Famous Flits Poems by Famous Poets

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

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That Shadow my Likeness

by Walt Whitman
 THAT shadow, my likeness, that goes to and fro, seeking a livelihood, chattering,
 chaffering; 
How often I find myself standing and looking at it where it flits; 
How often I question and doubt whether that is really me; 
—But in these, and among my lovers, and caroling my songs, 
O I never doubt whether that is really me. 5...Read more of this...

A bat flits

by Yosa Buson
 A bat flits
in moonlight
above the plum blossoms....Read more of this...

Sonnet 54

by Edmund Spenser
 Of this worlds theatre in which we stay,
My love like the spectator ydly sits
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 4

by Alexander Pope
 But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd, 
And secret passions labour'd in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin!...Read more of this...

173. Elegy on Stella

by Robert Burns
 STRAIT is the spot and green the sod
 From whence my sorrows flow;
And soundly sleeps the ever dear
 Inhabitant below.


Pardon my transport, gentle shade,
 While o’er the turf I bow;
Thy earthy house is circumscrib’d,
 And solitary now.


Not one poor stone to tell thy name,
 Or make thy virtues known:
But what avails to me-to thee,
 The sculpture of a stone?


I’ll...Read more of this...

Let Me Enjoy

by Thomas Hardy
 Minor Key


I 

Let me enjoy the earth no less 
Because the all-enacting Might 
That fashioned forth its loveliness 
Had other aims than my delight. 

II 

About my path there flits a Fair, 
Who throws me not a word or sign; 
I'll charm me with her ignoring air, 
And laud the lips not meant for mine. 

III 

From manuscripts of...Read more of this...

Ancestors

by Siegfried Sassoon
BEHOLD these jewelled merchant Ancestors 
Foregathered in some chancellery of death;
Calm provident discreet they stroke their beards
And move their faces slowly in the gloom 
And barter monstrous wealth with speech subdued 5
Lustreless eyes and acquiescent lids.
And oft in pauses of their conference 
They listen to the measured breath of night¡¯s
Hushed sweep of wind aloft the swaying trees
In dimly gesturing gardens;...Read more of this...

My Home

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 This is the place that I love the best, 
A little brown house, like a ground-bird's nest, 
Hid among grasses, and vines, and trees, 
Summer retreat of the birds and bees.

The tenderest light that ever was seen 
Sifts through the vine-made window screen-- 
Sifts and quivers, and flits and falls 
On home-made carpets and gray-hung walls.

All through June the...Read more of this...

Stanzas

by Charlotte Bronte
 IF thou be in a lonely place,
If one hour's calm be thine,
As Evening bends her placid face
O'er this sweet day's decline;
If all the earth and all the heaven
Now look serene to thee,
As o'er them shuts the summer even,
One moment­think of me ! 

Pause, in the lane, returning home;
'Tis dusk, it will be still:
Pause near the elm, a sacred gloom
Its...Read more of this...

The Vain King

by Henry Van Dyke
 In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line
Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine,
Were centred; and to him with loyal awe
The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights,...Read more of this...

A Large Number

by Wislawa Szymborska
 Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is the way it's always been:
bad with large numbers.
It is still moved by particularity.
It flits about the darkness like a flashlight beam,
disclosing only random faces,
while the rest go blindly by,
unthought of, unpitied.
Not even a Dante could have stopped that.
So what do you do when you're not,
even with all the muses on...Read more of this...

The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty

by George William Russell
 I WOULD I could weave in
 The colour, the wonder,
 The song I conceive in
 My heart while I ponder,


 And show how it came like
 The magi of old
 Whose chant was a flame like
 The dawn’s voice of gold;


 Whose dreams followed near them
 A murmur of birds,
 And ear still could hear them
 Unchanted in words.


...Read more of this...

On Death

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And...Read more of this...

haunting the quark

by Rg Gregory
 (I)
if you can’t scientifically explain it
dawkins says it has no value – some hope
inside the mechanical framework of a guess
(as far as any fact can truly grope)
doubts roam – mere looking can’t attain it

twentieth-century science perceived that mess
the more you probed the inner – more the scope
for chaos (uncertainty) – no mind could drain it
tie it to a marriage...Read more of this...

Mine Enemy is growing old --

by Emily Dickinson
 Mine Enemy is growing old --
I have at last Revenge --
The Palate of the Hate departs --
If any would avenge

Let him be quick -- the Viand flits --
It is a faded Meat --
Anger as soon as fed is dead --
'Tis starving makes it fat --...Read more of this...

The Source

by W S Merwin
 The sleep that flits on baby's eyes-does anybody know from where
it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where,
in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with
glow-worms, there hang two shy buds of enchantment. From there it
comes to kiss baby's eyes.
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps-does
anybody know where...Read more of this...

Banish Air from Air --

by Emily Dickinson
 Banish Air from Air --
Divide Light if you dare --
They'll meet
While Cubes in a Drop
Or Pellets of Shape
Fit
Films cannot annul
Odors return whole
Force Flame
And with a Blonde push
Over your impotence
Flits Steam....Read more of this...

To a soubrette

by Eugene Field
 'Tis years, soubrette, since last we met;
And yet--ah, yet, how swift and tender
My thoughts go back in time's dull track
To you, sweet pink of female gender!
I shall not say--though others may--
That time all human joy enhances;
But the same old thrill comes to me still
With memories of your songs and dances.

Soubrettish ways these latter days
Invite my praise, but never get...Read more of this...

Merrow Down

by Rudyard Kipling
 There runs a road by Merrow Down--
 A grassy track to-day it is--
An hour out Guildford town,
 Above the river Wey it is.

Here, when they heard the hors-bells ring,
 The ancient Britons dressed and rode
To which the dark Phoenicians bring
 Their goods along the Western Road.

Yes, here, or hereabouts, they met
 To hold their racial talks and such--
To barter...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 298] SONNET LXXI. Del cibo onde 'l signor mio sempre abbonda. HE DESCRIBES THE APPARITION OF LAURA.  Food wherewithal my lord is well supplied,With tears and grief my weary heart I've fed;As fears within and paleness o'er me spread,Oft thinking on its fatal wound and wide:But in...Read more of this...

The Love a Life can show Below

by Emily Dickinson
 The Love a Life can show Below
Is but a filament, I know,
Of that diviner thing
That faints upon the face of Noon --
And smites the Tinder in the Sun --
And hinders Gabriel's Wing --

'Tis this -- in Music -- hints and sways --
And far abroad on Summer days --
Distils uncertain pain --
'Tis this enamors in the East --
And tints the...Read more of this...

To Contemplation

by Robert Southey
 Faint gleams the evening radiance thro' the sky,
The sober twilight dimly darkens round;
In short quick circles the shrill bat flits by,
And the slow vapour curls along the ground.

Now the pleas'd eye from yon lone cottage sees
On the green mead the smoke long-shadowing play;
The Red-breast on the blossom'd spray
Warbles wild her latest lay,
And sleeps along the dale the silent breeze.
Calm...Read more of this...

The Progress of Spring

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...

Delight -- becomes pictorial --

by Emily Dickinson
 Delight -- becomes pictorial --
When viewed through Pain --
More fair -- because impossible
Than any gain --

The Mountain -- at a given distance --
In Amber -- lies --
Approached -- the Amber flits -- a little --
And That's -- the Skies --...Read more of this...

The Man-Moth

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for "mammoth."

 Here, above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her...Read more of this...

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