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Famous Miles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...y and by, 
And it just so happened one day in spring 
A kind of cloud came over the sky -- 
A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high, 
And nine miles thick, and nine hundred wide, 
Flyin' in regiments, side by side, 
And eatin' up every living thing. 

"All day long, like a shower of rain, 
You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall, 
Tap, tap, tap, on the window pane, 
And they'd rise and jump at the house again 
Till their crippled carcasses piled outside. 
But what did it matt...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton



...make two. 
We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease,
We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees
For twenty miles could tell how lovers played,
And we could count a kiss for every glade.
Worry, starvation, illness and distress?
Each moment was a mine of happiness.

Then we grew tired of being country mice,
Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice
There, giving holy berries to the moon,
July's thanksgiving for the joys of June.

And you are gone away --- and how shall...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...place’; 
And I agreed with him that it was heaven,— 
Till it was hell for me for then and after. 

“There was a village miles away from us
Where now and then we paddled for the mail 
And incidental small commodities 
That perfect exile might require, and stayed 
The night after the voyage with an antique 
Survival of a broader world than ours
Whom Asher called The Admiral. This time, 
A little out of sorts and out of tune 
With paddling, I let Asher go alone, 
Sure that his h...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ey laughed all week,
They laughed until they had a fit,
They laughed until their jackets split.
The laughter spread for miles around
To every city, every town,
Over mountains, 'cross the sea,
From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.
And soon the whole world rang with laughter,
Lasting till forever after,
While Cloony stood in the circus tent,
With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent.
And he said,"THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT -
I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT."
And while the world lau...Read more of this...
by Silverstein, Shel
...June.

Today is far from Childhood—
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter—
Which shortened all the miles—

And still her hum
The years among,
Deceives the Butterfly;
Still in her Eye
The Violets lie
Mouldered this many May.

I spilt the dew—
But took the morn—
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers—
Sue—forevermore!

67

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest n...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily



...ee of the lonely Hall,
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering. 

Then came a change, as all things human change.
Ten miles to northward of the narrow port
Open'd a larger haven: thither used
Enoch at times to go by land or sea;
And once when there, and clambering on a mast
In harbor, by mischance he slipt and fell:
A limb was broken when they lifted him;
And while he lay recovering there, his wife
Bore him another son, a sickly one:
Another hand crept too across his trade
...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a day’s work
To empty one house of all household goods
And fill another with ’em fifteen miles away,
Although you do no more than dump them down.”

“Dumped down in paradise we are and happy.”

“It’s all so much what I have always wanted,
I can’t believe it’s what you wanted, too.”

“Shouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’d like to know
If it is what you wanted, then how much
You wanted it for me.”

“A troubled conscience!
You don’t want me to tell if ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...Five years have passed; five summers, with the length 
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.  Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
Th...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...heshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.

In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an aërial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prop...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...hings in California.
He'd built a noble mansard roof with balls
On turrets, like Constantinople, deep
In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,
As if to put forever out of mind
The hope of being, as we say, received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
And recognized him, through the iron gray
In which his face was muffled to the eyes,
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover wit...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ad not, by ill chance, 
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, 
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him 
As many miles aloft. That fury stayed-- 
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, 
Nor good dry land--nigh foundered, on he fares, 
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, 
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. 
As when a gryphon through the wilderness 
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 
Had from his...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...
 and
 meadows; 
Marking through these, and after all, in duplicate slender lines, 
Bridging the three or four thousand miles of land travel, 
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, 
The road between Europe and Asia.

(Ah Genoese, thy dream! thy dream! 
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, 
The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream!) 

5
Passage to India! 
Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come, 
Like clo...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Strength
around the world same time this text is set in Boulder,
 Colorado before front range of Rocky Mountains
twelve miles north of Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility in 
 United States of North America, Western Hemi-
 sphere
of planet Earth six months and fourteen days around
 our Solar System in a Spiral Galaxy
the local year after Dominion of the last God nineteen 
 hundred seventy eight
Completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten East,
 Denver city white below
Blue sky tr...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...et.

Or, another time, mackerel-taking, 
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles: 
Or, another time, fishing for rock-fish, in Chesapeake Bay—I one of the brown-faced
 crew: 
Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, 
My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions. 

7
O boating on th...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart.. . .
 After the sunburn of the day
 han...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...s twelve,
Isn’t it, now? He’s been here half an hour.
He says he left the village store at nine.
Three hours to do four miles—a mile an hour
Or not much better. Why, it doesn’t seem
As if a man could move that slow and move.
Try to think what he did with all that time.
And three miles more to go!”
“Don’t let him go.
Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.
That sort of man talks straight on all his life
From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
To anything anyone else ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie; 
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near;
Where the humming-bird shimmers—where the neck of the long-lived swan is
 curving and winding; 
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human
 laugh; 
Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden, half hid by the high weeds;

Where band-neck’d partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...BUT two miles more, and then we rest ! 
Well, there is still an hour of day, 
And long the brightness of the West 
Will light us on our devious way; 
Sit then, awhile, here in this wood­ 
So total is the solitude, 
We safely may delay. 

These massive roots afford a seat, 
Which seems for weary travellers made. 
There rest. The air is soft and sweet 
In this sequest...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...And, watched by cockatoos and goats, 
Lonely Crusoes building boats;-- 
Where in sunshine reaching out 
Eastern cities, miles about, 
Are with mosque and minaret 
Among sandy gardens set, 
And the rich goods from near and far 
Hang for sale in the bazaar;-- 
Where the Great Wall round China goes, 
And on one side the desert blows, 
And with the voice and bell and drum, 
Cities on the other hum;-- 
Where are forests hot as fire, 
Wide as England, tall as a spire, 
Full of apes...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a thousand miles 
away, unknowing 
of the unexpected 
youthful stranger 
bumming toward his door. 

- New York, April 13, 1952...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry