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Famous Flourish Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bradstreet, Anne
...missions shall fall to decay,
263 And Pursuivants and Catchpoles want their pay.
264 So shall thy happy Nation ever flourish,
265 When truth and righteousness they thus shall nourish.
266 When thus in Peace, thine Armies brave send out
267 To sack proud Rome, and all her vassals rout.
268 There let thy name, thy fame, and valour shine,
269 As did thine Ancestors' in Palestine,
270 And let her spoils full pay with int'rest be
271 Of what unjustly once she poll'd fr...Read more of this...



by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ew 
Which fell on Zion hill; it loves the care 
Of humble shepherds, and the rural swain, 
And tended by their hands it flourishes 
With fruit and blossoms, and soon gives a shade, 
Beneath which ev'ry traveller shall rest, 
Safe from the burning east-wind and the sun. 
A vernal shade not with'ring like the gourd 
Of him who warned Nineveh, but like 
The aged oaks immortal on the plain 
Of Kadesh, or tall cedars on the hill 
Of Lebanon, and Hermon's shady top. 


High...Read more of this...

by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...e 
Where learning next her early visit paid, 
And spread her glories to illume the world, 
No more of Athens, where she flourished, 
And saw her sons of mighty genius rise 
Smooth flowing Plato, Socrates and him 
Who with resistless eloquence reviv'd 
The Spir't of Liberty, and shook the thrones 
Of Macedon and Persia's haughty king. 
No more of Rome enlighten'd by her beams, 
Fresh kindling there the fire of eloquence, 
And poesy divine; imperial Rome! 
Whose wide domini...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...n the list 
Of worthies, on God's ways insist, 
 The genuine word repeat: 
Vain are the documents of men, 
And vain the flourish of the pen 
 That keeps the fool's conceit. 

 L 
PRAISE above all—for praise prevails; 
Heap up the measure, load the scales, 
 And good to goodness add: 
The gen'rous soul her Saviour aids, 
But peevish obloquy degrades; 
 The Lord is great and glad. 

 LI 
For ADORATION all the ranks 
Of angels yield eternal thanks, 
 And DAVID in the mid...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...that when it chides doth cherish!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Onelie through you the tree of life doth flourish.

Who hath the hand which, without stroke, subdueth!
Who long-dead beautie with increase reneueth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Onely at you all enuie hopelesse rueth.

Who hath the haire, which, loosest, fastest tieth!
Who makes a man liue, then glad when he dieth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Only of y...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...throne, sublime and high; east, west, 
 And north and south, at corners four, there rest 
 Four mounts; Aptar, where flourishes the pine, 
 And Toxis, where the elms grow green and fine; 
 Crobius and Bleyda, giants in their might, 
 Against the stormy winds to stand and fight, 
 And these above its diadem uphold 
 Night's living canopy of clouds unrolled. 
 
 The herdsman fears, and thinks its shadow creeps 
 To follow him; and superstition keeps 
 Such hold that...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...d faded on the blowing of the horn.


III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...nough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.


 V. The Road at My Door

An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.

A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul.

 Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyes
The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;
The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,
And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands.
Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,
And with her flow'ry riches deck the plain;
Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,
And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd:
Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar ...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...nts
Be blasted from the sky;
Their glory fades, their courage faints
And all their projects die.

[What though they flourish tall and fair,
They have no root beneath;
Their growth shall perish in despair,
And lie despised in death.]

[So corn that on the house-top stands
No hope of harvest gives;
The reaper ne'er shall fill his hands,
Nor binder fold the sheaves.

It springs and withers on the place;
No traveller bestows
A word of blessing on the grass,
Nor minds ...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...o strong,
Amid this selfish bustling throng,
How will it faint and tire!

That tender love so warm and deep,
How can it flourish here below?
What bitter floods of tears must steep
The stony soil where it would grow!
O earth! a rocky breast is thine ­
A hard soil and a cruel clime,
Where tender plants must droop and pine,
Or alter with transforming time.
That soul, that clings to sympathy,
As ivy clasps the forest tree,
How can it stand alone?
That heart so prone to overfl...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...e vacuum of a dream
Becomes continually replete as the source of dreams
Is being tapped so that this one dream
May wax, flourish like a cabbage rose,
Defying sumptuary laws, leaving us
To awake and try to begin living in what
Has now become a slum. Sydney Freedberg in his
Parmigianino says of it: "Realism in this portrait
No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . . . 
However its distortion does not create
A feeling of disharmony . .Read more of this...

by Bible, The
...22:006:011 I went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits of the
           valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the
           pomegranates budded.

22:006:012 Or ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of
           Amminadib.

22:006:013 Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look
           upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the
           company of two armies.

22:007:001...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...land.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more:
His best ...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...hanges oft mine eyes have seen.
5.28 In various times of state I've also been.
5.29 I've seen a Kingdom flourish like a tree
5.30 When it was rul'd by that Celestial she,
5.31 And like a Cedar others so surmount
5.32 That but for shrubs they did themselves account.
5.33 Then saw I France, and Holland sav'd, Calais won,
5.34 And Philip and Albertus half undone.
5.35 I saw all peace at home, terror to foes,
5.36 But ah, I saw ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
.... 
And those of the name Stark gathered in Bow, 
A rock-strewn town where farming has fallen off, 
And sprout-lands flourish where the axe has gone. 
Someone had literally run to earth 
In an old cellar hole in a by-road 
The origin of all the family there. 
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe 
That now not all the houses left in town 
Made shift to shelter them without the help 
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard. 
They were at Bow, but th...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...
          Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine!
     Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
          Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
               Heaven send it happy dew,
               Earth lend it sap anew,
          Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow,
               While every Highland glen
               Sends our shout back again,
          'Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!'

     Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the ...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...python's skin
Can make wrought every nerve to ecstasy,
And I was wind and sky again, and sea,
And all sweet things that flourish, being free.

Till all at once the music changed its key.

And now it was of bitterness and death,
The cry the lash extorts, the broken breath
Of liberty enchained; and yet there ran
Through all a harmony of faith in man,
A knowledge all would end as it began.
All sights and sounds and aspects of my race
Accompanied this melody, kept pac...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...not found me so remiss; 
But lightly issuing thro', 
I would have paid her kiss for kiss, 
With usury thereto." 

O flourish high, with leafy towers, 
And overlook the lea, 
Pursue thy loves among the bowers 
But leave thou mine to me. 

O flourish, hidden deep in fern, 
Old oak, I love thee well; 
A thousand thanks for what I learn 
And what remains to tell. 

" ÔTis little more: the day was warm; 
At last, tired out with play, 
She sank her head upon her arm 
An...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...seen us lie here, as by the law we were bid."
Slumber calmly, ye loved ones! for sprinkled o'er by your life-blood,
Flourish the olive-trees there, joyously sprouts the good seed.
In its possessions exulting, industry gladly is kindled.
And from the sedge of the stream smilingly signs the blue god.
Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly;
Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load.
Winged by the lever, the stone from t...Read more of this...

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