Famous Low Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Swing high and swing low

by Eugene Field
 Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow -
It's off for a sailor thy father would go;
And it's here in the harbor, in sight of the sea,
He hath left his wee babe with my song and with me:
"Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow!"

Swing high and swing low
While the breezes they blow -
It's oh for the...Read more of this...

It dropped so low -- in my Regard --

by Emily Dickinson
 It dropped so low -- in my Regard --
I heard it hit the Ground --
And go to pieces on the Stones
At bottom of my Mind --

Yet blamed the Fate that flung it -- less
Than I denounced Myself,
For entertaining Plated Wares
Upon my Silver Shelf --...Read more of this...

To Think of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think...Read more of this...

Loud And Low In The Chimney

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 LOUD and low in the chimney
The squalls suspire;
Then like an answer dwindles
And glows the fire,
And the chamber reddens and darkens
In time like taken breath.
Near by the sounding chimney
The youth apart
Hearkens with changing colour
And leaping heart,
And hears in the coil of the tempest
The voice of love and death.
Love on high in the flute-like
And tender notes
Sounds as from April meadows
And hillside...Read more of this...

And Wilt Thou Weep When I Am Low?

by George (Lord) Byron
 And wilt thou weep when I am low?
Sweet lady! speak those words again:
Yet if they grieve thee, say not so---
I would not give that bosom pain.

My heart is sad, my hopes are gone,
My blood runs coldly through my breast;
And when I perish, thou alone
Wilt sigh above my place of rest.

And yet, methinks, a gleam of peace
Doth through my cloud...Read more of this...

Death Stands Above Me Whispering Low

by Walter Savage Landor
 Death stands above me, whispering low 
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know 
Is, there is not a word of fear....Read more of this...

Roy Butler

by Edgar Lee Masters
 If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois
Got at the secret of every case
As well as it does a case of rape
It would be the greatest court in the world.
A jury, of neighbors mostly, with "Butch" Weldy
As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes
And two ballots on a case like this:
Richard Bandle and I had trouble over a fence,
And my...Read more of this...

Low Barometer

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 The south-wind strengthens to a gale,
Across the moon the clouds fly fast,
The house is smitten as with a flail,
The chimney shudders to the blast.

On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;

And Reason kens he herits in
A haunted house. Tenants unknown
Assert their...Read more of this...

Catch

by Robert Francis
 Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to...Read more of this...

With brutus in st. jo

by Eugene Field
 Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack...Read more of this...

Sonnet XL: On the Low Margin

by Mary Darby Robinson
 On the low margin of a murm'ring stream,
As rapt in meditation's arms I lay;
Each aching sense in slumbers stole away,
While potent fancy form'd a soothing dream;
O'er the Leucadian deep, a dazzling beam
Shed the bland light of empyrean day!
But soon transparent shadows veil'd each ray,
While mystic visions sprang athwart the gleam!
Now to the heaving gulf they seem'd to bend,
And now...Read more of this...

Low Tide on Grand Pré

by Bliss Carman
 The sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
I almost dream they yet will bide
Until the coming of the tide.
And yet I know that not for us,
By any ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
A little while the grievous stream,
Which frets, uncomforted of dream--

A grievous stream, that to and fro
Athrough the fields of...Read more of this...

Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,

by Fernando Pessoa
Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,

When clouds are one cloud till the horizon,

Our thinking senses deem the sun away

And say «'tis sunless» and «there is no sun»;

And yet the very day they wrong truth by

Is of the unseen sun's effluent essence,

The very words do give themselves the lie,

The very thought of absence comes from presence:

Even so deem we...Read more of this...

The Parallel

by Thomas Moore
 Yes, sad one of Sion, if closely resembling, 
In shame and in sorrow, thy wither'd-up heart -- 
If drinking deep, deep, of the same "cup of trembling" 
Could make us thy children, our parent thou art. 

Like thee doth our nation lie conquer'd and broken, 
And fall'n from her head is the once royal crown; 
In her streets, in...Read more of this...

Low at my problem bending

by Emily Dickinson
 Low at my problem bending,
Another problem comes --
Larger than mine -- Serener --
Involving statelier sums.

I check my busy pencil,
My figures file away.
Wherefore, my baffled fingers
They perplexity?...Read more of this...

The Sky is low -- the Clouds are mean

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sky is low -- the Clouds are mean.
A Travelling Flake of Snow
Across a Barn or through a Rut
Debates if it will go --

A Narrow Wind complains all Day
How some one treated him
Nature, like Us is sometimes caught
Without her Diadem....Read more of this...

An Astrologers Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one:
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.

(Oh, man that...Read more of this...

The Low-Down White

by Robert William Service
 This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my klooch to town,
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three --
One for...Read more of this...

Low-Tide

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down
Will show again when the tide is high
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,—
The bottom of the sea once more.
There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty...Read more of this...

Sweet And Low

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father...Read more of this...

Low-Anchored Cloud

by Henry David Thoreau
 Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream-drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!...Read more of this...

The Native-Born

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
 We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
 (But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
 And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
 A health to the Native-born!

They change their skies above them,
 But not their hearts that roam!
We...Read more of this...

146. Address to Edinburgh

by Robert Burns
 EDINA! Scotia’s darling seat!
 All hail thy palaces and tow’rs,
Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet,
 Sat Legislation’s sov’reign pow’rs:
 From marking wildly scatt’red flow’rs,
As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d,
 And singing, lone, the lingering hours,
I shelter in they honour’d shade.


Here Wealth still swells the golden tide,
 As busy Trade his labours plies;
There Architecture’s noble pride
 Bids elegance...Read more of this...

The Sun kept stooping -- stooping -- low!

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sun kept stooping -- stooping -- low!
The Hills to meet him rose!
On his side, what Transaction!
On their side, what Repose!

Deeper and deeper grew the stain
Upon the window pane --
Thicker and thicker stood the feet
Until the Tyrian

Was crowded dense with Armies --
So gay, so Brigadier --
That I felt martial stirrings
Who once the Cockade wore --

Charged from my chimney corner...Read more of this...

How many times these low feet staggered

by Emily Dickinson
 How many times these low feet staggered --
Only the soldered mouth can tell --
Try -- can you stir the awful rivet --
Try -- can you lift the hasps of steel!

Stroke the cool forehead -- hot so often --
Lift -- if you care -- the listless hair --
Handle the adamantine fingers
Never a thimble -- more -- shall wear --

Buzz the...Read more of this...

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