Famous Mixed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Initial Love

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow;—
This befell long ago.
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged;
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste,
With malice...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing, and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

I am bound to this Land by blood

by Olu Oguibe
I am bound to this land by blood
That's why my vision is blurred
I am rooted in its soil
And its streams flood my veins
I smell the sweat of its men
And the million feet that plod
The dust of its streets
Leave their prints on my soul
I have walked the footpaths of this land
Climbed the snake-routes of its hills
I have known the heat of...Read more of this...

Louse Hunting

by Isaac Rosenberg
 Nudes -- stark and glistening,
Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces
And raging limbs
Whirl over the floor one fire.
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths
Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice.
And soon the shirt was aflare
Over the candle he'd lit while we lay.

Then we all sprang up and stript
To hunt the verminous brood.
Soon like a...Read more of this...

Regeneration

by Henry Vaughan
 1.

Award, and still in bonds, one day 
I stole abroad, 
It was high-spring, and all the way 
Primros'd, and hung with shade; 
Yet, was it frost within, 
And surly winds 
Blasted my infant buds, and sin 
Like clouds eclips'd my mind.

2.

Storm'd thus; I straight perceiv'd my spring 
Mere stage, and show, 
My walk a monstrous, mountain's thing 
Rough-cast with...Read more of this...

The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that 's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many...Read more of this...

A Ditty

by Edmund Spenser
In praise of Eliza Queen of the Shepherds


SEE where she sits upon the grassie greene, 
(O seemely sight!) 
Yclad in Scarlot, like a mayden Queene, 
And ermines white: 
Upon her head a Cremosin coronet 5 
With Damaske roses and Daffadillies set: 
Bay leaves betweene, 
And primroses greene, 
Embellish the sweete Violet. 

Tell me, have ye seene her angelick face 10...Read more of this...

From time to time my heart finds itself much straitened

by Omar Khayyam
From time to time my heart finds itself much straitened
in its cage. Shameful is it to be mixed with water
and clay. I have often thought of destroying this prison,
but my foot would come in contact with a stone and slip
on the stirrup of the Koran's law....Read more of this...

When Allah mixed my clay, He knew full well

by Omar Khayyam
When Allah mixed my clay, He knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
Without His will no act of mine was wrought;
Is it then just to punish me in hell?...Read more of this...

The Sphynx

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 The Sphynx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.?
"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
? I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;?

The fate of the manchild,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.

Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant...Read more of this...

Leffingwell

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I—THE LURE

No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant, 
For I shall never set my name to theirs 
That now bespeak the very sons and heirs 
Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. 
The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant,
And futile Seems the burden that he bears; 
But are we sounding his forlorn affairs 
Who brand him parasite and...Read more of this...

The Quarry

by William Vaughn Moody
 Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea
I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.
Upon his back a huge pagoda towered
Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.
Upon his forehead sat a golden throne,
The massy metal twisted into shapes
Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move
In myth or have their broken images
Sealed in the stony middle of the hills.
A peacock spread his thousand...Read more of this...

The Battle of Sheriffmuir

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1715, and on the 10th of November,
Which the people of Scotland have cause to remember;
On that day the Earl of Mar left Perth bound for Sheriffmuir,
At the same time leaving behind a garrison under Colonel Balfour. 

Besides leaving a force of about three thousand men quartered in different parts of Fife,
To protect the people's property,...Read more of this...

The Patriot

by Robert Browning
 An Old Story

I

It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad.
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day!

II

The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries.
Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels— 
But give me...Read more of this...

LoveSpell: Against Endings

by Erica Jong
 All the endings in my life
rise up against me
like that sea of troubles
Shakespeare mixed
with metaphors;
like Vikings in their boats
singing Wagner,
like witches
burning at
the stake--
I submit
to my fate.

I know beginnings,
their sweetnesses,
and endings,
their bitternesses--
but I do not know
continuance--
I do not know
the sweet demi-boredom
of life as it lingers,
of man and wife
regarding each other
across a table of shared witnesses,
of the hand-in-hand dreams
of those who...Read more of this...

To Stella Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems

by Jonathan Swift
 As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of...Read more of this...

The Party

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dey had a gread big pahty down to Tom's de othah night;
Was I dah? You bet! I nevah in my life see sich a sight;
All de folks f'om fou' plantations was invited, an' dey come,
Dey come troopin' thick ez chillun when dey hyeahs a fife an' drum.
Evahbody dressed deir fines'—Heish yo' mouf an' git away,
Ain't seen no sich fancy dressin'...Read more of this...

The Eighteenth Century

by Victor Hugo
 ("O dix-huitième siècle!") 
 
 {IV. vi} 


 O Eighteenth Century! by Heaven chastised! 
 Godless thou livedst, by God thy doom was fixed. 
 Thou in one ruin sword and sceptre mixed, 
 Then outraged love, and pity's claim despised. 
 Thy life a banquet—but its board a scaffold at the close, 
 Where far from Christ's beatic...Read more of this...

I cannot meet the Spring unmoved --

by Emily Dickinson
 I cannot meet the Spring unmoved --
I feel the old desire --
A Hurry with a lingering, mixed,
A Warrant to be fair --

A Competition in my sense
With something hid in Her --
And as she vanishes, Remorse
I saw no more of Her....Read more of this...

Fit the Second ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Bellman's Speech 

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face! 
He had bought a large map representing the sea, 
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A...Read more of this...

The Song Of The Chattahoochee

by Sidney Lanier
 Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the...Read more of this...

Sandpiper

by Elizabeth Bishop
 The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight...Read more of this...

The Question

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There...Read more of this...

Saltbush Bill on the Patriarchs

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Come all you little rouseabouts and climb upon my knee; 
To-day, you see, is Christmas Day, and so it’s up to me 
To give you some instruction like—a kind of Christmas tale— 
So name your yarn, and off she goes. What, “Jonah and the Whale”? 
Well, whales is sheep I’ve never shore; I’ve never been to sea, 
So all...Read more of this...

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