Famous Folded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Childs Christmas In Wales

...erything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in w...Read more of this...
by Thomas, Dylan


A Lovers Complaint

...applying wet to wet,
Or monarch's hands that let not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.

Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet moe letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secrecy.

These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kis...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...ion of Poets.

Songs of stern defiance, ever ready, 
Songs of the rapid arming, and the march, 
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead, the flag we know, 
Warlike flag of the great Idea. 

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
I stand again in leaden rain, your flapping folds saluting; 
I sing you over all, flying, beckoning through the fight—O the hard-contested fight! 
O the cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles! the hurtled balls scream! 

The battle-front forms amid th...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Beowulf (Old English)

...the singer. He sang who knew {1d}
tales of the early time of man,
how the Almighty made the earth,
fairest fields enfolded by water,
set, triumphant, sun and moon
for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,
and braided bright the breast of earth
with limbs and leaves, made life for all
of mortal beings that breathe and move.
So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel
a winsome life, till one began
to fashion evils, that field of hell.
Grendel this monster grim was ca...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Charmides

...ea off Sunium, or cast
The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp
Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
Divide the folded curtains of the night,
And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright.

And guilty lovers in their venery
Forgat a little while their stolen sweets,
Deeming they heard dread Dian's bitter cry;
And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats
Ran to their shields in haste precipitate,
Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet.

Fo...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...chamber was, with its curtains of white, and its clothes-press
Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves were carefully folded
Linen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven.
This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband in marriage,
Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a housewife.
Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant moonlight
Streamed through the windows, and lighted the room, till the heart of the maiden
...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Humanitad

...ne
In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip do...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hyperion

...tarted on their feet; some also shouted;
Some wept, some wail'd, all bow'd with reverence;
And Ops, uplifting her black folded veil,
Show'd her pale cheeks, and all her forehead wan,
Her eye-brows thin and jet, and hollow eyes.
There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines
When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise
Among immortals when a God gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load
His tongue with the filll weight of utterless thought,
With thunder, and with mus...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Inferno (English)

...ourse allow 
 Why halt ye fearful? In such guards as thou 
 The faintest-hearted might be bold." 

 As flowers, 
 Close-folded through the cold and lightless hours, 
 Their bended stems erect, and opening fair 
 Accept the white light and the warmer air 
 Of morning, so my fainting heart anew 
 Lifted, that heard his comfort. Swift I spake, 
 "O courteous thou, and she compassionate! 
 Thy haste that saved me, and her warning true, 
 Beyond my worth exalt me. Thine I make 
 M...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...fast each fluttering fair, 
Whose steps of lightness woke no echo there: 
He lean'd against the lofty pillar nigh 
With folded arms and long attentive eye, 
Nor mark'd a glance so sternly fix'd on his, 
Ill brook'd high Lara scrutiny like this: 
At length he caught it, 'tis a face unknown, 
But seems as searching his, and his alone; 
Prying and dark, a stranger's by his mien, 
Who still till now had gazed on him unseen; 
At length encountering meets the mutual gaze 
Of keen i...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Laughter and Tears IX

...of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley. 

When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen. 

After he looked about in every direction, I heard the young man saying, "Sit by me, my beloved, and listen to my heart; smile, for your hap...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

One Last Poem For Richard

...again.
This time for good I know because I didn’t
throw you out — and anyway we waved.
No shoes. No angry doors.
We folded clothes and went
our separate ways.
You left behind that flannel shirt
of yours I liked but remembered to take
your toothbrush. Where are you tonight?

Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again
and old ghosts come back home.
I’m sitting by the Christmas tree
wondering where did we go wrong.

Okay, we didn’t work, and all
memories to tell you the t...Read more of this...
by Cisneros, Sandra

Salut au Monde

..., lying
 there
 many centuries; 
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands
 folded
 across the breast. 

I see the menials of the earth, laboring; 
I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth; 
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics; 
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth; 
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and wo...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Samson Agonistes

...dine of brass, thy broad Habergeon. 
Vant-brass and Greves, and Gauntlet, add thy Spear
A Weavers beam, and seven-times-folded shield.
I only with an Oak'n staff will meet thee,
And raise such out-cries on thy clatter'd Iron,
Which long shall not with-hold mee from thy head,
That in a little time while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thy self at Gath to boast
Again in safety what thou wouldst have done
To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.

Har: Thou durst not th...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Song of Myself

...ll not be tantalized—you conceive too much of articulation. 

Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded? 
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost; 
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams; 
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts—it keeping tally with the meaning of things, 
HAPPINESS—which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this
 day. 

My final merit I refuse you—I refuse putting from m...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bride of Abydos

...saw nor sea nor strand, 
Nor even his Pacha's turban'd band 
Mix in the game of mimic slaughter, 
Careering cleave the folded felt [13] 
With sabre stroke right sharply dealt; 
Nor mark'd the javelin-darting crowd, 
Nor heard their Ollahs wild and loud [14] — 
He thought but of old Giaffir's daughter! 

X. 

No word from Selim's bosom broke; 
One sigh Zuleika's thought bespoke: 
Still gazed he through the lattice grate, 
Pale, mute, and mournfully sedate. 
To him Zuleika's e...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Dance Of Death

...veller 
Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, 
The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. 

For he who has not folded in his arms 
A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, 
Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, 
When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. 

O irresistible, with fleshless face, 
Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: 
"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, 
Ye shall taste death, musk scented skeletons! 

Withered Antino?s, dandies wi...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles

The Lady of the Lake

...
     A various scene the clansmen made:
     Some sat, some stood, some slowly strayed:
     But most, with mantles folded round,
     Were couched to rest upon the ground,
     Scarce to be known by curious eye
     From the deep heather where they lie,
     So well was matched the tartan screen
     With heath-bell dark and brackens green;
     Unless where, here and there, a blade
     Or lance's point a glimmer made,
     Like glow-worm twinkling through the s...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...vent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes
folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the act...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Witch Of Atlas

...of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures:--sounds of air
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
will never die--yet, ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone
And the regret they leave remains alone.

And there lay Visions swift and sweet and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis;--
Some eager to burst forth; some weak and faint
With...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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