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Famous Lightly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Keats, John
...shield,
And strives in vain to unsettle and wield
A Jovian thunderbolt: arch Hebe brings
A full-brimm'd goblet, dances lightly, sings
And tantalizes long; at last he drinks,
And lost in pleasure at her feet he sinks,
Touching with dazzled lips her starlight hand.
He blows a bugle,--an ethereal band
Are visible above: the Seasons four,--
Green-kyrtled Spring, flush Summer, golden store
In Autumn's sickle, Winter frosty hoar,
Join dance with shadowy Hours; while still the ...Read more of this...



by Hugo, Victor
...
 
 "What's our baggage? only vows, 
 Happiness, and all our care, 
 And the flower that sweetly shows 
 Nestling lightly in your hair. 
 
 "Come, the oaks all dark appear, 
 Twilight now will soon depart, 
 Railing sparrows laugh to hear 
 Chains thou puttest round my heart. 
 
 "Not my fault 'twill surely be 
 If the hills should vocal prove, 
 And the trees when us they see, 
 All should murmur—let us love! 
 
 "Oh, be gentle!—I am dazed, 
 See the dew i...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ordinate desires, 
Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride. 
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear 
Touched lightly; for no falshood can endure 
Touch of celestial temper, but returns 
Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts 
Discovered and surprised. As when a spark 
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid 
Fit for the tun some magazine to store 
Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain, 
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air; 
So started up in his...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...rom pure digestion bred, 
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound 
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan, 
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song 
Of birds on every bough; so much the more 
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve 
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, 
As through unquiet rest: He, on his side 
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love 
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld 
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, 
Shot forth peculi...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the common words and deeds; 
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place; 
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws; 
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons; 
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its
 sweeping
 and
 unript waves; 
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority;...Read more of this...



by Chesterton, G K
...ts by his hovel fire as oft,
But hears on his old bare roof aloft
A belfry burst in song.

"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.

"And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart.

"The meanest man in grey fields gone
Behind the set of sun,
Heareth between st...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...to the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
pic...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...

His robe of pride was thrown aside, 
His brow no high-crown'd turban bore 
But in its stead a shawl of red, 
Wreathed lightly round, his temples wore: 
That dagger, on whose hilt the gem 
Were worthy of a diadem, 
No longer glitter'd at his waist, 
Where pistols unadorn'd were braced; 
And from his belt a sabre swung, 
And from his shoulder loosely hung 
The cloak of white, the thin capote 
That decks the wandering Candiote: 
Beneath — his golden plated vest 
Clung like a c...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...all the gloss of art.
Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined:
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.

Ye friends...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before....Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ot his: and o'er the joy
His fatherly pity bends in tears dismay'd. 
Proud of his prime maybe he stand at best,
And lightly wear his strength, or aim it high,
In knowledge, skill and courage self-possest:--
Yet in the pictured face a charm doth lie,
The one thing lost more worth than all the rest,
Which seeing, he fears to say This child was I. 

40
Tears of love, tears of joy and tears of care,
Comforting tears that fell uncomforted,
Tears o'er the new-born, tears be...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...g. The secret
Of this journey is to let the wind
Blow its dust all over your body,
To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly
All the way through your ruins, and not to lose
Any sleep over the dead, who surely
Will bury their own, don't worry....Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...for a year.
Who coulde rhyme in English properly
His martyrdom? forsooth*, it is not I; *truly
Therefore I pass as lightly as I may.
It fell that in the seventh year, in May
The thirde night (as olde bookes sayn,
That all this story tellen more plain),
Were it by a venture or destiny
(As when a thing is shapen* it shall be), *settled, decreed
That soon after the midnight, Palamon
By helping of a friend brake his prison,
And fled the city fast as he might go,
For he h...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ph, a Naiad, or a Grace,
     Of finer form or lovelier face!
     What though the sun, with ardent frown,
     Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,—
     The sportive toil, which, short and light
     Had dyed her glowing hue so bright,
     Served too in hastier swell to show
     Short glimpses of a breast of snow:
     What though no rule of courtly grace
     To measured mood had trained her pace,—
     A foot more light, a step more true,
     Ne'er from...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...outh, so fierce, so compulsive,

The cocktails of alcohol and drugs, the quarrels with knives and guns

Entered into as lightly as love was once with us.



Our generation awaits the taste of death

With none of the anticipated solace,

No children’s children visiting in spite of the spare room

Stacked with toys, with shelves of dusty books, Baum’s ‘Magical Land of Oz’

Its spine laid bare, Mombi the witch, Dorothy and Toto

Gathered forlornly round the saw-horse, the sc...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ee:
There came a breeze from off the sea: 

It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat, 

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him. 

A while li...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ring, difficult
We women have, if that I shall not lie,
In this matter a quainte fantasy.
Whatever thing we may not lightly have,
Thereafter will we cry all day and crave.
Forbid us thing, and that desire we;
Press on us fast, and thenne will we flee.
With danger* utter we all our chaffare;** *difficulty **merchandise
Great press at market maketh deare ware,
And too great cheap is held at little price;
This knoweth every woman that is wise.
My fifthe husband, ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice,--
And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood, till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above:--

And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;
Time, earth, and fire, the ocean and the wind,
And all the...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...pervaded the rooms,) 
The faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying, 
The twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, 
The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,
The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, 
It is palpable as the living are palpable. 

The living look upon the corpse with their eye-sight, 
But without eye-sight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse. 

3
To thin...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...d, like formerly, happy and young!
Aren't you tortured already
By the traumatized strings' dark song?
Those now only lightly moan
That once, taut, loudly rang
And aimlessly they are torn
By my dry, waxen hand.
Little is necessary to make happy
One who is tender and loving yet,
The young forehead is not touched yet
By jealousy, rage or regret.
He is quiet, does not ask to be tender,
Only stares and stares at me
And with blissful smile does he bear
My obli...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things