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Famous Looming Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ope of land that ever grew, 
Field after field, up to a height, the peak 
Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king, 
Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope 
The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven, 
Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick, 
In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind, 
Streamed to the peak, and mingled with the haze 
And made it thicker; while the phantom king 
Sent out at times a voice; and here or there 
Stood one who pointed toward t...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...may go too, 
When my lease is through,— 

Or this one for the morning and the east, 
Where a man may feast 
His eyes on looming sails, 
And be the first to catch their foreign hails 
Or spy their bales 

Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole! 
It thrills my soul 
With wonder and delight, 
When gold-green shadows walk the world at night, 
So still, so bright. 

There at the window many a time of year, 
Strange faces peer, 
Solemn though not unkind, 
Their wits in sea...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss
...n their stride.





6



At dawn in Leeds

I was lost

Once I had left

The lock

Car park, office block,

Grand hotel looming

And no path

But then I found

Back Lane, every

Window blocked,

Every inch cobbled,

A road to nowhere

Built a hundred

Years ago.



I found a gas lamp

Anchored to a corner

Rusty and forgotten

In the glare

Of the million watt

Yorkshire Electricity

Tower of Steel for

The new museum

‘Guns before butter’

And I wonder,

Christian Visionary ...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...who can fight to Heaven's own height
 Is the man who can fight when he's losing.

Carry on! Carry on!
Things never were looming so black.
But show that you haven't a cowardly streak,
And though you're unlucky you never are weak.
Carry on! Carry on!
Brace up for another attack.
It's looking like hell, but -- you never can tell:
Carry on, old man! Carry on!

There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,
 And some who in brutishness wallow;
There are others, I know, who ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...rush dark and wild 
They fleck with shade our mountain heights
The same as long ago 
And on the horizon rest at last
In looming masses piled; 
While moonbeams flash and fly so fast
We scarce can say they smiled - 

Come walk with me, come walk with me;
We were not once so few
But Death has stolen our company
As sunshine steals the dew -
He took them one by one and we 
Are left the only two; 
So closer would my feelings twine
Because they have no stay but thine - 

'Nay call m...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily



...ttack!’ 
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right 
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left; 
And stumbling figures looming out in front. 
‘O Christ, they’re coming at us!’ Bullets spat, 
And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire... 
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang 
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out 
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked 
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, 
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groan...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ike face.
We're climbing,
 climbing higher.
Like an arrow of fire
 we pierce
 the darkness.
The heavens rise overhead,
 looming closer;
the sky is like a meadow full of flowers.
 We're climbing,
 climbing higher.

...................................................
 ...................................................
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I must have dozed off --
 I opened my eyes.
Dawn's moment of glory.
The sky a calm ocean,
our plane a ship....Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...un is her masthead light, 
She tows the moon like a pinnace frail 
Where her phosphor wake churns bright. 
Now hid, now looming clear, 
On the face of the dangerous blue 
The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, 
But on, but on does the old earth steer 
As if her port she knew. 

God, dear God! Does she know her port, 
Though she goes so far about? 
Or blind astray, does she make her sport 
To brazen and chance it out? 
I watched when her captains passed: 
She were better cap...Read more of this...
by Moody, William Vaughn
...
 
That rises upward always higher,
   And onward drags a labouring breast,
   And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
 
XVI
What words are these have falle'n from me?
   Can calm despair and wild unrest
   Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
 
Or cloth she only seem to take
   The touch of change in calm or storm;
   But knows no more of transient form
In her deep self, than some dead lake
 
That hol...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...onder cloud

That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire....Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rs de la politesse.

IV

Daisy Abey

Daisy, dearest of all, safest

And kindest, watcher and warner

Of chaotic corners looming

Round poetry’s boomerang bends

I owe you most a letter

While you are here beside me

Patient as a miller waiting on wind

To drive the great sails

Through summer. 

