Famous Leap Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Oh! the calm summer garden

by Emile Verhaeren
Oh! the calm summer garden where nothing moves! Unless it be, near the middle of the bright and radiant pond, the goldfish like tongues of fire.
They are our memories playing in our thoughts that are calm and stilled and limpid, like the trustful and restful water.
And the water brightens and the fishes leap at the abrupt and marvellous sun, not...Read more of this...

Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

by Annie Dillard
 New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

Bridges leap over the train...Read more of this...

In Me Past Present Future meet

by Siegfried Sassoon
 In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.

In me the cave-man clasps the seer,
And garlanded Apollo goes
Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements...Read more of this...

Rio Grandes Last Race

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now this was what Macpherson told 
While waiting in the stand; 
A reckless rider, over-bold, 
The only man with hands to hold 
The rushing Rio Grande. 

He said, `This day I bid good-bye 
To bit and bridle rein, 
To ditches deep and fences high, 
For I have dreamed a dream, and I 
Shall never ride again. 

`I dreamt last...Read more of this...

The Dancer At Cruachan And Cro-Patrick

by William Butler Yeats
 I, proclaiming that there is
Among birds or beasts or men
One that is perfect or at peace.
Danced on Cruachan's windy plain,
Upon Cro-patrick sang aloud;
All that could run or leap or swim
Whether in wood, water or cloud,
Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him....Read more of this...

The Last Meeting

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

Because the night was falling warm and still 
Upon a golden day at April’s end, 
I thought; I will go up the hill once more 
To find the face of him that I have lost, 
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long. 

So down the road I went,...Read more of this...

Song For Saint Cecilias Day 1687

by John Dryden
 From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony
 This universal frame began:
 When nature underneath a heap
 Of jarring atoms lay
 And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
 Arise, ye more than dead!
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry
In order to their stations leap,
 And Music's power obey.
From Harmony, from heavenly harmony
 This universal frame began:
...Read more of this...

Two Songs Of A Fool

by William Butler Yeats
 I

A speckled cat and a tame hare
Eat at my hearthstone
And sleep there;
And both look up to me alone
For learning and defence
As I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to think
Some day I may forget
Their food and drink;
Or, the house door left unshut,
The hare may run till it's found
The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the...Read more of this...

Skunk Hour

by Robert Lowell
(for Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire
who seemed to leap from an L....Read more of this...

A Change of Menu

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now the new chum loaded his three-nought-three, 
It's a small-bore gun, but his hopes were big. 
"I am fed to the teeth with old ewe," said he, 
"And I might be able to shoot a pig." 
And he trusted more to his nose than ear 
To give him warning when pigs were near. 

Out of his lair in the...Read more of this...

The Song Of The Camp-Fire

by Robert William Service
 Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them...Read more of this...

The Towers of Time

by G K Chesterton
 Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong...Read more of this...

The Glove

by Robert Browning
 (PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)

``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
``When a man's busy, why, leisure
``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
`` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
``Straightway he wants to be busy.
``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
``Caught thinking war the true pastime.
``Is there a reason in metre?
``Give us your speech, master Peter!''
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er...Read more of this...

The Wanderlust

by Robert William Service
 The Wanderlust has lured me to the seven lonely seas,
Has dumped me on the tailing-piles of dearth;
The Wanderlust has haled me from the morris chairs of ease,
Has hurled me to the ends of all the earth.
How bitterly I've cursed it, oh, the Painted Desert knows,
The wraithlike heights that hug the pallid plain,
The all-but-fluid silence, -- yet the longing grows...Read more of this...

Waiting

by Carl Sandburg
 TODAY I will let the old boat stand
Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in
To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway.
And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck
Watching the world go by
And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember.

I will choose what clouds I like
In the great white fleets that wander...Read more of this...

Landscape

by Dorothy Parker
 Now this must be the sweetest place
From here to heaven's end;
The field is white and flowering lace,
The birches leap and bend,

The hills, beneath the roving sun,
From green to purple pass,
And little, trifling breezes run
Their fingers through the grass.

So good it is, so gay it is,
So calm it is, and pure.
A one whose eyes may look on this
Must be the...Read more of this...

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

by Adrienne Rich
 The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes,...Read more of this...

ducks and wisdom

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...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

The Last Leap

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 ALL is over! fleet career, 
Dash of greyhound slipping thongs, 
Flight of falcon, bound of deer, 
Mad hoof-thunder in our rear, 
Cold air rushing up our lungs, 
Din of many tongues. 

Once again, one struggle good, 
One vain effort;—he must dwell 
Near the shifted post, that stood 
Where the splinters of the wood, 
Lying in the torn tracks, tell...Read more of this...

The touch of Zephyr (SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS)

by Horace
The touch of Zephyr and of Spring has loosen'd Winter's thrall;
       The well-dried keels are wheel'd again to sea:
     The ploughman cares not for his fire, nor cattle for their stall,
       And frost no more is whitening all the lea.
    ...Read more of this...

The Hawk and the Babe

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to Raymond Radclyffe]

I am that hawk of gold
Proud in adamantine poise
On the pillars of torqoise,
See,beyond the starry fold,
Where a darkling orb is rolled.

There, beneath a grove of yew,
Plays a babe. Should I despise
Such a foam of gold, and eyes
Burning beryline, so blue
That the sun seems peeping through?

Did I swwop, were Heaven amazed?
With my beak I strike but once;
Out...Read more of this...

The Bear

by Galway Kinnell
1
In late winter 
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow 
and bend close and see it is lung-colored 
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear. 

2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of...Read more of this...

My Bear

by Robert William Service
 I never killed a bear because
I always thought them critters was
 So kindo' cute;
Though round my shack they often came,
I'd raise my rifle and take aim,
 But couldn't shoot.
Yet there was one full six-feet tall
Who came each night and gobbled all
 The grub in sight;
On my pet garden truck he'd feast,
Until I thought I must at least
 Give him...Read more of this...

To the Muse of Poetry

by Mary Darby Robinson
 EXULT MY MUSE! exult to see 
Each envious, waspish, jealous thing, 
Around its harmless venom fling, 
And dart its powerless fangs at THEE! 
Ne'er shalt THOU bend thy radiant wing, 
To sweep the dark revengeful string; 
Or meanly stoop, to steal a ray, 
E'en from RINALDO'S glorious lay, 
Tho' his transcendent Verse should twine 
About thy heart, each bliss...Read more of this...

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