirewoman with a letter, printed
Upon the seal were the Deane crest and name. With utmost gentleness, 
the letter hinted
His understanding and his deep regret. But would she not permit 
him once ...Read more of this...

by Levy, Amy
...ark death upon thy brow,
That hast hid among the mountains, that hast roamed the forest o'er,
Bred to hiding, watching, fleeing, may thy speed avail thee now!

* * * * * * *

Still she flees, and ever fiercer tear the hungry hounds behind,
Still she flees, and ever faster follow there the huntsmen on,
Still she flees, her black hair streaming in a fury to the wind,
Still she flees, tho' all the glimmer of a happy hope is gone.
'Eh? what? baffled by a woman! Ah, sapristi! ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...so lightly that her vow she broke
And answered. So they drifted into seeing
Each other as before. There was no fleeing.
Christmas was over and the Carnival
Was very near, and tripping from each tongue
Was talk of the new opera. Each book-stall
Flaunted it out in bills, what airs were sung,
What singers hired. Pictures of the young
"Maestro" were for sale. The town was mad.
Only Charlotta felt depressed and sad.
Each day now brought a struggle ...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...o.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
 That such swift fleeing
 No soul foreseeing--
Not even I--would undo me so!...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing h...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...through blood, my brain, through pain,
-- Midst of a dim hot uproar fainting down --
Were 'ware of thee, far rearward, fleeing! Hound!"


Chapter V.

Then, as the passion of old Gris Grillon
A wave swift swelling, grew to highest height
And snapped a foaming consummation forth
With salty hissing, came the friar through
The mass. A stillness of white faces wrought
A transient death on all the hands and breasts
Of all the crowd, and men and women stood,
One instant, fi...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...hful tending, and Autumn's 
Reward in harvest. 


Come close to me, oh beloved of my soul; the 
Fire is cooling and fleeing under the ashes. 
Embrace me, for I fear loneliness; the lamp is 
Dim, and the wine which we pressed is closing 
Our eyes. Let us look upon each other before 
They are shut. 
Find me with your arms and embrace me; let 
Slumber then embrace our souls as one. 
Kiss me, my beloved, for Winter has stolen 
All but our moving lips. 


Y...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...he heaven stark and cold; 
No, but a nest of bending reeds, 
Flowering grass and scented weeds; 
Or like a traveller's fleeing tent, 
Or bow above the tempest beet; 
Built of tears and sacred ffames, 
And virtue reaching to its aims; 
Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 
Silent rushes the swift Lord 
Through ruined systems still restored, 
Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, 
Plants with worlds the wilderness; 
Waters with tears of anc...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...d as no grown-folk are,
Cold of kiss as some north star,
Violet from the valleys wild.
Snared as innocence must be,
Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead—
At the end of tortures dread
Roaring Cowboys set you free.

Fly, O song, to her to-day, 
Like a cowboy cross the land. 
Snatch her from Belasco's hand 
And that prison called Broadway. 

All the village swains await
One dear lily-girl demure,
Saucy, dancing, cold and pure, 
Elf who must return in state....Read more of this...

by Hughes, Ted
...ails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice. 

The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-froz...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...repertoire of blunt four-letter curses
on the team or race that makes the sprayer vexed.

Then, pushed for time, or fleeing some observer,
dodging between tall family vaults and trees
like his team's best ever winger, dribbler, swerver,
fills every space he finds with versus Vs.

Vs sprayed on the run at such a lick,
the sprayer master of his flourished tool,
get short-armed on the left like that red tick
they never marked his work with much at school.

Half this ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...hat silent isle, which lies 
'Mid remember'd agonies, 
The frail bark of this lone being), 
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 150 
And its ancient pilot, Pain, 
Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 
In the sea of Life and Agony: 
Other spirits float and flee 155 
O'er that gulf: ev'n now, perhaps, 
On some rock the wild wave wraps, 
With folding wings they waiting sit 
For my bark, to pilot it 
To some calm and blooming cove, 160 
Whe...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs