Famous Flourished Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Tournament

by Sidney Lanier
 Joust First.


I.

Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.

II.

Flourished the trumpets: entered Heart,
A youth in crimson and gold.
Flourished again: Brain stood apart,
Steel-armored, dark and cold.

III.

Heart's palfrey caracoled gayly round,
Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
So cynical-calm was he.

IV.

Heart's helmet-crest...Read more of this...

Hans Sachs Poetical Mission

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [I feel considerable hesitation in venturing 
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a 
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character 
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.' 
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel- 
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays,...Read more of this...

The Blinded Bourbons

by Victor Hugo
 ("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?") 
 
 {II. v., November, 1836.} 


 Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story? 
 Or said that France, low bowed before their glory, 
 One day would mindful be 
 Of them and of their mournful fate no more, 
 Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er 
...Read more of this...

Name of Horses

by Donald Hall
 All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding 
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul 
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, 
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields, 
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with...Read more of this...

Mr. Dana of the New York Sun

by Eugene Field
 Thar showed up out'n Denver in the spring uv '81
A man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun.
His name wuz Cantell Whoppers, 'nd he wuz a sight ter view
Ez he walked inter the orfice 'nd inquired fer work ter do.
Thar warn't no places vacant then,--fer be it understood,
That wuz the time when talent flourished at that altitood;
But...Read more of this...

Russia To The Pacifists

by Rudyard Kipling
  1918
God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
 But--leave your sports a little while--the dead are borne
 this way!
Armies dead and Cities dead, past all count or care.
God rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there?
 Singing:--Break ground for a wearied host
 That have no ground to keep.
 Give them the rest that they covet most...Read more of this...

A Study In Feeling

by Ellis Parker Butler
 To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel O’Lang.

Monsieur O’Lang had sympathy to such a great degree.
No virtuoso ever...Read more of this...

The Four Ages Of The World

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The goblet is sparkling with purpled-tinged wine,
Bright glistens the eye of each guest,
When into the hall comes the Minstrel divine,
To the good he now brings what is best;
For when from Elysium is absent the lyre,
No joy can the banquet of nectar inspire.

He is blessed by the gods, with an intellect clear,
That mirrors the world as it glides;
He has seen...Read more of this...

At Cheyenne

by Eugene Field
 Young Lochinvar came in from the West,
With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; 
The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, 
His No. 

brogans were chuck full of feet, 
His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, 
And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. 
The fair Mariana sate watching a star, 
When who...Read more of this...

Hyla Brook

by Robert Frost
 By June our brook's run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)--
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against...Read more of this...

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

by Ezra Pound
 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es. IV. 

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre 

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...

Y was a yew

by Edward Lear
Y  was a yew,Which flourished and grewBy a quiet abodeNear the side of a road. y Dark little yew!...Read more of this...

316. Song—The Banks o' Doon (First Version)

by Robert Burns
 SWEET are the banks—the banks o’ Doon,
 The spreading flowers are fair,
And everything is blythe and glad,
 But I am fu’ o’ care.
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
 That sings upon the bough;
Thou minds me o’ the happy days
 When my fause Luve was true:
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
 That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I...Read more of this...

The Chinese Nightingale

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Song in Chinese Tapestries


"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you...Read more of this...

To the Lady Margaret Ley

by John Milton
 Daughter to that good Earl, one President 
Of England’s Council and her Treasury, 
Who lived in both unstained with gold or fee, 
And left them both, more in himself content, 
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament 
Broke him, as that dishonest victory 
At Ch?ronea, fatal to liberty, 
Killed with report that old man eloquent, 
Though later born than...Read more of this...

317. Song—The Banks o' Doon (Second Version)

by Robert Burns
 YE flowery banks o’ bonie Doon,
 How can ye blume sae fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
 And I sae fu’ o care!
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
 That sings upon the bough!
Thou minds me o’ the happy days
 When my fause Luve was true.
Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonie bird,
 That sings beside thy mate;
For sae...Read more of this...

Daniel MCumber

by Edgar Lee Masters
 When I went to the city, Mary McNeely,
I meant to return for you, yes I did.
But Laura, my landlady's daughter,
Stole into my life somehow, and won me away.
Then after some years whom should I meet
But Georgine Miner from Niles -- a sprout
Of the free love, Fourierist gardens that flourished
Before the war all over Ohio.
Her dilettante lover had tired of...Read more of this...

Redbud Trail - Winter

by James Lee Jobe
 It??™s two muddy miles from Highway 20,
just past the north fork of Cache Creek,
across the broad meadow, through 
blue oak woodland, up, up to the ridge,
and back down to the creek bank,
the crossing point, me striding with
mud caking my old hiking boots.



For a millennia the Miwok people walked 
these canyons and ridges. Pomo, too.
Gathering acorns to trade, the sweetest...Read more of this...

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

by Robert William Service
 Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!

Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West;
Men from the farms and the cities, into...Read more of this...

Liberty Tree

by Thomas Paine
In a chariot of light from the regions of day,
The Goddess of Liberty came;
Ten thousand celestials directed the way,
And hither conducted the dame.
A fair budding branch from the gardens above,
Where millions with millions agree,
She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,
And the plant she named Liberty Tree.
The celestial exotic struck deep in the ground,
Like a native it...Read more of this...

The Human Tree

by G K Chesterton
 Many have Earth's lovers been,
Tried in seas and wars, I ween;
Yet the mightiest have I seen:
Yea, the best saw I.
One that in a field alone
Stood up stiller than a stone
Lest a moth should fly.

Birds had nested in his hair,
On his shoon were mosses rare,
Insect empires flourished there,
Worms in ancient wars;
But his eyes burn like a glass,
Hearing a great sea...Read more of this...

Names Of Horses

by Donald Hall
All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats.
All summer you mowed the...Read more of this...

The Twins

by Robert Browning
 Give'' and ``It-shall-be-given-unto-you.''

I.

Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables---flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?

II.

A beggar asked an alms
One day at an abbey-door,
Said Luther; but, seized with qualms,
The abbot replied, ``We're poor!

III.

``Poor, who had plenty once,
``When gifts fell thick as rain:
``But they give us nought, for the nonce,
``And how should we give again?''

IV.

Then the beggar, ``See your...Read more of this...

The Yukon

by Joaquin Miller
 THE moon resumed all heaven now, 
She shepherded the stars below 
Along her wide, white steeps of snow, 
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how. 

She bared her full white breast, she dared 
The sun e'er show his face again. 
She seemed to know no change, she kept 
Carousal constantly, nor slept, 
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared...Read more of this...

Love And Marilyn Monroe

by Delmore Schwartz
 (after Spillane)


Let us be aware of the true dark gods
Acknowledgeing the cache of the crotch
The primitive pure and pwerful pink and grey
 private sensitivites
Wincing, marvelous in their sweetness, whence rises
 the future.

Therefore let us praise Miss Marilyn Monroe.
She has a noble attitude marked by pride and candor
She takes a noble pride in the female nature and torso
She articualtes her...Read more of this...

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