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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A Lovers Complaint

...nd often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and, nowhere fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.

Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Beowulf (Modern English)

...of his father,
so that loyal companions should linger with him
in old age, when war comes soon,
the people should follow him. By these praiseful deeds
one ought to flourish in every tribe everywhere. (ll. 20-25)

Then Scyld turned himself away at his given hour—
faring full of greatness—into the covenant of the Lord.
Then they brought him to the briny beach,
his beloved retainers, just as he himself had bidden
while he still wielded words, the benefactor of the Scyl...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Dickinson Poems by Number

...est.
Her heart is fit for home—
I—a Sparrow—build there
Sweet of twigs and twine
My perennial nest.

211

Come slowly—Eden!
Lips unused to Thee—
Bashful—sip thy Jessamines—
As the fainting Bee—

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums—
Counts his nectars—
Enters—and is lost in Balms.

213

Did the Harebell loose her girdle
To the lover Bee
Would the Bee the Harebell hallow
Much as formerly?

Did the "Paradise"—persuaded—
Yield her moat of pe...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Humanitad

...ew thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or cro...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hyperion

...ce could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
She was a Goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon
Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,
When sages look'd to Egyp...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Inferno (English)

...tless hours forgot, 
 I turn my tale to that which next befell, 
 When the dawn opened, and the night was not. 
 The hollowed blackness of that waste, God wot, 
 Shrank, thinned, and ceased. A blinding splendour hot 
 Flushed the great height toward which my footsteps fell, 
 And though it kindled from the nether hell, 
 Or from the Star that all men leads, alike 
 It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike 
 The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. 

 How first I e...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...himself would have it seem — unknown: 
Yet these in vain his eye could scarcely scan, 
Nor glean experience from his fellow-man; 
But what he had beheld he shunn'd to show, 
As hardly worth a stranger's care to know; 
If still more prying such inquiry grew, 
His brow fell darker, and his words more few. 

VII. 

Not unrejoiced to see him once again, 
Warm was his welcome to the haunts of men; 
Born of high lineage, link'd in high command, 
He mingled with the magnates of his ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Love

...bsp;   The Lady of the Land.   I told her, how he pin'd: and, ah!  The low, the deep, the pleading tone,  With which I sang another's Love,    Interpreted my own.   She listen'd with a flitting Blush,  With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;  And she forgave me, that I gaz'd    Too fondly on her Face!   But when I told the cruel...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Poem of Joys

...th resistless way, and speed off in the distance. 

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides! 
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the forenoon. 

O the horseman’s and horsewoman’s joys! 
The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the cool gurgling by the
 ears
 and hair. 

3
O the fireman’s joys! 
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells—shou...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of Myself

...shall be less familiar
 than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing: 
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
 withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread, 
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels, swelling the house with their
 plenty, 
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization, and scream at my eyes, 
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me a cent, ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...et Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood
Or breathe his breath alive?
His century like a small dark cloud
Drifts far; it is an eyeless crowd,
Where the tortured trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive.

Lady, by one light only
We look from Alfred's eyes,
We know he saw athwart the w...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Growth of Love

...less dream
Waking to thee his joy's interpreter.
I walk around and in the fields confer
Of love at large with tree and flower and stream,
And list the lark descant upon my theme,
Heaven's musical accepted worshipper. 
Thy smile outfaceth ill: and that old feud
'Twixt things and me is quash'd in our new truce;
And nature now dearly with thee endued
No more in shame ponders her old excuse,
But quite forgets her frowns and antics rude,
So kindly hath she grown to her new use. 

...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Hunting Of The Snark

...

Supposing that, when Pistol uttered the well-known
words--

 "Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!"

Justice Shallow had felt certain that it was either William or Richard, but had not been able to settle which, so that he could not possibly say either name before the other, can it be doubted that, rather than die, he would have gasped out "Rilchiam!"


CONTENTS

Fit the First. The Landing
Fit the Second. The Bellman's Speech
Fit the Third. The Baker's Tale
Fit the Fou...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Idiot Boy

...  And Betty o'er and o'er has told  The boy who is her best delight,  Both what to follow, what to shun,  What do, and what to leave undone,  How turn to left, and how to right.   And Betty's most especial charge,  Was, "Johnny! Johnny! mind that you  Come home again, nor stop at all,  Come home again, whate'er befal,  My Johnny do, I pray you do."   ...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Lady of the Lake

...For twice that day, from shore to shore,
     The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er.
     Few were the stragglers, following far,
     That reached the lake of Vennachar;
     And when the Brigg of Turk was won,
     The headmost horseman rode alone.
     VII.

     Alone, but with unbated zeal,
     That horseman plied the scourge and steel;
     For jaded now, and spent with toil,
     Embossed with foam, and dark with soil,
     While every gasp with sobs he dr...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Three Voices

...t "That I could get away!"
Strove with the thought "But I must stay. 

"To dine!" she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
"To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth! 

"Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the gormandising troup
Who find a solace in the soup? 

"Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff." 

"Yet well-bred men," he faintly said,
"Are not willing to be fed:
Nor are they well without the...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Triumph of Life

...ove crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
R...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Vision of Judgment

...Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Waste Land

...the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
 Unreal City, 
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stet...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

White Flock

...here triumphant lives the sun's last ray.
And frequently into my room's window
The winds from northern seas begin to blow
And pigeon from my palms eats wheat..
The pages that I did not complete
Divinely light she is and calm,
Will finish Muse's suntanned arm.



x x x

Just like a cold noreaster
At first she'll sting,
And then a single salty tear
The heart will wring.

The evil heart will pity
Something and then regret.
But this light-headed sadness
It w...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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