Famous Girdled Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Song Of Despair

...u everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo


Charmides

...rtain
Will never know of what I try to sing,
How long the last kiss was, how fond and late his lingering.

The moon was girdled with a crystal rim,
The sign which shipmen say is ominous
Of wrath in heaven, the wan stars were dim,
And the low lightening east was tremulous
With the faint fluttering wings of flying dawn,
Ere from the silent sombre shrine his lover had withdrawn.

Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
And...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Four Songs Of Four Seasons

...in the sand's red sea,
Lifts loftier her head than the red sand's drift.

And far to the fair south-westward lightens,
Girdled and sandalled and plumed with flowers,
At sunset over the love-lit lands,
The hill-side's crown where the wild hill brightens,
Saint Fina's town of the Beautiful Towers,
Hailing the sun with a hundred hands.

Land of us all that have loved thee dearliest,
Mother of men that were lords of man,
Whose name in the world's heart work a spell
My last song'...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Happy Dust

...For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter, the fold
Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, w...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister

Hiawathas Sailing

...ed in the breeze of morning, 
Saying, with a sigh of patience, 
"Take my cloak, O Hiawatha!"
With his knife the tree he girdled; 
Just beneath its lowest branches, 
Just above the roots, he cut it, 
Till the sap came oozing outward;
Down the trunk, from top to bottom, 
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, 
With a wooden wedge he raised it, 
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken.
"Give me of your boughs, O Cedar! 
Of your strong and pliant branches, 
My canoe to make more steady, 
M...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth


Humanitad

...mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.

Then up and down the f...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Inferno (English)

...silence. 
 Strong and wide 
 Before us rose a castled height, beset 
 With sevenfold-circling walls, unscalable, 
 And girdled with a rivulet round, but yet 
 We passed thereover, and the water clear 
 As dry land bore me; and the walls ahead 
 Their seven strong gates made open one by one, 
 As each we neared, that where my Master led 
 With ease I followed, although without were none 
 But deep that stream beyond their wading spread, 
 And closed those gates beyond their b...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Kubla Khan

...h caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was h...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Magdalen Walks

...ound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some 
tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow 
...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Music

...s it undefiled,--
Thou art the child
Of Amor, and by right divine
A throne of love is thine,
Thou flower-folded, golden-girdled, star-crowned Queen,
Whose bridal beauty mortal eyes have never seen!


II

Thou art the Angel of the pool that sleeps,
While peace and joy lie hidden in its deeps,
Waiting thy touch to make the waters roll
In healing murmurs round the weary soul.
Ah, when wilt thou draw near,
Thou messenger of mercy robed in song?
My lonely heart has listened for th...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van

Ravenna

...le 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 marriage-ring);
And all the flowers of our English Spring,
Fond snowdrops, and the bright-starred daffodil.
Up starts the lark beside the murmuring mill,
And breaks the gossamer-threads of early dew;
And down the river, like a flame of blue,
Keen as an arrow flies the water-king,
While the brown linnets in the greenwood sing.
A year ago...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Song of the Lotos-Eaters

...nd the bolts are hurl'd 
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd 
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: 
Where the smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, 
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, 115 
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. 
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song 
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wr...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Burden Of Itys

...d sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Cremona Violin

...or sard
Delighted her. And rings of every size
Turned smartly round like hoops before her eyes,
Amethyst-flamed or ruby-girdled, jarred
To spokes and flashing triangles, and starred
Like rockets bursting on a festal day.
Charlotta could not tear herself away.
With eyes glued tightly on a golden box,
Whose rare enamel piqued her with its hue,
Changeable, iridescent, shuttlecocks
Of shades and lustres always darting through
Its level, superimposing sheet of blue,
Charlotta did ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Deserted Garden

...I know a village in a far-off land
Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain
With tinted walls a space on either hand
And fed by many an olive-darkened lane
The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band
Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,
Winds off to that dim corner of the skies
Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.

Here, among trees whose overhanging shade
Strews petals on the little droves bel...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

The Farewell XXVIII

...ve sheltered me, 

Yet was it not your loving mindfulness of my days and my nights that made food sweet to my mouth and girdled my sleep with visions? 

For this I bless you most: 

You give much and know not that you give at all. 

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, 

And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse. 

And some of you have called me aloof, and drunk with my own aloneness, 

And you have said,...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

The Lady of the Lake

...unds no longer stood,
     Emerging from entangled wood,
     But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
     Like castle girdled with its moat;
     Yet broader floods extending still
     Divide them from their parent hill,
     Till each, retiring, claims to be
     An islet in an inland sea.
     XIV.

     And now, to issue from the glen,
     No pathway meets the wanderer's ken,
     Unless he climb with footing nice
     A far-projecting precipice.
     The br...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Lotos-eaters

...r, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a t...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Princess (part 5)

...to trust 
Since our arms failed--this Egypt-plague of men! 
Almost our maids were better at their homes, 
Than thus man-girdled here: indeed I think 
Our chiefest comfort is the little child 
Of one unworthy mother; which she left: 
She shall not have it back: the child shall grow 
To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 
I took it for an hour in mine own bed 
This morning: there the tender orphan hands 
Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence 
The wrath I nursed...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Princess (part 7)

...uch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, 
And girdled her with music. Happy he 
With such a mother! faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay.' 
'But I,' 
Said Ida, tremulously, 'so all unlike-- 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words: 
This mother is your model. I have heard 
of y...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Girdled 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
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter