Famous Frames Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Boy in Church

...“Gabble-gabble,… brethren,… gabble-gabble!” 
My window frames forest and heather. 
I hardly hear the tuneful babble, 
Not knowing nor much caring whether 
The text is praise or exhortation,
Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation. 

Outside it blows wetter and wetter, 
The tossing trees never stay still. 
I shift my elbows to catch better 
The full round sweep of heathered hill.
The tortured copse bends to and fro ...Read more of this...
by Graves, Robert


A Hymn In Honour Of Beauty

...leshly seed is eft enraced,
Through every part she doth the same impress,
According as the heavens have her graced,
And frames her house, in which she will be placed,
Fit for herself, adorning it with spoil
Of th' heavenly riches which she robb'd erewhile.

Thereof it comes that these fair souls, which have
The most resemblance of that heavenly light,
Frame to themselves most beautiful and brave
Their fleshly bower, most fit for their delight,
And the gross matter by a sovere...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

A Satyre Against Mankind

...ng his short life, void of all rest,
To the eternal, and the ever-blessed.
This busy, pushing stirrer-up of doubt,
That frames deep mysteries, then finds them out;
Filling with frantic crowds of thinking fools
The reverend bedlam's, colleges and schools;
Borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce
The limits of the boundless universe;
So charming ointments make an old witch fly,
And bear a crippled carcass through the sky.
'Tis the exalted power whose business lies
In nons...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

A Song To David

...
The quail, the brave domestic cock, 
 The raven, swan, and jay. 

 XXIV 
Of fishes—ev'ry size and shape, 
Which nature frames of light escape, 
 Devouring man to shun: 
The shells are in the wealthy deep, 
The shoals upon the surface leap, 
 And love the glancing sun. 

 XXV 
Of beasts—the beaver plods his task, 
While the sleek tigers roll and bask, 
 Nor yet the shades arouse: 
Her cave the mining coney scoops;
Where o'er the mead the mountain stoops, 
 The kids exult and ...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher

Absalom And Achitophel

...is joy conceal'd, he sets himself to show;
On each side bowing popularly low:
His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames,
And with familiar ease repeats their names.
Thus, form'd by Nature, furnish'd out with arts,
He glides unfelt into their secret hearts:
Then, with a kind compassionating look,
And sighs, bespeaking pity e'er he spoke:
Few words he said; but easy those and fit:
More slow than Hybla drops, and far more sweet.

I mourn, my country-men, your lost estate;...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John


Elegy: Walking the Line

...and rosemary,
Tithonia and zinnias between the rows;
The greenhouse by the rock wall, used for cuttings
In late spring, frames to grow them strong for planting
Through winter into summer. Early one morning
Mort called out, lying helpless by the bridge.
His ashes we let drift where the magnolia
We planted as a stem divides the path
The others lie, too young, at Silver Hill,
Except my mother. Ninety-five, she lives
Three thousand miles away, beside the bare
Pacific, in rooms th...Read more of this...
by Bowers, Edgar

Epipsychidion (excerpt)

...s golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigur'd; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food,
Like flames too pure and light and unimbu'd
To nourish their bright lives wi...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...r station descended
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village.
Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of hemlock,
Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.
Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows; and gables projecting
Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway.
There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the sunset
Lighted the village street and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,
Matr...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Eviradnus

...summer's grace, 
 The wind that ever is with mystic might 
 A spirit ripple of the Infinite. 
 The glass restored to frames to creak is made 
 By blustering wind that comes from neighboring glade. 
 Strange in this dream-like place, so drear and lone, 
 The guest expected should be living one! 
 The seven lights from seven arms make glow 
 Almost with life the staring eyes that show 
 On the dim frescoes—and along the walls 
 Is here and there a stool, or the light ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Five Bells

...were living backward, so each night 
You crept a moment closer to the breast, 
And they were living, all of them, those frames 
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth, 
And most your father, the old man gone blind, 
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck, 
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments 
And tablets cut with dreams of piety 
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men 
Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment 
At cargoes they had never thought to bear, 
Th...Read more of this...
by Slessor, Kenneth

Metro North

...r brightness,
 this February,

scumbled sky
 above graduated zones
 of decline:

dead rowhouses,
 charred windows'
 wet frames

around empty space,
 a few chipboard polemics
 nailed over the gaps,

speeches too long
 and obsessive for anyone
 on this train to read,

sealing the hollowed interiors
 --some of them grand once,
 you can tell by

the fillips of decoration,
 stone leaves, the frieze
 of sunflowers.

