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Famous Flow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...race and ev'ry virtue dwells, 
And where the springs of knowledge and of thought 
In riv'lets clear and gushing streams flow down 
Attempt a strain? How sing in rapture high 
Or touch in vari'd melody the lyre 
The lyre so long neglected and each strain 
Unmeditated, and long since forgot? 
But yet constrain'd on this occasion sweet 
To this fam'd hall and this assembly fair 
With comely presence honouring the day, 
She fain would pay a tributary strain. 
A purer strain t...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...;
Immortal Heirs of Universal Praise!
Whose Honours with Increase of Ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!
Nations unborn your mighty Names shall sound,
And Worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some Spark of your Coelestial Fire
The last, the meanest of your Sons inspire,
(That on weak Wings, from far, pursues your Flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain Wits a Science little known,
T' admire Superior Sense, and ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...icken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken. 

Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion -
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean. 

And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors. 

And One (we name him not) that flies the flowers,
That dreads ...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...Sometimes when I'm alone
I Cry,
Cause I am on my own.
The tears I cry are bitter and warm.
They flow with life but take no form
I Cry because my heart is torn.
I find it difficult to carry on.
If I had an ear to confide in,
I would cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry on.
The world moves fast and it would rather pass by.
Then to stop and see what makes one cry,
so painfu...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...fairy-like from high 
The immortal lights that live along the sky: 
Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree, 
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee; 
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove, 
And Innocence would offer to her love. 
These deck the shore; the waves their channel make 
In windings bright and mazy like the snake. 
All was so still, so soft in earth and air, 
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there; 
Secure that nought of evil could delig...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...And cannot rest from planning day or night
How high I'd thrust the peaks in summer snow
To tap the upper sky and draw a flow
Of frosty night air on the vale below
Down from the stars to freeze the dew as starry.

The more the sensibilitist I am
The more I seem to want my mountains wild;
The way the wiry gang-boss liked the logjam. 
After he'd picked the lock and got it started,
He dodged a log that lifted like an arm
Against the sky to break his back for him,
Then cam...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...morning first smiles on the world; 
And let us to our fresh employments rise 
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers 
That open now their choisest bosomed smells, 
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store. 
So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was cheered; 
But silently a gentle tear let fall 
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair; 
Two other precious drops that ready stood, 
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell 
Kissed, as the gracio...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Downward as far antarctick; and in length, 
West from Orontes to the ocean barred 
At Darien ; thence to the land where flows 
Ganges and Indus: Thus the orb he roamed 
With narrow search; and with inspection deep 
Considered every creature, which of all 
Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found 
The Serpent subtlest beast of all the field. 
Him after long debate, irresolute 
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose 
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ar ago I breathed the Italian air, -
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marr...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...e sum, and just as one
Gets accustomed to a noise that
Kept one awake but now no longer does,
So the room contains this flow like an hourglass
Without varying in climate or quality
(Except perhaps to brighten bleakly and almost
Invisibly, in a focus sharpening toward death--more 
Of this later). What should be the 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 sump...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...self, I say of them.

And I know I am solid and sound; 
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow; 
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. 

I know I am deathless; 
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at
 night. 

I know I am august; 
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood; 
I see ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...the love of the turtle, 
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? 
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; 
Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, 
Wax faint o'er the gardens of G?l in her bloom; [1] 
Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute; 
Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky, 
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie, 
And ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...fe,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.<...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...s, in that sweet bower,  The periwinkle trail'd its wreathes;  And 'tis my faith that every flower  Enjoys the air it breathes.   The birds around me hopp'd and play'd:  Their thoughts I cannot measure,  But the least motion which they made,  It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.   The budding twigs spread out their fan,  To catch the breezy ai...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...wildest nook
     His solitary refuge took.
     There, while close couched the thicket shed
     Cold dews and wild flowers on his head,
     He heard the baffled dogs in vain
     Rave through the hollow pass amain,
     Chiding the rocks that yelled again.
     IX.

     Close on the hounds the Hunter came,
     To cheer them on the vanished game;
     But, stumbling in the rugged dell,
     The gallant horse exhausted fell.
     The impatient rider strove in ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...imble Fowler's Aim. -- Now Nature droops;
Languish the living Herbs, with pale Decay:
And all the various Family of Flowers
Their sunny Robes resign. The falling Fruits, 
Thro' the still Night, forsake the Parent-Bough,
That, in the first, grey, Glances of the Dawn,
Looks wild, and wonders at the wintry Waste.

THE Year, yet pleasing, but declining fast,
Soft, o'er the secret Soul, in gentle Gales, 
A Philosophic Melancholly breathes,
And bears the swelling Though...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...that Idea doth hide: 

"And he, that yearns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow: 

"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought." 

So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face. 


The Second Voice 


THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech 

She ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...bove crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...oping no one else may ever be so; 
I know my catechism; I know we're caromed 
With the best doctrines till we quite o'erflow; 
I know that all save England's church have shamm'd, 
And that the other twice two hundred churches 
And synagogues have made a damn'd bad purchase. 

XV

God help us all! God help me too! I am, 
God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish, 
And not a whit more difficult to damn, 
Than is to bring to land a late-hook'd fish, 
Or to the butcher to ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone
In their own golden beams--each like a flower
Out of whose depth a firefly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.

At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister,
Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind: such power her mighty Sire
Had girt t...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs