Famous Grounds Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...observed as they flew--
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew,
And, privileged by age, desires to know
In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.

So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promised in the charity of age.

'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


A Satyre Against Mankind

...pierce
The flaming limits of the universe,
Search heaven and hell, Find out what's acted there,
And give the world true grounds of hope and fear."

Hold mighty man, I cry, all this we know,
From the pathetic pen of Ingelo;
From Patrlck's Pilgrim, Sibbes' Soliloquies,
And 'tis this very reason I despise,
This supernatural gift that makes a mite
Think he's an image of the infinite;
Comparing his short life, void of all rest,
To the eternal, and the ever-blessed.
This busy, push...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Autobiography

...1 I haven't gone to the places most people visit
 mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
 but I've had my coffee grounds read
my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
 in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothing says it will
I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that
and I wouldn't want such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to th...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim

Beowulf (Modern English)

...ne. I have performed many mighty deeds
in my youth. The notorious matter of Grendel
became known to me on my stomping grounds:
shanty-singers are saying that this hall,
the best of houses, stands idle, impotent
for its warriors after the evening’s light,
the brightness under heaven, becomes obscured. (ll. 405-14)

“Then my tribesmen instructed me, the best
of our wise men, that I should seek you,
Prince Hrothgar, because they knew my skillful power,
they observed i...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Burning Drift-Wood

...on your Sea of Dreams, 
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. 
I turn from all that only seems, 
And seek the sober grounds of truth. 

What matter that it is not May, 
That birds have flown, and trees are bare, 
That darker grows the shortening day, 
And colder blows the wintry air! 

The wrecks of passion and desire, 
The castles I no more rebuild, 
May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, 
And warm the hands that age has chilled. 

Whatever perished with my ships...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf


Custer

...the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts, 
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds, 
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) , 
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a dying nation stand
And view the lost domain, once their beloved land.



II.
Upon the vast Atlantic's leagues of shore
The happy red man's tent is seen no more; 
And from the deep blue...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Endymion: Book I

...
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms:
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge--see,
Great son of Dryope,
The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!

 Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be sti...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Flee On Your Donkey

...ered her.

The curtains flutter out
and slump against the bars.
They are my two thin ladies
named Blanche and Rose.
The grounds outside
are pruned like an estate at Newport.
Far off, in the field,
something yellow grows.

Was it last month or last year
that the ambulance ran like a hearse
with its siren blowing on suicide—
Dinn, dinn, dinn!—
a noon whistle that kept insisting on life
all the way through the traffic lights?

I have come back
but disorder is not what it was.
I ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Great are the Myths

...r Souls; 
It is well assorted—they have not studied for nothing—the great includes the
 less; 
They rule on the highest grounds—they oversee all eras, states, administrations. 

The perfect judge fears nothing—he could go front to front before God;
Before the perfect judge all shall stand back—life and death shall stand
 back—heaven
 and hell shall stand back. 

5
Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever; 
Great is Death—sure as life holds all parts together, De...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Monadnoc

...Happy, I said, whose home is here,
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!
Boon nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found.
He was no eagle and no earl,
Alas! my foundling was a churl,
With heart of cat, and eyes of bug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time o...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

New Hampshire

...muffled to the eyes,
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover with me on the road to Brighton.
His farm was "grounds," and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor's at a trading station.
And be was rich, and I was still a rascal.
I couldn't keep from asking impolitely,
Where bad he been and what had he been doing?
How did he get so? (Rich was understood.)
In dealing in "old rags" in San Francisco.
Ob, it was terrible as we...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Ode on Solitude

...appy he, who free from care 
The rage of courts, and noise of towns; 
Contented breathes his native air, 
In his own grounds. 

II. 
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter fire. 

III. 
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find 
Hours, days, and years slide swift away, 
In health of body, peace of mind, 
Quiet by day, 

IV. 
Sound sleep by night; study and ease 
Togeth...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...e on the whole success; 
When he who most excels in fact of arms, 
In what he counsels and in what excels 
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 
And utter dissolution, as the scope 
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled 
With armed watch, that render all access 
Impregnable: oft on the bodering Deep 
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing 
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night, 
Scorning surprise. Or, co...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Satyr

...ce, 
The flaming limits of the Universe, 
Search Heav'n and Hell, find out what's acted there, 
And give the World true grounds of hope and fear. 
Hold mighty Man, I cry, all this we know, 
From the Pathetique Pen of Ingello; 
From Patricks Pilgrim, Stilling fleets replyes, 
And 'tis this very reason I despise. 
This supernatural gift, that makes a Myte -- , 
Think he's the Image of the Infinite: 
Comparing his short life, void of all rest, 
To the Eternal, and the ever blest...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Snowbound a Winter Idyl

...ranes of Nilus said; 
A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
Content to live where life began; 
Strong only on his native grounds, 
The little world of sights and sounds 
Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 
Whereof his fondly partial pride 
The common features magnified, 
As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
In White of Selborne's loving view, -- 
He told how teal and loon he shot, 
And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
The feats on pond and river done, 
The prodigies of rod and gun...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Song of the Worm

...THE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and so...Read more of this...
by Cook, Eliza

The Cremona Violin

...dering insects knock,
And the `Rathaus' clock
Booms twice, through the shrill sounds
Of flutes and horns in the lamplit grounds.
Pressed against him in the mazy wavering
Of a country dance, with her short breath quavering
She leans upon the beating, throbbing
Music. Laughing, sobbing,
Feet gliding after sliding feet;
His -- hers --
The ballroom blurs --
She feels the air
Lifting her hair,
And the lapping of water on the stone stair.
He is there! He is there!
Twang harps, and ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Deserted Village

...
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs—and God has given my share— 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to l...Read more of this...
by Goldsmith, Oliver

The Epic Of The Lion

...e was come to munch at last 
 The princely morsel!—Ah! what sight astounds 
 That grisly lounger? 
 
 In the palace grounds 
 An alcove on a garden gives, and there 
 A tiny thing—forgot in the general fear, 
 Lulled in the flower-sweet dreams of infancy, 
 Bathed with soft sunlight falling brokenly 
 Through leaf and lattice—was at that moment waking; 
 A little lovely maid, most dear and taking, 
 The prince's sister—all alone, undressed— 
 She sat up singing: c...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

...k in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, "we won't have our
usual recess, the grounds 
are too wet."
"AW!" most of the boys 
went.
"but we are going to do
something special at
recess," she went on,
"and it will be
fun!"
well, we all wondered
what that would
be
and the two hour wait
seemed a long time
as Mrs.Sorenson
went about
teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little
girls, they looked so 
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat stil...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

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