Famous Looms Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hillcrest

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 (To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)


No sound of any storm that shakes 
Old island walls with older seas 
Comes here where now September makes 
An island in a sea of trees. 

Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets 
The roaring of a world remade, 
And all his ruins and regrets; 

And if he still remembers here...Read more of this...

Agnostic

by Robert William Service
 The chapel looms against the sky,
 Above the vine-clad shelves,
And as the peasants pass it by
 They cross themselves.
But I alone, I grieve to state,
 Lack sentiment divine:
A citified sophisticate,
 I make no sign.

Their gesture may a habit be,
 Mechanic in a sense,
Yet somehow it awakes in me
 Strange reverence.
And though from ignorance it stem,
 Somehow I deeply grieve,
And...Read more of this...

The Two Men

by Thomas Hardy
 THERE were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his endings, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.

"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend and mortal lot
And sweeten...Read more of this...

Skyscraper

by Carl Sandburg
 BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and
has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul...Read more of this...

The Ripest Peach

by James Whitcomb Riley
 The ripest peach is highest on the tree -- 
And so her love, beyond the reach of me, 
Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow 
Her heart down to me where I worship now! 

She looms aloft where every eye may see 
The ripest peach is highest on the tree. 
Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!...Read more of this...

Night

by Sidney Lanier
 A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea, 
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.

I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.

We tread an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly...Read more of this...

The Moose

by Elizabeth Bishop
 From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats 
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich...Read more of this...

To Mr. Blanchard the Celebrated Aeronaut in America

by Philip Freneau
 Nil mortalibus ardui est
  Caelum ipsum petimus stultitia
   Horace

FROM Persian looms the silk he wove
No Weaver meant should trail above
The surface of the earth we tread,
To deck the matron or the maid.

But you ambitious, have design'd
With silk to soar above mankind:--
On silk you hang your splendid car
And mount towards the morning star.

How can you be so...Read more of this...

The Bells of Malines

by Henry Van Dyke
 AUGUST 17, 1914 

The gabled roofs of old Malines
Are russet red and gray and green,
And o'er them in the sunset hour
Looms, dark and huge, St. Rombold's tower.
High in that rugged nest concealed,
The sweetest bells that ever pealed,
The deepest bells that ever rung,
The lightest bells that ever sung,
Are waiting for the master's hand
To fling their music o'er the land. 

And...Read more of this...

Deaths And Entrances

by Dylan Thomas
 On almost the incendiary eve
 Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
 And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
 Of your immortal friends
Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust
 To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
 That cannot sink or cease
...Read more of this...

Wait

by Galway Kinnell
 Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same:...Read more of this...

O Poor People

by Elizabeth Smart
 Let us invoke a healthy heart-breaking
Towards the horrible world:
Let us say 0 poor people
How can they help being so absurd,
Misguided, abused, misled?

With unsifted saving graces jostling about 
On a mucky medley of needs,
Like love-lit ****, 
Year after cyclic year
The unidentifiable flying god is missed.

Emotions sit in their heads disguised as judges,
Or are twisted to look like mathematical formulae,
And only...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...

My Garden

by Robert William Service
 The world is sadly sick, they say,
And plagued by woe and pain.
But look! How looms my garden gay,
With blooms in golden reign!
With lyric music in the air,
Of joy fulfilled in song,
I can't believe that anywhere
 Is hate and harm and wrong.

A paradise my garden is,
And there my day is spent;
A steep myself in sunny bliss,
Incredibly content.
Feeling that I am...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

The Ghost Of The Past

by Thomas Hardy
 We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
As ever has been known.

As daily I went up the stair,
And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there --
The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
I...Read more of this...

The Four Seasons

by Obi Nwakanma
I
ICICLES fall from trees, molten with age, 
without memory - they 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...Read more of this...

Devils

by Alexander Pushkin
 Storm-clouds hurtle, storm-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
On and on our coach advances,
Little bell goes din-din-din...
Round are vast, unknown expanses;
Terror, terror is within.

-- Faster, coachman! "Can't, sir, sorry:
Horses, sir, are nearly dead.
I am blinded, all is blurry,
All snowed up; can't see ahead.
Sir, I tell you on the level:
We...Read more of this...

Revulsion

by Thomas Hardy
 THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,
And losing love is as one's life were riven;
It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
To cede what was superfluously given.

Let...Read more of this...

I. M. R. T. Hamilton Bruce (1846-1899)

by William Ernest Henley
 Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the...Read more of this...

Little Brother

by Robert William Service
 Wars have been and wars will be
Till the human race is run;
Battles red by land and sea,
Never peace beneath the sun.
I am old and little care;
I'll be cold, my lips be dumb:
Brother mine, beware, beware . . .
Evil looms the wrath to come.

Eastern skies are dark with strife,
Western lands are stark with fear;
Rumours of world-war are rife,
Armageddon draweth near.
If...Read more of this...

The Assault Heroic

by Robert Graves
 Down in the mud I lay, 
Tired out by my long day 
Of five damned days and nights, 
Five sleepless days and nights,… 
Dream-snatched, and set me where
The dungeon of Despair 
Looms over Desolate Sea, 
Frowning and threatening me 
With aspect high and steep— 
A most malignant keep.
My foes that lay within 
Shouted and made a din, 
Hooted and...Read more of this...

The Twelve

by Aleksandr Blok
 III 
Our sons have gone 
to serve the Reds 
to serve the Reds 
to risk their heads! 

O bitter,bitter pain, 
Sweet living! 
A torn overcoat 
an Austrian gun! 

-To get the bourgeosie 
We'll start a fire 
a worldwide fire, and drench it 
in blood- 
The good Lord bless us! 


-O you bitter bitterness, 
boring boredom, 
deadly boredom. 

This is...Read more of this...

Shirt

by Robert Pinsky
 The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The...Read more of this...

The Moon of Other Days

by Rudyard Kipling
 Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
 When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch -- alas! --
 Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
 She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be
 The Moon of Other Days?

Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
 Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
 The Moon of August shone,
When...Read more of this...

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