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Famous Float Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Robert
...fall!

XXXI.

What did I say?---that a small bird sings
All day long, save when a brown pair
Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings
Strained to a bell: 'gainst noon-day glare
You count the streaks and rings.

XXXII.

But at afternoon or almost eve
'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows,
Its bosom does so heave.

XXXIII.

Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...s nest, from bough to bough
Hopped the shy finch, and the huge tortoise crept across the
slough.

On the faint wind floated the silky seeds
As the bright scythe swept through the waving grass,
The ouzel-cock splashed circles in the reeds
And flecked with silver whorls the forest's glass,
Which scarce had caught again its imagery
Ere from its bed the dusky tench leapt at the dragon-fly.

But little care had he for any thing
Though up and down the beech the squirrel pla...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...o wonder that the stars he sees not there. 
 Giants the spiders are, that weave with care 
 Their hideous webs, which float the joists amid, 
 Joists whose dark ends in griffins' jaws are hid. 
 The light is lurid, and the air like death, 
 And dark and foul. Even Night holds its breath 
 Awhile. One might suppose the door had fear 
 To move its double leaves—their noise to hear. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 WHAT MORE WAS TO BE SEEN. 
 
 But the great hall of generations dead 
...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
Pnom Penh to Nakon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran. 
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day's release 
>from pain, cars float downside the bridge trestle 
and uncounted building-wall windows multiplied a mile 
deep into ash-delicate sky beguile 
my empty mind. A seagull passes alone wings 
spread silent over roofs. 

- May 20, 1975 Mayaguez Crisis ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back to the pasture by the pool, and soon
Through the green leaves will float the hum of murmuring bees at
noon.

Soon will the glade be bright with bellamour,
The flower which wantons love, and those sweet nuns
Vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture
Will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations
With mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind,
And straggling traveller's-joy each hedge with yellow stars will
bind.

Dear bride ...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...everything that hath a vermeil hue,
Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,
And let the clouds of even and of morn
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills;
Let the red wine within the goblet boil,
Cold as a bubbling well; let faint-lipp'd shells,
On sands, or in great deeps, vermilion turn
Through all their labyrinths; and let the maid
Blush keenly, as with some warm kiss surpris'd.
Chief isle of the embowered Cyclades,
Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,
A...Read more of this...

by Ali, Muhammad
...I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...tream of the might of the tune,
Gliding like a dream in the light of the moon,
Bears them all away, and away, and away,
Floating in the trance of the dance.

Then begins a measure stately,
Languid, slow, serene;
All the dancers move sedately,
Stepping leisurely and straitly,
With a courtly mien;
Crossing hands and changing places,
Bowing low between,
While the minuet inlaces
Waving arms and woven paces,--
Glittering damaskeen.
Where is she whose form is folden
In its ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...nd sail!

19
O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys! 
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on, 
To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports, 
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,) 
A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...er now upon thy swelling tide,
Pine-forest-like, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow.

O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies; 
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs—their white bellies bulge to the
 sun—they do not ask who seizes fast to them; 
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch; 
They do not think whom they souse with spray. 

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
 in the market; 
I loiter, enjoying his rep...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...t, 
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; 
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the Soul. 

Now I reëxamine philosophies and religions, 
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and
 along
 the
 landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization; 
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him; 
The past, the future, ma...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...hone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide....Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...find no refuge from distress,  But in the milder grief of pity.   Remembrance! as we float along,  For him suspend the dashing oar,  And pray that never child of Song  May know his freezing sorrows more.  How calm! how still! the only sound,  The dripping of the oar suspended!  —The evening darkness gathers round  By virtue's holiest powers atte...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...made.
     The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
     Emerging from entangled wood,
     But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
     Like castle girdled with its moat;
     Yet broader floods extending still
     Divide them from their parent hill,
     Till each, retiring, claims to be
     An islet in an inland sea.
     XIV.

     And now, to issue from the glen,
     No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
     Unless he climb with footing nice
     A far-projectin...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...h, or else a kemelin*, *brewing-tub
For each of us; but look that they be large,
In whiche we may swim* as in a barge: *float
And have therein vitaille suffisant
But for one day; fie on the remenant;
The water shall aslake* and go away *slacken, abate
Aboute prime* upon the nexte day. *early morning
But Robin may not know of this, thy knave*, *servant
Nor eke thy maiden Gill I may not save:
Ask me not why: for though thou aske me
I will not telle Godde's privity.
Suff...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...apes:--and each was at her beck.

And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
Clipped in a floating net a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept.
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept--
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds--
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the animals!

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! 
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and the cohering is
 for
 it; 
And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and materials are
 altogether
 for it...Read more of this...

by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
ans bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried mas...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own....Read more of this...

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