Famous Long Grounded Poems

Famous Long Grounded Poems. Long Grounded Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Grounded long poems

See also: Long Member Poems

 STANDING IN EDEN





1



Poetry claimed me young on Skegness beach

Before I was born I answered her cry

For a lost child still in the womb still

As the seawave journeying green upon green

Swollen in my mother’s side lashed and

Tongue-tied on a raft of premonition

Trying to survive my birth as the soul

Survives death turned in on the tide high

Watermarked as a bride to my beginning.



In April rain the banks were white narcissi

Yellow daffodils in Chapeltown alyssum at the

Foot of every tree white bands round the boles

Against the blackout still after fifty years

In the copse at Chapeltown the fences down the

Undergrowth cleared the bark exposed with scars

Like stars.



I am grounded in Chapeltown from dawn to dusk

Curfewed by my body’s husk I dream of ‘Swan Lake’

Car after car swan after swan across the stage

The mad conductor’s baton raised dying swans

Flying from the wings fading on the last chords

In the hyaline air by the crystal river where

We surrendered to its flow.





2



In Roundhay’s Canal Gardens go a pair of black swans

Scarlet beak to scarlet beak bend by the willow

Necks arched like the great bow of Odysseus;

Ithaca, I have returned, my Penelope lost, the tapestry

Of my journey torn, Troy long gone, a blind memory

In Homer’s song: I sing...
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 And now it was evening. 

And Almitra the seeress said, "Blessed be this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken." 

And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener? 

Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck. 

And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said: 

People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you. 

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. 

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. 

Even while the earth sleeps we travel. 

We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered. 

Brief were my days among you, and briefer still the words I have spoken. 

But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again, 

And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit...
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 The Angel ended, and in Adam's ear 
So charming left his voice, that he a while 
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear; 
Then, as new waked, thus gratefully replied. 
What thanks sufficient, or what recompence 
Equal, have I to render thee, divine 
Historian, who thus largely hast allayed 
The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed 
This friendly condescension to relate 
Things, else by me unsearchable; now heard 
With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, 
With glory attributed to the high 
Creator! Something yet of doubt remains, 
Which only thy solution can resolve. 
When I behold this goodly frame, this world, 
Of Heaven and Earth consisting; and compute 
Their magnitudes; this Earth, a spot, a grain, 
An atom, with the firmament compared 
And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll 
Spaces incomprehensible, (for such 
Their distance argues, and their swift return 
Diurnal,) merely to officiate light 
Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot, 
One day and night; in all her vast survey 
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire, 
How Nature wise and frugal could commit 
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand 
So many nobler bodies to create, 
Greater so manifold, to this one use, 
For...
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 WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot*, *sweet
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt* and heath *grove, forest
The tender croppes* and the younge sun *twigs, boughs
Hath in the Ram  his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages*); *hearts, inclinations
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers  for to seeke strange strands,
To *ferne hallows couth* in sundry lands; *distant saints known*
And specially, from every shire's end
Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,
That them hath holpen*, when that they were sick. *helped

Befell that, in that season on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard  as I lay,
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devout corage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk, *by aventure y-fall *who had by chance fallen
In fellowship*, and pilgrims were they all, into company.* 
That toward Canterbury woulde ride.
The chamber, and the stables were wide,
And *well we weren eased at the best.* *we were well...
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 Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.


TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight,
stirr'd up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the Text of Holy
Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the
Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts
distinguisht each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song
between. Heretofore Men in highest dignity have labour'd not a
little to be thought able to compose a Tragedy. Of that honour
Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, then...
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