Famous Freer Poems by Famous Poets

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

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My Most Distinguished Guest And Learned Friend

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 My most Distinguished Guest and Learned Friend,
The pallid hare that runs before the day
Having brought your earnest counsels to an end
Now have I somewhat of my own to say:
That it is folly to be sunk in love,
And madness plain to make the matter known,
There are no mysteries you are verger of;
Everyman's wisdoms these are, and my own.
If I have...Read more of this...

Laus Deo

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel:
God's own voice is...Read more of this...

Seascape With Sun And Eagle

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 Freer
than most birds
an eagle flies up
over San Francisco
freer than most places
soars high up
floats and glides high up
in the still
open spaces

flown from the mountains
floated down
far over ocean
where the sunset has begun
a mirror of itself

He sails high over
turning and turning
where seaplanes might turn
where warplanes might burn

He wheels about burning
in the red sun
climbs and glides
and doubles back upon himself
now over ocean
now over...Read more of this...

The Sonnets To Orpheus: XIX

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Though the world keeps changing its form
as fast as a cloud, still
what is accomplished falls home
to the Primeval.

Over the change and the passing,
larger and freer,
soars your eternal song,
god with the lyre.

Never has grief been possesed,
never has love been learned,
and what removes us in death

is not revealed.
Only the song through the land
hallows and heals....Read more of this...

Sic Vita

by Henry David Thoreau
 I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 
A bunch of violets without their roots, 
And sorrel intermixed, 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots, 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay...Read more of this...

Gustav Richter

by Edgar Lee Masters
 After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Seemed to be raising them on trial,
As if after-while to be transplanted
To a larger garden of freer air.
And I was disembodied vision
Amid a light, as it were the sun
Had...Read more of this...

As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free

by Walt Whitman
 1
AS a strong bird on pinions free, 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving, 
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America, 
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, 
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...

The Unequal Fetters

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Cou'd we stop the time that's flying
Or recall itt when 'tis past
Put far off the day of Dying
Or make Youth for ever last
To Love wou'd then be worth our cost. 

But since we must loose those Graces
Which at first your hearts have wonne
And you seek for in new Faces
When our Spring of Life is done
It wou'd but urdge our...Read more of this...

Trilogy of Passion: II. ELEGY

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 When man had ceased to utter his lament,

 A god then let me tell my tale of sorrow.

WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on...Read more of this...

The Battle

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Heavy and solemn,
A cloudy column,
Through the green plain they marching came!
Measure less spread, like a table dread,
For the wild grim dice of the iron game.
The looks are bent on the shaking ground,
And the heart beats loud with a knelling sound;
Swift by the breasts that must bear the brunt,
Gallops the major along the front--
"Halt!"
And fettered they stand at the stark...Read more of this...

A Word for the Hour

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
On one hand into fratricidal fight,
Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
Frame lies...Read more of this...

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