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Famous Kin Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...an’ cleanly neat,
 Mair braw than when they’re fine;
Their faces blythe, fu’ sweetly kythe,
 Hearts leal, an’ warm, an’ kin’:
The lads sae trig, wi’ wooer-babs
 Weel-knotted on their garten;
Some unco blate, an’ some wi’ gabs
 Gar lasses’ hearts gang startin
 Whiles fast at night.


Then, first an’ foremost, thro’ the kail,
 Their stocks 5 maun a’ be sought ance;
They steek their een, and grape an’ wale
 For muckle anes, an’ straught anes.
Poor hav’rel Will fell aff t...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...forest grass!
Do not those curls of glossy jet surpass
For tenderness the arms so idly lain
Amongst them? Feelest not a kindred pain,
To see such lovely eyes in swimming search
After some warm delight, that seems to perch
Dovelike in the dim cell lying beyond
Their upper lids?--Hist! "O for Hermes' wand
To touch this flower into human shape!
That woodland Hyacinthus could escape
From his green prison, and here kneeling down
Call me his queen, his second life's fair crown!
Ah ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down.Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...yside,
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the meadows.
When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide
Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah! fair in sooth was the maiden,
Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, while the bell from its turret
Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them,
Down t...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ding,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

 If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the s...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ed Pine 
Lost footing, fell, and so was whirled away. 
'How he went down,' said Gareth, 'as a false knight 
Or evil king before my lance if lance 
Were mine to use--O senseless cataract, 
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy-- 
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows 
And mine is living blood: thou dost His will, 
The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, 
Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall 
Linger with vacillating obedience, 
Prisoned, and kept and...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hant with his eyes upon the throne, 
Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this 
He chilled the popular praises of the King 
With silent smiles of slow disparagement; 
And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse, 
Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought 
To make disruption in the Table Round 
Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds 
Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims 
Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot. 

For thus it chanced one morn when all...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...ed, and ceased. A blinding splendour hot 
 Flushed the great height toward which my footsteps fell, 
 And though it kindled from the nether hell, 
 Or from the Star that all men leads, alike 
 It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike 
 The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. 

 How first I entered on that path astray, 
 Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know. 
 When gained my feet the upward, lighted way, 
 I backward gazed, as one the drowning...Read more of this...

by Graves, Robert
...r my laughter-loving ear:
Soon I mocked at all I heard,
 Though with cause indeed for fear.

Now I know the mermaid kin
 I find them bound by natural laws:
They have neither tail nor fin,
 But are deadlier for that cause.

Dragons have no darting tongues,
 Teeth saw-edged, nor rattling scales;
No fire issues from their lungs,
 No black poison from their tails:

For they are creatures of dark air,
 Unsubstantial tossing forms,
Thunderclaps of man's despair
 In mid-whir...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...otton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart.. . .
 After the sunburn of the day
 handling a pitchfork at a h...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...DEDICATION 

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet.
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the ...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...nquisitorial botanist, 
26 And general lexicographer of mute 
27 And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld himself, 
28 A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass. 
29 What word split up in clickering syllables 
30 And storming under multitudinous tones 
31 Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt? 
32 Crispin was washed away by magnitude. 
33 The whole of life that still remained in him 
34 Dwindled to one sound strumming in his ear, 
35 Ubiquitous concussi...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. 

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. 

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. 

Even while the earth sleeps we travel. 

We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered. 

Brief were my days among you, and briefer stil...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...For good ye are and bad, and like to coins, 
Some true, some light, but every one of you 
Stamped with the image of the King; and now 
Tell me, what drove thee from the Table Round, 
My brother? was it earthly passion crost?' 

`Nay,' said the knight; `for no such passion mine. 
But the sweet vision of the Holy Grail 
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries, 
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out 
Among us in the jousts, while women watch 
Who wins, who falls; an...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...deep his midnight lair had made
     In lone Glenartney's hazel shade;
     But when the sun his beacon red
     Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head,
     The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay
     Resounded up the rocky way,
     And faint, from farther distance borne,
     Were heard the clanging hoof and horn.
     II.

     As Chief, who hears his warder call,
     'To arms! the foemen storm the wall,'
     The antlered monarch of the waste
     Sprung from h...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets: then the monster, then the man; 
Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 
Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; 
As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here 
Among the lowest.' 
Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon 
As emblematic of a nobler age; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; 
Ran down the Persia...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...d assuage the woe
Which he abhorr'd to view below. 

V
The other was as pure of mind,
But form'd to combat with his kind;
Strong in frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish'd in the foremost rank
With joy: - but not in chains to pine:
His spirit wither'd with their clank,
I saw it silently decline -
And so perchance in sooth did mine:
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
Had foll...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye--
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his ...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...aying; 'Upon my word,
The garter!' and clapped my hands like a child.

Some one beside me turned and smiled,
And looking down at me said: "I fancy,
You're Bertie's Australian cousin Nancy.
He toId me to tell you that he'd be late 
At the Foreign Office and not to wait 
Supper for him, but to go with me, 
And try to behave as if I were he." 
I should have told him on the spot 
That I had no cousin—that I was not 
Australian Nancy—that my name 
Was Susan Dunne, and ...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things