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Famous Lifted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...htnings playing,
And your port immovable where you stand; 
With still the inextinguishable glance, and the clench’d and lifted fist, 
And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the scorner, utterly crush’d beneath
 you; 
The menacing, arrogant one, that strode and advanced with his senseless scorn, bearing the
 murderous knife; 
—Lo! the wide swelling one, the braggart, that would yesterday do so much!
To-day a carrion dead and damn’d, the despised of all the earth! 
An o...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...seek.
Then at the dawning, as day was breaking,
the might of Grendel to men was known;
then after wassail was wail uplifted,
loud moan in the morn. The mighty chief,
atheling excellent, unblithe sat,
labored in woe for the loss of his thanes,
when once had been traced the trail of the fiend,
spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow,
too long, too loathsome. Not late the respite;
with night returning, anew began
ruthless murder; he recked no whit,
firm in his guilt, o...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...hand
Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly,
And soon the breath of morning came and fanned
His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly
The tangled curls from off his forehead, while
He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile.

And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak
With his long crook undid the wattled cotes,
And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke
Curled through the air across the ripening oats,
And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed
As thr...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...est
His head upon a mossy hillock green,
And so remain'd as he a corpse had been
All the long day; save when he scantly lifted
His eyes abroad, to see how shadows shifted
With the slow move of time,--sluggish and weary
Until the poplar tops, in journey dreary,
Had reach'd the river's brim. Then up he rose,
And, slowly as that very river flows,
Walk'd towards the temple grove with this lament:
"Why such a golden eve? The breeze is sent
Careful and soft, that not a leaf may fal...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...pause of the song, with measured motion the clock clicked.

Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly lifted,
Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its hinges.
Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the blacksmith,
And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with him.
"Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps paused of the threshold.
"Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the settle
Close by the chimney-...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth



...cavern;
The frozen God still couchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow ofthe place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,
As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:
"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,
Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
Look up, and tell me i...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...fair things motion, all at one 
 Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none 
 When down the slope there came with lifted head 
 And back-blown mane and caverned mouth and red, 
 A lion, roaring, all the air ashake 
 That heard his hunger. Upward flight to take 
 No heart was mine, for where the further way 
 Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay, 
 That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she 
 In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see, 
 And where she lay among...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...smoke.
They always took their holidays in autumn.
Once they came on a maple in a glade,
Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up,
And every leaf of foliage she'd worn
Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.
But its age kept them from considering this one.
Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.
Could it have been another maple like it?
They hovered for a moment near discovery...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...wild;
The way the wiry gang-boss liked the logjam. 
After he'd picked the lock and got it started,
He dodged a log that lifted like an arm
Against the sky to break his back for him,
Then came in dancing, skipping with his life
Across the roar and chaos, and the words 
We saw him say along the zigzag journey
Were doubtless as the words we heard him say
On coming nearer: "Wasn't she an i-deal
Son-of-a-*****? You bet she was an i-deal."

For all her mountains fall a little short...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ntains and the mountainous sea,
I know not where, but which a dream diurnal
Paints on my lids a moment till the hull
Be lifted from the kernel
And Slumber fed to me.
Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene,
Though it would seem a ruined place and after
Your lichenous heart, being full
Of broken columns, caryatides
Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees,
And urns funereal altered into dust
Minuter than the ashes of the dead,
And Psyche's lamp out of th...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...-
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's...Read more of this...
by Soto, Gary
...e-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of
 their prepared graves; 
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d
 unshaved men: 
All this I swallow—it tastes good—I like it well—it becomes mine;
I am the man—I suffer’d—I was there. 

The disdain and calmness of olden martyrs; 
The mother, condemn’d for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing
 on; 
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing,
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...squeal;
But the eyes in his head were strong like steel,
And his soul remembered Rome.

Then Alfred of the lonely spear
Lifted his lion head;
And fronted with the Italian's eye,
Asking him of his whence and why,
King Alfred stood and said:

"I am that oft-defeated King
Whose failure fills the land,
Who fled before the Danes of old,
Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,
Who now upon the Wessex wold
Hardly has feet to stand.

"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God
I have ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
..., the choir, 
All he faces became fire 
Below the eastern window high 
To see Christ's star come up the sky. 
Then they lifted hands and turned, 
And all their lifted fingers burned, 
Burned like the golden altar tallows, 
Burned like a troop of God's own Hallows, 
Bringing to mind the burning time 
When all the bells will rock and chime 
And burning saints on burning horses 
Will sweep the planets from their courses 
And loose the stars to burn up night. 
Lord, give us eyes ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John
...hree Queens we came, 
Where Arthur's wars are rendered mystically, 
And thence departed every one his way. 

`And I was lifted up in heart, and thought 
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists, 
How my strong lance had beaten down the knights, 
So many and famous names; and never yet 
Had heaven appeared so blue, nor earth so green, 
For all my blood danced in me, and I knew 
That I should light upon the Holy Grail. 

`Thereafter, the dark warning of our King, 
That most of...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ve me still!'
     XXIX.

     The crowd's wild fury sunk again
     In tears, as tempests melt in rain.
     With lifted hands and eyes, they prayed
     For blessings on his generous head
     Who for his country felt alone,
     And prized her blood beyond his own.
     Old men upon the verge of life
     Blessed him who stayed the civil strife;
     And mothers held their babes on high,
     The self-devoted Chief to spy,
     Triumphant over wrongs and ire,
...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...s death, 
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost-- 
Her stature more than mortal in the burst 
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire-- 
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, 
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt, 
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels, 
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall, 
And some were pushed with lances from the rock, 
And part were drowned within the whirling brook: 
O miracle of noble womanhood!' 

So sang the gallant...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ched the little blue stars hatch
Into an egg of perfect flame.
He lit his candle, and almost in shame
At his eagerness, lifted his eyes.
The Shadow was there, and its precise
Outline etched the cold, white wall.
The young man swore, "By God! You, Paul,
There's something the matter with your brain.
Go home now and sleep off the strain."

The next day was a storm, the rain
Whispered and scratched at the window-pane.
A grey and shadowless morning filled
The little shop. The watc...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...e tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably;
And around which the solid vapours hoar,
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed-in with rifts and precipices grey,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.

And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded thing
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused co...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things