Famous Meandering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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197. Song—The Banks of the Devon

...nd England triumphant display her proud rose:
A fairer than either adorns the green valleys,
 Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows....Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Coloured Print by Shokei

...smell,
And the path is soft to tread,
And beyond the fall it winds up and on,
While little streamlets thread
Their own meandering way down the hill
Each singing its own little song, until
I forget that 't is only a pictured path,
And I hear the water and wind,
And look through the mist, and strain my eyes
To see what there is behind;
For it must lead to a happy land,
This little path by a waterfall spanned....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

A Poem

...an urban sheeted roof
curls into waves of trailing smoke.

The brook is limpid murmuring gold
the smoke is trailing meandering gold
the killers are killers
of conscience grace and candid souls
if ever they marked
the wave of anguish
a dash, a span
among the torrents of water and sweat
the rocks in hearts
the dark sinister rocks would fall.

(Translated from Urdu By Balraj Komal, Posted By Anila A.) ...Read more of this...
by Amjad, Majeed

Abraham

...rer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.
He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular sky,
Not the great rounded sky through which he journeyed,
That went with him but when he rested changed.
His mind was full of names
Learned from str...Read more of this...
by Muir, Edwin

Beautiful Monikie

...to try a race;
It's there they can enjoy themselves during the live-long summmer day,
Near to the little purling burn, meandering on its way,
And emptying itself into the pond of Monikie,
Which supplies the people with water belonging to Dundee....Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz


Daffy Duck In Hollywood

...arge "borrowed" from Ollie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering, 
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) 
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows....Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Days of Pie and Coffee

...in his product--
I've forgotten what it was--hair restorer,
parrot feed--and he enjoyed nothing more
then a a day spent meandering the back roads 
in his jalopy. I gave him directions 
to the Denton farm, but I doubt 
that he followed them, he didn't 
seem to be listening, and it was getting late 
and Sithney had an idea of his own 
and I don't know why I am remembering this now, 
just that he summed himself up by saying 
"I've missed too many boats" 
and all these years late...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Days of Pie and Coffee

...in his product--
I've forgotten what it was--hair restorer,
parrot feed--and he enjoyed nothing more
then a a day spent meandering the back roads 
in his jalopy. I gave him directions 
to the Denton farm, but I doubt 
that he followed them, he didn't 
seem to be listening, and it was getting late 
and Sithney had an idea of his own 
and I don't know why I am remembering this now, 
just that he summed himself up by saying 
"I've missed too many boats" 
and all these years late...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

Early Poems

...Thus Iphis spoke; the royal hope and pride 
 Of a great monarch; while her damsels nigh, 
 Wandered along the Nile's meandering side; 
 And these diminished beauties, standing by 
 The trembling mother; watching with eyes wide 
 Their graceful mistress, admired her as stood, 
 More lovely than the genius of the flood! 
 
 The waters broken by her delicate feet 
 Receive the eager wader, as alone 
 By gentlest pity led, she strives to meet 
 The wakened babe; and, ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Garden Francies

...t, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

IV.

Roses, if I live and do well,
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Kubla Khan

...he thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fount...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Kubla Khan

...esher's flail : 
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 
It flung up momently the sacred river. 

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 
Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean : 
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
Ancestral voices prophesying war ! 
The shadow of the dome of pleasure 
Floated midway on the waves ; 
Where was heard the mingled measure 
From...Read more of this...
by ,

The Absinthe Drinkers

...ssers with his customary stare.
He never takes his piercing eyes from off that moving throng,
That current cosmopolitan meandering along:
Dark diplomats from Martinique, pale Rastas from Peru,
An Englishman from Bloomsbury, a Yank from Kalamazoo;
A poet from Montmartre's heights, a dapper little Jap,
Exotic citizens of all the countries on the map;
A tourist horde from every land that's underneath the sun --
That little wizened Spanish man, he misses never one.
Oh, foul or fa...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Thompsons Lunch Room -- Grand Central Station

...and grey-white salt.
Grey-white placards: "Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters":
Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines.
Dropping on the white counter like horn notes
Through a web of violins,
The flat yellow lights of oranges,
The cube-red splashes of apples,
In high plated `epergnes'.
The electric clock jerks every half-minute:
"Coming! -- Past!"
"Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,"
Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily.
A man carries a chi...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Thus the Mayne glideth

...re my Love abideth; 
Sleep 's no softer: it proceeds 
On through lawns, on through meads, 
On and on, whate'er befall, 
Meandering and musical, 
Though the niggard pasturage 
Bears not on its shaven ledge 
Aught but weeds and waving grasses 
To view the river as it passes, 
Save here and there a scanty patch 
Of primroses too faint to catch 
A weary bee.... And scarce it pushes 
Its gentle way through strangling rushes 
Where the glossy kingfisher 
Flutters when noon-heats ar...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

To Helen 2

...ared. 
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) 

The pearly lustre of the moon went out: 
The mossy banks and the meandering paths, 
The happy flowers and the repining trees, 
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors 
Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 
All- all expired save thee- save less than thou: 
Save only the divine light in thine eyes- 
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 
I saw but them- they were the world to me! 
I saw but them- saw only them for hou...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

two south coast poems (a) this morning i came within sound of the sea

...were a bed of rock
whose hands were drier than deserts
the sea's voice drove fear up through the valley
the tributaries meandering inside me longing for outlet
shrivelled even as their own courses became straight

my demand for ocean died now the ocean approached

the clouds put up with a lot of invective from me today
not a stone lay upon the earth in its right place
the valley upheaved into a mountain and the sea froze
the hardness in me was all fluid - i cried to be melted...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

...
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun,
How ...Read more of this...
by Thoreau, Henry David

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