When the muse takes over

I am snatched from order and duty

Blowing routine into a riot of going

And coming, blind, backwards, tip

Over ****, sea waves crashing in suburbia,

Satur...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...published on BLINKING EYE, http://www.blinking-eye.co.uk/writer/padel2.html )



Then spoke the thunder, shattering the looming blackness of our national life. The rumble that breaks a spell of the dry season

 – Saro-Wiwa, "The Storm Breaks"



Does a zebra foal dream? Head lower, lower
under lenticular dark cloud,
he drags harlequin fetlocks, porcelain
quails' egg hooflets through pimpling dust,

slower, slower through the silver
rainbow night, this soot and fester
cellar-l...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth
...then I roused with fear for lo!
I saw six grisly ships of war.
A grim, grey line of might and dread
Against the skyline looming sheer:
With horror to myself I said:
"Courage, my comrades, war is near!"

I saw my cottage on the hill
With rambling roses round the door;
It was so peaceful and so still
I sighed . . . and then it was no more.
A flash of flame, a rubble heap;
I cried aloud with woe and fear . . .
And wok myself from troubled sleep -
My home was safe, war was not ne...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...lines 
And broken lines were they, 
With scarce a soldier who could tell 
Where friend or foeman lay: 
The storm cloud looming over all, 
Save where the west was red, 
And on the field, of friend and foe, 
Ten thousand men lay dead. 

Boy Clarence lay in slush and blood 
With his face deathly white; 
Old Withen lay by his left side 
And I knelt at his right. 
And Clarence ever whispered, 
Though with dying eyes serene: 
"I loved her for her girlhood,. 
Will someone tell the ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...ng 
absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Sus-
quehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, cling-
ing like starlings beneath the eaves.
Even the leftover carats of tar in the gutter, so black they seemed to suck 
the light out of the air.
By nightfall kids had come across them: every sidewalk on the block was 
scribbled with obscenities and hearts....Read more of this...
by Williams, C K
...s, I sadly fear
The battle and my hopes are lost,
Unless some help appear!"

Lo, as she spoke, she saw afar
The rescuer looming up -
The pride of all Buena Park,
Clow's famous yellow pup!

"Now, sick'em, Don," the maiden cried,
"Now, sick'em, Don!" cried she;
Obedient Don at once complied -
As ordered, so did he.

He sicked'em all so passing well
That, overcome by fright,
The Indian horde gave up the fray
And safety sought in flight.

They ran and ran and ran and ran
O'er val...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...rown, she knew not why.
But hurrying to the open door,
Against the verge of western sky

I saw retreating on the hills,
Looming and sinister and black,
The stealthy figure swift and huge
Of One who strode and looked not back....Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss
...ey stand aloof in their 
nakedness - they limber; 
like the gods terrified into silence, 
like tall brooding deities looming out of the 
fog: 

The forest hugs them 
carves them into stones, 
Etches them into the slow 
eastern landscape: rivers, hills 
the slow running water, 
times broken inscapes…

The willows are burdened with ice 
the white shrouds of burial spread 
upon the earth's ravaged face; the eyes 
unseeing, the mouth unspeaking, 
a gust of wind p...Read more of this...
by Nwakanma, Obi
...like a lover's beat,-- 
So reigns the rapture of the year.

The ho! and hey! and whop-hooray! 
Though winter clouds be looming, 
Remember a November day 
Is merrier than mildest May 
With all her blossoms blooming.

While birds in scattered flight are blown 
Aloft and lost in dusky mist, 
And truant boys scud home alone 
'Neath skies of gold and amethyst; 
While twilight falls, and Echo calls 
Across the haunted atmosphere, 
With low, sweet laughs at intervals,-- 
So reigns ...Read more of this...
by Riley, James Whitcomb
...velous afterthought of the flukes,

and the way his broad flippers
resembled a pair of clownish gloves
or puppet hands, looming greenish white

beneath the bay's clouded sheen. 
When he had consumed his pleasure
of the shimmering swarm, his pleasure, perhaps,

in his own admired performance,
he swam out the harbor mouth,
into the Atlantic. And though grief

has seemed to me itself a dim,
salt suspension in which I've moved,
blind thing, day by day,

through the wreckage, bare...Read more of this...
by Doty, Mark

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things