Famous Middle Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Middle poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous middle poems. These examples illustrate what a famous middle poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were cond...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...nt in the variety of ourselves,
We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves;
We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world;
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn.
Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears, whatever does not appear, we are beautiful or sinful in ourselves only.
(O mother! O sisters dear!
If we are lost, no victor else has destroy’d us;
It is by ourselves we go down to eter...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...en. (ll. 64-73)
Then I have learned it far and wide that the work was proclaimed
to the many tribes throughout this middle-earth,
that they must adorn that folk-stead. And so it happened in his time,
immediately among men, that it was completely finished,
the greatest of halls—he created for it the name Heorot,
he who had the widest authority of his words.
He left no promises unfulfilled and dealt out rings,
riches at his feastings. The hall towered there,
high and...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...{8a} -- Beowulf’s quest,
sturdy seafarer’s, sorely galled him;
ever he envied that other men
should more achieve in middle-earth
of fame under heaven than he himself. --
“Art thou that Beowulf, Breca’s rival,
who emulous swam on the open sea,
when for pride the pair of you proved the floods,
and wantonly dared in waters deep
to risk your lives? No living man,
or lief or loath, from your labor dire
could you dissuade, from swimming the main.
Ocean-tides with your ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures,(25) how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?
VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...d shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...n -
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
Carroll, Lewis
...ur drool is identical.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not.
Today is November 14th, 1972.
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,
U.S.A., and it rains steadily
in the pond like white puppy eyes.
The pond is waiting for its skin.
the pond is waiting for its leather.
The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.
It begins:
Interrogator:
What can you say of your last seven days?
Anne:
They were tired.
Interrogator:
One day is enough to perfect a man....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...rdered,
"Move to the right." An equal number crowded
Against the right wall. Only one man remained
At attention in the middle: "What are you, soldier?"
Saluting, the man said, "Sir, I am a Belgian."
"Why, that's astonishing, Corporal--what's your name?"
Saluting again, "Rabinowitz," he answered:
A joke that seems at first to be a story
About the Jews. But as the renga describes
Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals
And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...st, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast--a serpent armed
With mortal sting. About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in Heaven; the third his feet
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
The circuit wide. Straight knew him all the bands
Of Ang...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ons high or deep
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in Heaven,
Or Earth, or Middle; all things fair and good:
But all that fair and good in thy divine
Semblance, and in thy beauty's heavenly ray,
United I beheld; no fair to thine
Equivalent or second! which compelled
Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come
And gaze, and worship thee of right declared
Sovran of creatures, universal Dame!
So talked the spirited sly Snake; a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...e afternoon with my face turn’d up to the clouds,
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle:
Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek’d bush-boy—(behind me he
rides at the drape of the day;)
Far from the settlements, studying the print of animals’ feet, or the
moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital, reaching lemonade to a feverish patient;
Nigh the coffin’d corpse when all is still, examining with a candle:
Voyaging to eve...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ough the vacant building;
The huge store-house carried up in the city, well under way,
The six framing-men, two in the middle, and two at each end, carefully bearing on their
shoulders a
heavy stick for a cross-beam,
The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands, rapidly laying the long
side-wall, two
hundred feet from front to rear,
The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the
bricks,
The bricks, one after anoth...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...eant Death's Arrests:
3.89 Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
3.90 Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.
Middle Age.
4.1 Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
4.2 And now am grown more staid that have been green,
4.3 What they have done, the same was done by me:
4.4 As was their praise, or shame, so mine must be.
4.5 Now age is more, more good ye do expect;
4.6 But more my age, the more is my defect.
4.7 But what's of worth, your eyes shall first ...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...w
The knights and ladies wept, and rich and poor
Wept, and the King himself could hardly speak
For grief, and all in middle street the Queen,
Who rode by Lancelot, wailed and shrieked aloud,
"This madness has come on us for our sins."
So to the Gate of the three Queens we came,
Where Arthur's wars are rendered mystically,
And thence departed every one his way.
`And I was lifted up in heart, and thought
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists,
How my strong lance...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...own, To comfort poor old Susan Gale. And Betty, now at Susan's side, Is in the middle of her story, What comfort Johnny soon will bring, With many a most diverting thing, Of Johnny's wit and Johnny's glory. And Betty's still at Susan's side: By this time she's not quite so flurried; Demure with porringer and plate She sits, as if in Susan's fate &...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...orld;
A wildering forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar,
While on the north, through middle air,
Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare.
XV.
From the steep promontory gazed
The stranger, raptured and amazed,
And, 'What a scene were here,' he cried,
'For princely pomp or churchman's pride!
On this bold brow, a lordly tower;
In that soft vale, a lady's bower;
On yonder meadow far away,
...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...le: French "propos".
4. "Peace" rhymed with "lese" and "chese", the old forms of
"lose" and "choose".
5. According to Middle Age writers there were two motions of
the first heaven; one everything always from east to west above
the stars; the other moving the stars against the first motion,
from west to east, on two other poles.
6. Atyzar: the meaning of this word is not known; but "occifer",
murderer, has been suggested instead by Urry, on the authority
of a marginal readi...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...en houses
of brick, one we enterd; in it were a [PL 20] number of monkeys,
baboons, & all of that species chaind by the middle, grinning and
snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their
chains: however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then
the weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect,
first coupled with & then devourd, by plucking off first one limb
and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk. this
after grinning & ...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
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