Famous Larger Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Larger poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous larger poems. These examples illustrate what a famous larger poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
My Faith is larger than the Hills --
So when the Hills decay --
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way --
'Tis first He steps upon the Vane --
And then -- upon the Hill --
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will --
And if His Yellow feet should miss --
The Bird would not...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
[from a motif by Jean Dunand (1877-1942)]
seven lacqueur ducks on a silver pond
their rippling held in a moveless frieze
nothing now can help them swim beyond
the stoned edges (invent a new-age breeze)
eternity is water starved of trees
their fixture is our own - for all we fidget
history puts us down as one dead digit
silver-ponded we can't stop being stirred
to leap behind...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Do you think that odes and sermons,
And the ringing of church bells,
And the blood of old men and young men,
Martyred for the truth they saw
With eyes made bright by faith in God,
Accomplished the world's great reformations?
Do you think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic
Would have been heard if the chattel slave
Had crowned the dominant dollar,
In spite of Whitney's...Read more of this...
by
Jack Prelutsky
it came today to visit
and moved into the house
it was smaller than an elephant
but larger than a mouse
first it slapped my sister
then it kicked my dad
then it pushed my mother
oh! that really made me mad
it went and tickled rover
and terrified the cat
it sliced apart my necktie
and rudely crushed my hat
it smeared my head with honey
and filled the tub with...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.5-13
L. M.
Divine providence in air, earth, and sea.
The God of our salvation hears
The groans of Zion mixed with tears;
Yet when he comes with kind designs,
Through all the way his terror shines.
On him the race of man depends,
Far as the earth's remotest ends,
Where the Creator's name is known
By nature's feeble light alone.
Sailors, that travel o'er the flood,
Address their frighted...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she
married a corporation lawyer who picked her from
a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid
for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing
and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the
game was changing her looks, calling...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Edward Brown
The Man that hath great griefs I pity not;
’Tis something to be great
In any wise, and hint the larger state,
Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot!
Moreover, while we wait the possible,
This man has touched the fact,
And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed
In pulpy folds, resides the ironic...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an
appointment for the Sacrament of Confesson
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose --
I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
After a long day of work in my hot-houses
Sleep was sweet, but if you sleep on your left side
Your dreams may be abruptly ended.
I was among my flowers where some one
Seemed to be raising them on trial,
As if after-while to be transplanted
To a larger garden of freer air.
And I was disembodied vision
Amid a light, as it were the sun
Had...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY
Sweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home:
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
To bring from thence the scorched clove:
Nor, with the loss of...Read more of this...
by
Mark Doty
Today the Masons are auctioning
their discarded pomp: a trunk of turbans,
gemmed and ostrich-plumed, and operetta costumes
labeled inside the collar "Potentate"
and "Vizier." Here their chairs, blazoned
with the Masons' sign, huddled
like convalescents, lean against one another
on the grass. In a casket are rhinestoned poles
the hierophants carried in parades;
here's a splendid golden staff...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
BEYOND the gates thou gav'st a field to till;
I have a larger on my window-sill.
A farm, d'ye say? Is this a farm to you,
Where for all woods I spay one tuft of rue,
And that so rusty, and so small a thing,
One shrill cicada hides it with a wing;
Where one cucumber covers all the plain;
And where one serpent rings himself...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Renunciation -- is a piercing Virtue --
The letting go
A Presence -- for an Expectation --
Not now --
The putting out of Eyes --
Just Sunrise --
Lest Day --
Day's Great Progenitor --
Outvie
Renunciation -- is the Choosing
Against itself --
Itself to justify
Unto itself --
When larger function --
Make that appear --
Smaller -- that Covered Vision -- Here --...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
But he saw nothing; space was black—no sound.
"Forward," said Canute, raising his proud head.
There fell a second stain beside the first,
Then it grew larger, and the Cimbrian chief
Stared at the thick vague darkness, and saw naught.
Still as a bloodhound follows on his track,
Sad he went on. 'There...Read more of this...
by
William Vaughn Moody
After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.
I
Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
To the Almighty on his radiant Throne,
Let endless Hallelujas rise!
Praise Him, ye wondrous Heights to us unknown,
Praise Him, ye Heavens unreach'd by mortal Eyes,
Praise Him, in your degree, ye sublunary Skies!
Praise Him, you Angels that before him bow,
You Creatures of Celestial frame,
Our Guests of old, our wakeful Guardians now,
Praise Him, and...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Though the world keeps changing its form
as fast as a cloud, still
what is accomplished falls home
to the Primeval.
Over the change and the passing,
larger and freer,
soars your eternal song,
god with the lyre.
Never has grief been possesed,
never has love been learned,
and what removes us in death
is not revealed.
Only the song through the land
hallows and heals....Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
"Christ of the Andes," Christ of Everywhere,
Great lover of the hills, the open air,
And patient lover of impatient men
Who blindly strive and sin and strive again, --
Thou Living Word, larger than any creed,
Thou Love Divine, uttered in human deed, --
Oh, teach the world, warring and wandering still,
Thy way of Peace, the foot...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
II
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness...Read more of this...
by
J R R Tolkien
Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning.
"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then,"
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now!
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain?
The time that I remember best is this --
A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
When I shall meet God’s generous dispensers
Of all the riches in the heavenly store,
Those lesser gods, who act as Recompensers
For loneliness and loss upon this shore,
Methinks abashed, and somewhat hesitating,
My soul its wish and longing will declare,
Lest they reply: ‘Here are no bounties waiting:
We gave on earth, your portion and your share.’
Then shall I...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Lancaster bore him--such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer--a little wild.
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two
And sees old friends he somehow can't get near....Read more of this...
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