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Famous Mazes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...and plays and romances
Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!

You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes,
And take all you want, not a copper they cost,--
What is there to hinder your picking out phrases
For an epic as clever as "Paradise Lost"?

Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero,
Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean;
Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero
Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.

There are words so delicious ...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...ess and swilled insolence
Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then when the grey-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in pa...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...n vallies: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermei...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...nderment!
Upon soft verdure saw, one here, one there,
Cupids a slumbering on their pinions fair.

 After a thousand mazes overgone,
At last, with sudden step, he came upon
A chamber, myrtle wall'd, embowered high,
Full of light, incense, tender minstrelsy,
And more of beautiful and strange beside:
For on a silken couch of rosy pride,
In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth
Of fondest beauty; fonder, in fair sooth,
Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach:
And cov...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...'s pen
To paint her myriad phases:
The monarch, and the slave, of men -
A mountain-summit, and a den
Of dark and deadly mazes - 

A flashing light - a fleeting shade -
Beginning, end, and middle
Of all that human art hath made
Or wit devised! Go, seek HER aid,
If you would read my riddle!...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...hey dwindle 
Make the cold air fire: then screen them 
In those locks where whoso gazes 5 
Faints entangled in their mazes. 

Child of Light! thy limbs are burning 
Through the veil which seems to hide them  
As the radiant lines of morning 
Through thin clouds ere they divide them; 10 
And this atmosphere divinest 
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

Fair are others: none beholds thee; 
But thy voice sounds low and tender 
Like the fairest for it f...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...ath serve with the Sable, and bless God in the ornaments of the Temple. 

Let Jehoida bless God with an Hare, whose mazes are determined for the health of the body and to parry the adversary. 

Let Ahitub humble himself with an Ape before Almighty God, who is the maker of variety and pleasantry. 

Let Abiathar with a Fox praise the name of the Lord, who ballances craft against strength and skill against number. 

Let Moses, the Man of God, bless with a Lizard,...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...Had Lara's daring boyhood govern'd men. 
It skills not, boots not, step by step to trace 
His youth through all the mazes of its race; 
Short was the course his restlessness had run, 
But long enough to leave him half undone. 

III. 

And Lara left in youth his fatherland; 
But from the hour he waved his parting hand 
Each trace wax'd fainter of his course, till all 
Had nearly ceased his memory to recall. 
His sire was dust, his vassals could declare, 
'Twas ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...idence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate-- 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. 
Of good and evil much they argued then, 
Of happiness and final misery, 
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame: 
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!-- 
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm 
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite 
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast 
With stubborn patience as with triple steel. 
Another ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...cred hill; 
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere 
Of planets, and of fixed, in all her wheels 
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate, 
Eccentrick, intervolved, yet regular 
Then most, when most irregular they seem; 
And in their motions harmony divine 
So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear 
Listens delighted. Evening now approached, 
(For we have also our evening and our morn, 
We ours for change delectable, not need;) 
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...and 
In sight of God? Him, after all disputes, 
Forced I absolve: all my evasions vain, 
And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still 
But to my own conviction: first and last 
On me, me only, as the source and spring 
Of all corruption, all the blame lights due; 
So might the wrath! Fond wish!couldst thou support 
That burden, heavier than the earth to bear; 
Than all the world much heavier, though divided 
With that bad Woman? Thus, what thou desirest, 
And what thou...Read more of this...

by Hayden, Robert
...n, but it won't be easy.
 They'll dart underground when you try to catch them, 
 plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, 
 torn into scorpions when you try to catch them.

And before I'll be a slave 
I'll be buried in my grave

 North star and bonanza gold
 I'm bound for the freedom, freedom-bound 
 and oh Susyanna don't you cry for me

 Runagate

 Runagate


II.
Rises from their anguish and their power,

 Harriet Tubman,

 woman of earth, whipscarred,
 a summon...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ut
     Their checkered bands the joyous rout.
     There morricers, with bell at heel
     And blade in hand, their mazes wheel;
     But chief, beside the butts, there stand
     Bold Robin Hood and all his band,—
     Friar Tuck with quarterstaff and cowl,
     Old Scathelocke with his surly scowl,
     Maid Marian, fair as ivory bone,
     Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John;
     Their bugles challenge all that will,
     In archery to prove their skill.
    ...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
..., amid pale shrines
Of imag'd saints, and intermingled graves,
Mus'd a veil'd votaress; than Flavia feels,
As thro' the mazes of the festive ball,
Proud of her conquering charms, and beauty's blaze,
She floats amid the silken sons of dress,
And shines the fairest of th' assembled fair.
When azure noontide cheers the daedal globe,
And the blest regent of the golden day
Rejoices in his bright meridian tower,
How oft my wishes ask the night's return,
That best befriends the ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, 'Names:' 
He, standing still, was clutched; but I began 
To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 
And double in and out the boles, and race 
By all the fountains: fleet I was of foot: 
Before me showered the rose in flakes; behind 
I heard the puffed pursuer; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not, 
And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 
At last I hooked my ankle in a vine, 
That claspt the feet of a Mnemosyne, 
And falli...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...to know,
And little Hearts to flutter at a Beau. 

Oft when the World imagine Women stray,
The Sylphs thro' mystick Mazes guide their Way,
Thro' all the giddy Circle they pursue,
And old Impertinence expel by new.
What tender Maid but must a Victim fall
To one Man's Treat, but for another's Ball?
When Florio speaks, what Virgin could withstand,
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her Hand?
With varying Vanities, from ev'ry Part,
They shift the moving Toyshop of their Hear...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...tones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;
All purities of shady springs,
All shynesses of film-winged things
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;
All modesties o...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ined­pale­to gaze
On such a day's vast Phoenix blaze,
A day in fires decayed ! 

There­hand-in-hand we tread again 
The mazes of this varying wood, 
And soon, amid a cultured plain, 
Girt in with fertile solitude, 
We shall our resting-place descry, 
Marked by one roof-tree, towering high 
Above a farm-stead rude. 

Refreshed, erelong, with rustic fare, 
We'll seek a couch of dreamless ease; 
Courage will guard thy heart from fear, 
And Love give mine divinest peace: 
To-...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ined­pale­to gaze
On such a day's vast Phoenix blaze,
A day in fires decayed ! 

There­hand-in-hand we tread again 
The mazes of this varying wood, 
And soon, amid a cultured plain, 
Girt in with fertile solitude, 
We shall our resting-place descry, 
Marked by one roof-tree, towering high 
Above a farm-stead rude. 

Refreshed, erelong, with rustic fare, 
We'll seek a couch of dreamless ease; 
Courage will guard thy heart from fear, 
And Love give mine divinest peace: 
To-...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...hite frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,

and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick 
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.

Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
>From this distance in time
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

but it was only 
the usual gray rock
turning the usual green
when drenched by the sea.

The sea drenched the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away 
flake after ...Read more of this...

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