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Famous Gossamer Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...seeking the spheres, to connect them; 
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; 
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul....Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...ear from woods forlorn, 
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— 
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright 
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, 
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. 

Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun, 
Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, 
Till shade and silence waken up as one, 
And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. 
Where are the merry birds?—Away, away, 
On panting wings through the inclement skies, 
Lest owls should prey 
U...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...ng Grain-- 
We passed the Setting Sun-- 

Or rather--He passed us-- 
The Dews drew quivering and chill-- 
For only Gossamer, my Gown-- 
My Tippet--only Tulle-- 

We paused before a House that seemed 
A Swelling of the Ground-- 
The Roof was scarcely visible-- 
The Cornice--in the Ground-- 

Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet 
Feels shorter than the Day 
I first surmised the Horses' Heads 
Were toward Eternity-- ...Read more of this...

by Po, Li
...my heart.
I lifted myself in amazement, and alas!
I woke and found my bed and pillow—
Gone was the radiant world of gossamer.

So with all pleasures of life.
All things pass with the east-flowing water.
I leave you and go—when shall I return?
Let the white roe feed at will among the green crags,
Let me ride and visit the lovely mountains!
How can I stoop obsequiously and serve the mighty ones!
It stifles my soul....Read more of this...



by Tolkien, J R R
...e and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fi...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.

Her gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the burnished disk of the marigold,
Or the sunflower turning to meet the sun
When the gloom of the dark blue night is done,
And the spear of the lily is aureoled.

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...silver dust.

Now to the low leaves they cling,
Each with coy fantastic pose,
Each a petal of a rose
Straining at a gossamer string.

Then to the tall trees they climb,
Like thin globes of amethyst,
Wandering opals keeping tryst
With the rubies of the lime....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow 
there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air....Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...
You stirring even in the arctic ice,
Even at the dark ocean floor, even
In the cellular flesh of a stone.
Gas. Gossamer. My poker friends
Question your presence
In a poem by me, passing the magazine
One to another.

Not the stone and not the words, you
Like a veil over Arthur's headstone,
The passage from Proverbs he chose
While he was too ill to teach
And still well enough to read, I was
Beside the master craftsman
Delighting him day after day, ever
At play ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...agic tone, that sweetly hung
About the music of his tongue. 
Then will I skim the floating air,
On a light couch of gossamer,
While with my wonder-aching eye,
I contemplate the spangled sky, 
And hear the vaulted roof repeat
The song of Inspiration sweet; 
While round the winged cherub train,
Shall iterate the aëry strain:
Swift, thro' my quiv'ring nerves shall float
The tremours of each thrilling note; 
And every eager sense confess
Extatic transport's wild excess:
'Till...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...the daisies grow,
And the wan snowdrop sighing for the sun
On sunless days in winter, we shall know
By whom the silver gossamer is spun,
Who paints the diapered fritillaries,
On what wide wings from shivering pine to pine the eagle flies.

Ay! had we never loved at all, who knows
If yonder daffodil had lured the bee
Into its gilded womb, or any rose
Had hung with crimson lamps its little tree!
Methinks no leaf would ever bud in spring,
But for the lovers' lips that kiss,...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ring,
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! - it seems a little time
Since last I saw that lordly southern clime,
Where flower and fruit to purple radiance blow,
And like bright lamps the fabled apples glow.
Full Spring it wa...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...eather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its
suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne's silver tapestry, -
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river's marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the wo...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...crisp blooms to swagger, winglets, limpid

 debris
Shall I arrange these few remaining flowers?
Shall I rearrange these gossamer efficiencies?
Please don't touch me with your skin.
Please let the thing evaporate.
Please tell me clearly what it is.
The party is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.
It's a philosophy of life, of course,
drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air
above the heads -- how small they seem from here,
the bobbing universal ...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...my entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
“That chamber is the ghostly!”

Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous, --no web, no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.

One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...y Sublime.

And oft, when Summer breath'd ambrosial gales,
Soft sailing o'er the waste of printless dew
Or twilight gossamer, his pensive gaze
Trac'd the swift storm advancing, whose broad wing
Blacken'd the rushy dome of his low Hut;
While the pale lightning smote the pathless top
Of tow'ring CENIS, scatt'ring high and wide
A mist of fleecy Snow. Then would he hear,
(While MEM'RY brought to view his happier days)
The tumbling torrent, bursting wildly forth
From its t...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...Art? What do I know . . .
Well, look! That David Strong so well displayed,
"White Sorcery" it's called, all gossamer,
And pale moon-magic and a dancing maid
(You like the little elfin face of her?) --
That's good; but still, the picture as a whole,
The values, -- Pah! He never painted worse;
Perhaps because his fire was lacking coal,
His cupboard bare, no money in his purse.
Perhaps . . . they say he labored hard and long,
And see now, in the harve...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...and--gentleness 
To such as her! if Cyril spake her true, 
To catch a dragon in a cherry net, 
To trip a tigress with a gossamer 
Were wisdom to it.' 
'Yea but Sire,' I cried, 
'Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No: 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 
The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes, 
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down 
Gagelike to man, and had not shunned the death, 
No, not the soldier'...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...world began:
Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground,
Or the cloak of a medicine man.
A deep-crumpled gossamer web,
Fringed with the fangs of a snake.
The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs.
It shimmers on clay-hill and lake,
With the gleam of great bubbles of blood,
Or coiled like a rainbow shell....
I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march.
I am burning with Heaven and Hell.


II

The gray king died in his hour.<...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things