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Famous Haunt Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ck with gems the dewy mountain's brow. 


The earth perceives a sov'reign virtue shed 
And from each cave, and midnight haunt retires 
Dark superstition, with her vot'ries skill'd, 
In potent charm, or spell of magic pow'r; 
In augury, by voice, or flight of birds, 
Or boding sign at morn, or noon, or eve, 
Portent and prodigy and omen dire. 
Each oracle by Demon, or the craft 
Of priests, made vocal, can declare no more 
Of high renown, and victory secure, 
To kings low pros...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...ings, merely because they're hid; 
He thinks his knowledge ne'er can reach too high 
And boldly pierces nature's inmost haunts 
But for uncertainties; your broken isles, 
You northern Tartars, and your wand'ring Jews. 
Hear what the voice of history proclaims. 
The Carthaginians, e'er the Roman yoke 
Broke their proud spirits and enslav'd them too, 
For navigation were renown'd as much 
As haughty Tyre with all her hundred fleets; 
Full many: league their vent'rous seamen sai...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank,
Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark 
And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar overarching frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang
Tremulous and pale. Like res...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse tho' thousand Charms conspire,
Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire,
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear,
Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.
These Equal Syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the Ear the open Vowels tire,
While Expletives their feeble Aid do join,
And ten low Words oft creep in one dull Line,
While they ring round the same unvary'd Chimes,
With sure Retu...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...ow dark, and dogged them still,
lured, or lurked in the livelong night
of misty moorlands: men may say not
where the haunts of these Hell-Runes {2c} be.
Such heaping of horrors the hater of men,
lonely roamer, wrought unceasing,
harassings heavy. O’er Heorot he lorded,
gold-bright hall, in gloomy nights;
and ne’er could the prince {2d} approach his throne,
-- ’twas judgment of God, -- or have joy in his hall.
Sore was the sorrow to Scyldings’-friend,
heart-rending ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,



...ctify
The dearest rites of love; there in the cool
And green recesses of its farthest depth there is pool,

The ouzel's haunt, the wild bee's pasturage,
For round its rim great creamy lilies float
Through their flat leaves in verdant anchorage,
Each cup a white-sailed golden-laden boat
Steered by a dragon-fly, - be not afraid
To leave this wan and wave-kissed shore, surely the place was made

For lovers such as we; the Cyprian Queen,
One arm around her boyish paramour,
Strays...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...SEC. BRO. 'Tis most true
That musing meditation most affects
The pensive secrecy of desert cell,
Far from the cheerful haunt of men and herds,
And sits as safe as in a senate house
For who would rob a hermit of his weeds,
His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,
Or do his grey hairs any violence?
But Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon-watch with unenchanted eye
To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit,
From the ra...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ative owners of the land were pressed, 
And selfish cities, harbingers of want, 
Shut from their vision each accustomed haunt.
Yet hungry Progress, never satisfied, 
Gazed on the western plains, and gazing, longed and sighed.



IV.
As some strange bullock in a pasture field
Compels the herds to fear him, and to yield
The juicy grass plots and the cooling shade
Until, despite their greater strength, afraid, 
They huddle in some corner spot and cower
Before the monarch's all c...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...the night to water the horses,
And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened
Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children;
And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable,
And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a nutshell,
And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horseshoes,
With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village.
Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the blacksmith,
Knocked from...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ht, 
 Foul and polluted; and before this thing, 
 This hydra, do the Temple's hinges swing— 
 The throne becomes the haunt of all things base 
 Oh, age of infamy and foul disgrace! 
 Oh, starry heavens looking on the shame, 
 No brow but reddens with resentful flame— 
 And yet the silent people do not stir! 
 Oh, million arms! what things do you deter— 
 Poor sheep, whom vermin-majesties devour, 
 Have you not nails with strong desiring power 
 To rend these royalt...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...lissful light,
These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
Of all my lucent empire? It is left
Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
The blaze, the splendor, and the symmetry,
I cannot see but darkness, death, and darkness.
Even here, into my centre of repose,
The shady visions come to domineer,
Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.---
Fall!---No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that inf...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...violets cover'd up in leaves; 
And mid-May's eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 50 

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time 
I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
Call'd him soft names in many a mus¨¨d rhyme, 
To take into the air my quiet breath; 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 55 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such a...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within 
Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf, 
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, 
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve 
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, 
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold: 
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash 
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, 
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault, 
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles: 
So clomb this first gra...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote as heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her rememberance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consum...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...1 Involved him in midwifery so dense 
492 His cabin counted as phylactery, 
493 Then place of vexing palankeens, then haunt 
494 Of children nibbling at the sugared void, 
495 Infants yet eminently old, then dome 
496 And halidom for the unbraided femes, 
497 Green crammers of the green fruits of the world, 
498 Bidders and biders for its ecstasies, 
499 True daughters both of Crispin and his clay. 
500 All this with many mulctings of the man, 
501 Effective coloniz...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...nd vex my soul no more!
 Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
 Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!


PREFACE


If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.18) 

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes." 

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) a...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...d:'
     Fear nothing for thy favorite hold;
     The spot an angel deigned to grace
     Is blessed, though robbers haunt the place.
     Thy churlish courtesy for those
     Reserve, who fear to be thy foes.
     As safe to me the mountain way
     At midnight as in blaze of day,
     Though with his boldest at his back
     Even Roderick Dhu beset the track.—
     Brave Douglas,—lovely Ellen,—nay,
     Naught here of parting will I say.
     Earth does not hold...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...yond, beyond...



II

There is no clock can measure what we both passed through,

The darker griefs that soon began to haunt your fragile sleep,

The echoes of nightmare flights through empty streets that soon

Began to creep behind the wainscot of those tiny rooms, the rat

That took them up and ran to hide and haunt us, encountered

At the cellar-head or heard beneath the boards. The sad rat-catcher’s

Nod and shaking head, as if he knew more than the pair of us

What lay ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...in a strain of toil,
His nights burnt up in a seething coil.
Seasons shot by, uncognisant
He worked. The Shadow came to haunt
Even his days. Sometimes quite plain
He saw on the wall the blackberry stain
Of his lady's picture. No sun was bright
Enough to dazzle that from his sight.

There were moments when he groaned to see
His life spilled out so uselessly,
Begging for boons the Shade refused,
His finest workmanship abused,
The iridescent bubbles he blew
Into lovely existence...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...tirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,--and lumps neither alive nor dead,
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.

For she was beautiful. Her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
No thought of living spirit could abide
(Which to her looks had ever been betrayed)
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things