Desolate fields--open spaces,
 in a city where you
 can hardly tur...Read more of this...
by Doty, Mark

Miracles

...rface of the earth is spread with the same, 
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; 
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that
 concerns
 them, 
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men
 in
 them, 
What stranger miracles are there?...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...
Which the five watchful senses represent, 
She forms imaginations, aery shapes, 
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames 
All what we affirm or what deny, and call 
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires 
Into her private cell, when nature rests. 
Oft in her absence mimick Fancy wakes 
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes, 
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams; 
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late. 
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find 
Of our las...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America

...ooked just like

the 1930s.

 There were pictures of animals cut out of magazines and

tacked to the wall, with crayola frames drawn around them

and crayola picture wires drawn holding them to the wall.

They were pictures of kittens and puppies. They looked just

fine .

 There was a bowl of goldfish next to the bed, next to the

gun. How religious and intimate the goldfish and the gun

looked together.

 They had a cat named 208. They covered the bathroom

floor with newsp...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Ruins of Rome by Bellay

...' heaven itself appall, 
Alas, by little ye to nothing fly, 
The people's fable, and the spoil of all: 
And though your frames do for a time make war 
'Gainst time, yet time in time shall ruinate 
Your works and names, and your last relics mar. 
My sad desires, rest therefore moderate: 
For if that time make ends of things so sure, 
It also will end the pain, which I endure. 


8 

Through arms and vassals Rome the world subdued, 
That one would ween, that one sole City's str...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Satyr

...his short life, void of all rest, 
To the Eternal, and the ever blest. 
This busie, puzling, stirrer up of doubt, 
That frames deep Mysteries, then finds 'em out; 
Filling with Frantick Crowds of thinking Fools, 
Those Reverend Bedlams, Colledges, and Schools; 
Borne on whose Wings, each heavy Sot can pierce, 
The limits of the boundless Universe. 
So charming Oyntments, make an Old Witch flie, 
And bear a Crippled Carcass through the Skie. 
'Tis this exalted Pow'r, whose bus...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

The Fire of Drift-Wood

...pon the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
  And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,
  The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
  All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part
  Of fancies floating through the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
  That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed!  O hearts that yearned!
  They were indeed too much akin,
...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

The Lady of the Lake

...ight,
     As when the setting sun has given
     Ten thousand hues to summer even,
     And from their tissue fancy frames
     Aerial knights and fairy dames.
     Still by Fitz-James her footing staid;
     A few faint steps she forward made,
     Then slow her drooping head she raised,
     And fearful round the presence gazed;
     For him she sought who owned this state,
     The dreaded Prince whose will was fate!—
     She gazed on many a princely port
   ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Mary Gloster

...and all,
And Brussels an' Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,
And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light,
But M'Cullough he died in the Sixties, and ---- Well, I'm dying to-night...
I knew -- I knew what was coming, when we bid on the Byfleet's keel --
They piddled and piffled with iron, I'd given my orders for steel!
Steel and the first expansions. It paid, I tell you, it paid,
When we came with our nine-knot freighters and collared the long-r...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Schooner Flight

...t place, Jesus? Where is my harbor?
Where is the pillow I will not have to pay for,
and the window I can look from that frames my life?


3 Shabine Leaves the Republic

I had no nation now but the imagination.
After the white man, the niggers didn't want me
when the power swing to their side.
The first chain my hands and apologize, "History";
the next said I wasn't black enough for their pride.
Tell me, what power, on these unknown rocks -
a spray-plane Air Force, the Fire Br...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Frames poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry

Member Area

My Admin
Profile and Settings
Edit My Poems
Edit My Quotes
Edit My Short Stories
Edit My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder

Soup Social

Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us

Member Poems

Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread

Member Poets

Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest

Famous Poems

Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Famous Poets

Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War

Poetry Resources

Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter