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Famous Linked Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...through the signs,
And not a star but told him how love twines
A wreath for every decanate, degree,
Minute and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.

Let me go back to your last birthday. Then
I was already your one man of men
Appointed to complete you, and fulfil
From everlasting the eternal will.
We lay within the flood of crimson light
In my own balcony that August night,
And conjuring the arigh...Read more of this...



by Nash, Ogden
...es remain below
To pursue the Cain who each has slain
And harry him to and fro.
When life is extinct each corpse is linked
To its gibbering murderer,
As a chicken is bound with wire around
The neck of a killer cur.

Handcuffed to Hate come Doctor Waite
(He tastes the poison now),
And Ruth and Judd and a head of blood
With horns upon its brow.
Up sashays Nan with her feathery fan
From Floradora bright;
She never hung for Caesar Young
But she's dancing with him toni...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ce of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky:-

"What tho 'in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Linked to a little system, and one sun-
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath-
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secr...Read more of this...

by Bidart, Frank
...but she's right:

the past in maiming us,
makes us,
fruition
 is also
destruction:

 I think of Proust, dying
in a cork-linked room, because he refuses to eat
because he thinks that he cannot write if he eats
because he wills to write, to finish his novel

--his novel which recaptures the past, and
with a kind of joy, because
in the debris
of the past, he has found the sources of the necessities

which have led him to this room, writing

--in this strange harmony, does he wil...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...charnel-vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensualty
To a degenerate and degraded state.
 SEC. BRO. How charming is divine Philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
 Eld. Bro. List!
list! I hear
Some far-off hallo break the silent ai...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...Hector's brother
And yet some thousand other
He that had grief to mother
Passed pale from Dante's sight;
With one fast linked as fearless,
Perchance, there only tearless;
Iseult and Tristram, peerless
And perfect queen and knight.

A shrill-winged sound comes flying
North, as of wild souls crying
The cry of things undying,
That know what life must be;
Or as the old year's heart, stricken
Too sore for hope to quicken
By thoughts like thorns that thicken,
Broke, breaking w...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...that ever into ocean run!

Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guide
Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?
Linked to thine arm, O Raphael, by thy side
Might I aspire to reach to souls beyond
Our earth, and bid the bright ambition go
To that perfection which the angels know!

Happy, O happy--I have found thee--I
Have out of millions found thee, and embraced;
Thou, out of millions, mine!--Let earth and sky
Return to darkness, and the antique waste--
To chaos shocke...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...le for the seed: 
And still at evenings on before his horse 
The flickering fairy-circle wheeled and broke 
Flying, and linked again, and wheeled and broke 
Flying, for all the land was full of life. 
And when at last he came to Camelot, 
A wreath of airy dancers hand-in-hand 
Swung round the lighted lantern of the hall; 
And in the hall itself was such a feast 
As never man had dreamed; for every knight 
Had whatsoever meat he longed for served 
By hands unseen; and even...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...on 
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern 
Th' advantage, and, descending, tread us down 
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? 
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!" 
 They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung 
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch 
On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, 
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 
In which they were, or the fi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Hell, 
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath; 
Now lately Heaven and Earth, another world 
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain 
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell! 
If that way be your walk, you have not far; 
So much the nearer danger. Go, and speed; 
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain." 
 He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply, 
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore, 
With fresh alacrity and force renewed 
Springs upw...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...he brimming stream; 
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles 
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems 
Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league, 
Alone as they. About them frisking played 
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase 
In wood or wilderness, forest or den; 
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw 
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, 
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant, 
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreat...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...destroyed, 
Or won to what may work his utter loss, 
For whom all this was made, all this will soon 
Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe; 
In woe then; that destruction wide may range: 
To me shall be the glory sole among 
The infernal Powers, in one day to have marred 
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days 
Continued making; and who knows how long 
Before had been contriving? though perhaps 
Not longer than since I, in one night, freed 
From servitude inglorious...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...her gained 
By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld 
By parents; or his happiest choice too late 
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound 
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame: 
Which infinite calamity shall cause 
To human life, and houshold peace confound. 
He added not, and from her turned; but Eve, 
Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing 
And tresses all disordered, at his feet 
Fell humble; and, embracing them, besought 
His peace, and thus proc...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ded now their orisons, and found 
Strength added from above; new hope to spring 
Out of despair; joy, but with fear yet linked; 
Which thus to Eve his welcome words renewed. 
Eve, easily my faith admit, that all 
The good which we enjoy from Heaven descends; 
But, that from us aught should ascend to Heaven 
So prevalent as to concern the mind 
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will, 
Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer 
Or one short sigh of human breath, upbo...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ded into song the while,
And feeling swam in the moist eye;
And from the mouth, with spirit teeming o'er,
Jest, sweetly linked with grace, began to pour.

Sunk in the instincts of the worm,
By naught but sensual lust possessed,
Ye recognized within his breast
Love-spiritual's noble germ;
And that this germ of love so blest
Escaped the senses' abject load,
To the first pastoral song he owed.
Raised to the dignity of thought,
Passions more calm to flow were taught
From ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...
Should lie in it. And further to bedeck
His love, Heinrich had picked a whiff, a fleck,
The merest puff of a thin, linked chain
To hang it from. Lotta could not refrain
From weeping as they sauntered down the street.
She did not want the locket, yet she did.
To have him love her she found very sweet,
But it is hard to keep love always hid.
Then there was something in her heart which chid
Her, told her she loved Theodore in him,
That all these meetings wer...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...I reached a ruined fort:  There, pains which nature could no more support,  With blindness linked, did on my vitals fall;  Dizzy my brain, with interruption short  Of hideous sense; I sunk, nor step could crawl,  And thence was borne away to neighbouring hospital.   Recovery came with food: but still, my brain  Was weak, nor of the past had memory.  I heard ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Part black, part whitened with the bones of men, 
Not to be crost, save that some ancient king 
Had built a way, where, linked with many a bridge, 
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea. 
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge, 
And every bridge as quickly as he crost 
Sprang into fire and vanished, though I yearned 
To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens 
Opened and blazed with thunder such as seemed 
Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first 
At once ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ace is Lanrick mead;
     Speed forth the signal! Norman, speed!'
     And must he change so soon the hand
     Just linked to his by holy band,
     For the fell Cross of blood and brand?
     And must the day so blithe that rose,
     And promised rapture in the close,
     Before its setting hour, divide
     The bridegroom from the plighted bride?
     O fatal doom'—it must! it must!
     Clan-Alpine's cause, her Chieftain's trust,
     Her summons dread, brook...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...s of sleep.
Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;
There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.

But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song,--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong,
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Wr...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs