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Famous Moss Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...im some fine braw ane;
It chanc’d the stack he faddom’t thrice 13
 Was timmer-propt for thrawin:
He taks a swirlie auld moss-oak
 For some black, grousome carlin;
An’ loot a winze, an’ drew a stroke,
 Till skin in blypes cam haurlin
 Aff’s nieves that night.


A wanton widow Leezie was,
 As cantie as a kittlen;
But och! that night, amang the shaws,
 She gat a fearfu’ settlin!
She thro’ the whins, an’ by the cairn,
 An’ owre the hill gaed scrievin;
Whare three lairds’ lan’...Read more of this...



by Thomas, Dylan
...the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ri...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...he word
whether from Green Spring, and the yellow bird
'that sings unceasing on the banks of Kiang,'
or 'from the Green Moss Path, that winds and winds,
nine turns for every hundred steps it winds,
up the Sword Parapet on the road to Shuh.'
‘Dead pinetrees hang head-foremost from the cliff.
The cataract roars downward. Boulders fall
Splitting the echoes from the mountain wall.
No voice, save when the nameless birds complain,
in stunted trees, female echoing ma...Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...lings. 

 LV 
The spotted ounce and playsome cubs
Run rustling 'mongst the flow'ring shrubs, 
 And lizards feed the moss; 
For ADORATION beasts embark, 
While waves upholding halcyon's ark 
 No longer roar and toss. 

 LVI 
While Israel sits beneath his fig, 
With coral root and amber sprig 
 The wean'd advent'rer sports; 
Where to the palm the jasmine cleaves, 
For ADORATION 'mongst the leaves 
 The gale his peace reports. 

 LVII 
Increasing days their reign exa...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...known?
Unguided Love hath fallen- 'mid "tears of perfect moan."
He was a goodly spirit- he who fell:
A wanderer by moss-y-mantled well-
A gazer on the lights that shine above-
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty's hair-
And they, and ev'ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of woe)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo-
B...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ering stream of wind
Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,
And, lo! with gentle motion between banks
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 
Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark!
The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar
With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.
Where the embowering trees recede, and leave
A little space of green expanse, the cove
Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers
Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes,
Reflecte...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
..., intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
Elf-needled mat of moss,

XIII.

By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening---nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,
Where a freaked fawn-coloured flaky crew
Of toadstools peep indulged.

XIV.

And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...their priests go out, till none
Is left to teach their worship; then the fires
Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss
O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images
Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns,
Chanted by kneeling crowds, the chiding winds
Shriek in the solitary aisles. When he
Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all
The laws that God or man has made, and round
Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth,--
Lifts up his atheist front to scof...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...elics old; 
And, coating each, slow-formed, appears, 
The growth of green and antique mould. 

All in this house is mossing over; 
All is unused, and dim, and damp; 
Nor light, nor warmth, the rooms discover­ 
Bereft for years of fire and lamp. 

The sun, sometimes in summer, enters 
The casements, with reviving ray; 
But the long rains of many winters 
Moulder the very walls away. 

And outside all is ivy, clinging 
To chimney, lattice, gable grey; 
Scarcely one ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...; 
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields; 
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them; 
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and
 poke-weed.

6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.


Or I guess it is the handke...Read more of this...

by Cook, Eliza
...to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet--
Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in darkness and dust.
You...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
....
Good Violets, sweet Violets, hide shame
Below the earth.

"Ye silent Mills,
Reject the bitter kindness of the moss.
O Farms! protest if any tree emboss
The barren hills.

"Young Trade is dead,
And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern
And folds his arms that find no bread to earn,
And bows his head.

"Spring-germs, spring-germs,
Albeit the towns have left you place to play,
I charge you, sport not. Winter owns to-day,
Stay: feed the worms."...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...not a happy child. 

Adventurous joy it was for me! 
I crept beneath the boughs, and found 
A circle smooth of mossy ground 
Beneath a poplar-tree. 20 

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, 
Bedropt with roses waxen-white, 
Well satisfied with dew and light, 
And careless to be seen. 

Long years ago, it might befall, 25 
When all the garden flowers were trim, 
The grave old gardener prided him 
On these the most of all. 

Some Lady, stately o...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...sp; Alas! 'tis very little, all  Which they can do between them.   Beside their moss-grown hut of clay,  Not twenty paces from the door,  A scrap of land they have, but they  Are poorest of the poor.  This scrap of land he from the heath  Enclosed when he was stronger;  But what avails the land to them,  Which they can till no longer?Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...r beneath,
     The varied realms of fair Menteith.
     With anxious eye he wandered o'er
     Mountain and meadow, moss and moor,
     And pondered refuge from his toil,
     By far Lochard or Aberfoyle.
     But nearer was the copsewood gray
     That waved and wept on Loch Achray,
     And mingled with the pine-trees blue
     On the bold cliffs of Benvenue.
     Fresh vigor with the hope returned,
     With flying foot the heath he spurned,
     Held westward...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...harm;
Tempe, no more I court thy balmy breeze,
Adieu green vales! Ye broider´d meads, adieu!
Beneath yon ruin'd abbey's moss-grown piles
Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,
Where through some western window the pale moon
Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light;
While sullen sacred silence reigns around,
Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower
Amid the mould'ring caverns dark and damp,
Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves
Of flaunting ivy,...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ad sweeps gently under the bridge where trains never ran

Our voices still echoing round the cavernous walls the smooth moss clings to

And we are beyond the reach of the driving rain.



There is always the odd cottage no one can be bothered with where the lorries roar

But when you look behind a random stream gurgles by an overgrown track

With a gully of pebbles and an overhanging rock,

The door still hangs on that rusty latch; your thumb might still

Make it yield, n...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...I get up and ran
through the blades of balisier sharper than spears:
with the blood of my race, I ran, boy, I ran
with moss-footed speed like a painted bird;
then I fall, but I fall by an icy stream under
cool fountains of fern, and a screaming parrot
catch the dry branches and I drowned at last
in big breakers of smoke; then when that ocean
of black smoke pass, and the sky turn white,
there was nothing but Progress, if Progress is
an iguana as still as a young leaf in sunli...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...rock or stone, it is o'ergrown  With lichens to the very top,  And hung with heavy tufts of moss,  A melancholy crop:  Up from the earth these mosses creep,  And this poor thorn! they clasp it round  So close, you'd say that they were bent  With plain and manifest intent,  To drag it to the ground;  And all had join'd in one endeavour  To...Read more of this...

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