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Famous Lithe Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...leidoscope divine it moves, changing, before us. 

For not the envoys, nor the tann’d Japanee from his island only;
Lithe and silent, the Hindoo appears—the Asiatic continent itself appears—the Past, the
 dead, 
The murky night morning of wonder and fable, inscrutable, 
The envelop’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, 
The North—the sweltering South—eastern Assyria—the Hebrews—the Ancient of Ancients, 
Vast desolated cities—the gliding Present—all of these, and mor...Read more of this...



by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...an hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before. 

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer. 

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before. 

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn. 

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before. 

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...assume to teach here, may well prepare himself, body and mind, 
He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe, himself, 
He shall surely be question’d beforehand by me with many and stern questions. 

Who are you, indeed, who would talk or sing to America? 
Have you studied out the land, its idioms and men?
Have you learn’d the physiology, phrenology, politics, geography, pride, freedom,
 friendship, of the land? its substratums and objects? 
Have you cons...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...ange as pumpkins in the field, 
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs 
who come to eat it, orange as my 
cat running lithe through the high grass. 

Yellow as a goat's wise and wicked eyes, 
yellow as a hill of daffodils, 
yellow as dandelions by the highway, 
yellow as butter and egg yolks, 
yellow as a school bus stopping you, 
yellow as a slicker in a downpour. 

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing 
song of all the things you make 
me think of, here is oblique 
p...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...uperb command.
Twelve hundred men, the picked of all the land, 
Innured to hardship and made strong by strife
Their lithe limbed bodies breathed of out-door life; 
While on their faces, resolute and brave, 
Hope stamped its shining seal, although their thoughts were grave.



XXV.
The sad eyed women halted in the dawn, 
And waved farewell to dear ones riding on.
The modest mist picked up her robes and ran
Before the Sun god's swift pursuing van.
And sudden...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...ou art! The world how deep!
How tremulous-dazzlingly the wheels sweep
Around their axle! Then these gleaming reins,
How lithe! When this thy chariot attains
Is airy goal, haply some bower veils
Those twilight eyes? Those eyes!--my spirit fails--
Dear goddess, help! or the wide-gaping air
Will gulph me--help!"--At this with madden'd stare,
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood;
Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood,
Or blind Orion hungry for the morn.
And, b...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ers, and tumultuously
Down thro' the whitening hazels made a plunge
To the bottom, and dispersed, and beat or broke
The lithe reluctant boughs to tear away
Their tawny clusters, crying to each other
And calling, here and there, about the wood. 

But Philip sitting at her side forgot
Her presence, and remember'd one dark hour
Here in this wood, when like a wounded life
He crept into the shadow: at last he said
Lifting his honest forehead `Listen, Annie,
How merry they are ...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...thine,
The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold
Wrong from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer,
Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble
Against his neighbour's life, and he who laughed
And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame
Blasted before his own foul calumnies,
Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold
His conscience to preserve a worthless life,

Even while he hugs himself on his escape,
Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length,
Thy steps o'ertake him, ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...as from a scummy marsh.
At this, through all his bulk an agony
Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,
Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd
From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled
To the eastern gates, and full six dewy hours
Before the dawn in season due should blush,
He breath'd fierce breath against the sleepy portals,
Clear'd them of heavy vapours, burst them wide
Suddenly on the ocean's chilly streams....Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...fe's flung by, and love's forgotten, --
Then you'll be tired; and passion dead and rotten;
And he'll be dirty, dirty!
O lithe and free
And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see,
That's how I'll see your man and you! --

But you
-- Oh, when THAT time comes, you'll be dirty too!...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ing. Four deep they stand and strain to see 
The tango in its ecstasy of glowing lives that clasp and cling. 


Lithe limbs relaxed, exalted eyes fastened on vacancy, they seem 
To float upon the perfumed stream of some voluptuous Paradise, 


Or, rapt in some Arabian Night, to rock there, cradled and subdued, 
In a luxurious lassitude of rhythm and sensual delight. 


And only when the measures cease and terminate the flowing dance 
They waken from their magic tr...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...he black marauder, hauled by love
On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.
Behind snarled thickets of my eyes
 Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush
 Bright those claws that mar the flesh
And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.
His ardor snares me, lights the trees,
 And I run flaring in my skin;
 What lull, what cool can lap me in
When burns and brands that yellow gaze?

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,
 To quench his thirst I squander blook;
 He eats, and still his need...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...Sardinian! you Bavarian! Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian! 
You citizen of Prague! Roman! Neapolitan! Greek! 
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville! 
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding! 
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shooting arrows to the mark! 
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary! 
You women of the earth subordinated at your ...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ing with her cultured phrase 
Our homeliness of words and ways. 
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
Condemned to share her love or hate. 
A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ll out—(there is a great heat in
 the fire.) 

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements; 
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms; 
Over-hand the hammers swing—over-hand so slow—over-hand so sure:
They do not hasten—each man hits in his place. 

13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses—the block swags
 underneath on its tied-over chain; 
The ***** that drives the dray of the stone-yard—steady and ta...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...from the farthest hills:
`Ye groaning forces, crack me every shell
Of customs, old constraints, and narrow ills;
Thou, lithe Invention, wake and pry and guess,
Till thy deft mind invents me Happiness.'

"And I beheld high scaffoldings of creeds
Crumbling from round Religion's perfect Fane:
And a vast noise of rights, wrongs, powers, needs,
-- Cries of new Faiths that called `This Way is plain,'
-- Grindings of upper against lower greeds --
-- Fond sighs for old things, s...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bu...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...rce and hawkish kissing that did scar
And mar the lady's beauty evermore.
-- And once while Chivalry stood tall and lithe
And flashed his sword above the stricken eyes
Of all the simple peasant-folk of France:
While Thought was keen and hot and quick,
And did not play, as in these later days,
Like summer-lightning flickering in the west
-- As little dreadful as if glow-worms lay
In the cool and watery clouds and glimmered weak --
But gleamed and struck at once or oak or m...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s, 
And the Gods were more familiar, 
In the North-land lived a hunter, 
With ten young and comely daughters, 
Tall and lithe as wands of willow; 
Only Oweenee, the youngest, 
She the wilful and the wayward, 
She the silent, dreamy maiden, 
Was the fairest of the sisters.
"All these women married warriors, 
Married brave and haughty husbands; 
Only Oweenee, the youngest, 
Laughed and flouted all her lovers, 
All her young and handsome suitors, 
And then married old Osseo,...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...e ?

See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is the spasm that kills us !

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This weird i...Read more of this...

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