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Famous Mote Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Robert
...ght,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right,---
Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white!

XVI.

What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm's pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
See the eye, by a fly's foot blurred---
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain's coat of curd!

XVII.

Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?
'Tis the world the same
For my praise or blame,
And ...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...nt to be with flowers and gyrlonds dight,
And her deare fauours dearly well adorned
Her face, the fairest face that eye mote see,
She likewise did deforme like him to bee. 

Her yellow locks that shone so bright and long,
As Sunny beames in fairest somers day:
She fiersly tore, and with outragious wrong
From her red cheeks the roses rent away. 
And her faire brest the threasury of ioy,
She spoyld therof, and filled with annoy.

His palled face impictured with deat...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...nt to be with flowers and gyrlonds dight,
And her deare fauours dearly well adorned
Her face, the fairest face that eye mote see,
She likewise did deforme like him to bee. 

Her yellow locks that shone so bright and long,
As Sunny beames in fairest somers day:
She fiersly tore, and with outragious wrong
From her red cheeks the roses rent away. 
And her faire brest the threasury of ioy,
She spoyld therof, and filled with annoy.

His palled face impictured with deat...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...swallowed in the swell
Of her heart's ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.

In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion.

In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality.

Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism - rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude! ...Read more of this...

by Chatterton, Thomas
...dome of Robynne of the dale. 

Raufe. 
Saie to mee nete; I kenne thie woe in myne; 
O! I've a tale that Sabalus mote telle. 
Swote flouretts, mantled meedows, forestes dynge; 
Gravots far-kend around the Errmiets cell; 
The swote ribible dynning yn the dell; 
The joyous dauncynge ynn the hoastrie courte; 
Eke the highe songe and everych joie farewell, 
Farewell the verie shade of fayre dysporte; 
Impestering trobble onn mie dernie tale, 
Ne one kynde Seyncte to wa...Read more of this...



by Spenser, Edmund
...disgrace. 120 
O fayrest Phoebus! father of the Muse! 
If ever I did honour thee aright, 
Or sing the thing that mote thy mind delight, 
Doe not thy servants simple boone refuse; 
But let this day, let this one day, be myne; 125 
Let all the rest be thine. 
Then I thy soverayne prayses loud wil sing, 
That all the woods shal answer, and theyr eccho ring. 

Harke! how the Minstrils gin to shrill aloud 
Their merry Musick that resounds from far, 130 
The...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...nd sere fyue sythez
Gawan watz for gode knawen, and as golde pured,
Voyded of vche vylany, wyth vertuez ennourned
in mote;
Forthy the pentangel nwe
He ber in schelde and cote,
As tulk of tale most trwe
And gentylest knyyght of lote.
Fyrst he watz funden fautlez in his fyue wyttez,
And efte fayled neuer the freke in his fyue fyngres,
And alle his afyaunce vpon folde watz in the fyue woundez
That Cryst kayght on the croys, as the crede tellez;
And quere-so-euer ...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...
I cease from the effort to cease; I absolve the dead I from
its Vow,
I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote
or a star,
To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem
for what are,
Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go,
how I thrive,
If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive.
What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious
game.
Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them
the same.<...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...rst turned inward, it is best shot farthest.

Love, the mad wine of good and evil, the saint's and murderer's,
 the mote in the eye that makes its object
Shine the sun black; the trap in which it is better to catch the
 inhuman God than the hunter's own image....Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...e as if we will never die.


 III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
 and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
 I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
 in pitch-black space ...
You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
 if you're going to say "I live...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...rings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellis'd rays from Heaven,
No mote may shun- no tiniest fly-
The lightning of his eagle eye-
How was it that Ambition crept,
Unseen, amid the revels there,
Till growing bold, he laughed and leapt
In the tangles of Love's very hair?...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ed,
And the four strings of his violin
Were spinning like bees on a day in Spring.
The notes rose into the wide sun-mote
Which slanted through the window,
They lay like coloured beads a-row,
They knocked together and parted,
And started to dance,
Skipping, tripping, each one slipping
Under and over the others so
That the polychrome fire streamed like a lance
Or a comet's tail,
Behind them.
Then a wail arose -- crescendo --
And dropped from off the end of the bow,
And ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...s, or years, or days -
I kept no count, I took no note -
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter'd or fetterless to be,
I learn'd to love despair.
And thus when they appear'd at last,
And all my bond aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage - and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a se...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...g up the ladder into the loft, the Boy
Stands watching, very still, prickly and hot with joy.
He sees the dusty sun-mote slit by streaks of red,
He sees it split and stream, and all about his head
Spikes and spears of gold are licking, pricking, flicking,
Scratching against the walls and furniture, and nicking
The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom.
The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the room.
The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door
A...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
..."Hove"
or "houfe," means "hood;" and the phrase signifies to be even
with, outwit.

12. The illustration of the mote and the beam, from Matthew.


THE TALE.


At Trompington, not far from Cantebrig,* *Cambridge
There goes a brook, and over that a brig,
Upon the whiche brook there stands a mill:
And this is *very sooth* that I you tell. *complete truth*
A miller was there dwelling many a day,
As any peacock he was proud and gay:
Pipen he could, and fish,...Read more of this...

by Morris, William
....
"I saw the body of Wisdom, and of shifting guise was she wrought,
And I stretched out my hands to hold her, and a mote of the dust they caught;
And I prayed her to come for my teaching, and she came in the midnight dream--
And I woke and might not remember, nor betwixt her tangle deem:
She spake, and how might I hearken; I heard, and how might I know;
I knew, and how might I fashion, or her hidden glory show?
All things I have told thee of Wisdom are but fleeting images...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...for to wed,
Nor no man that intendeth unto heaven.
With wilde thunder dint* and fiery leven** * stroke **lightning
Mote* thy wicked necke be to-broke. *may
Thou say'st, that dropping houses, and eke smoke,
And chiding wives, make men to flee
Out of their owne house; ah! ben'dicite,
What aileth such an old man for to chide?
Thou say'st, we wives will our vices hide,
Till we be fast,* and then we will them shew. *wedded
Well may that be a proverb of a shrew.* *...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...be;
Ne no-thing asketh so grete attendaunces
As doth youre lay, and that knowe alle ye; 
But that is not the worste, as mote I thee;
But, tolde I yow the worste poynt, I leve,
Al seyde I sooth, ye wolden at me greve!

'But tak this, that ye loveres ofte eschuwe,
Or elles doon of good entencioun, 
Ful ofte thy lady wole it misconstrue,
And deme it harm in hir opinioun;
And yet if she, for other enchesoun,
Be wrooth, than shalt thou han a groyn anoon:
Lord! wel is him that may ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...this ensample of me,
If I al night wolde him in sorwe see
For al the tresour in the toun of Troye,
I bidde god, I never mote have Ioye! 

'Now loke thanne, if ye, that been his love,
Shul putte al night his lyf in Iupartye
For thing of nought! Now, by that god above,
Nought only this delay comth of folye,
But of malyce, if that I shal nought lye. 
What, platly, and ye suffre him in distresse,
Ye neither bountee doon ne gentilesse!'

Quod tho Criseyde, 'Wole ye doon o thin...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ur wyse fader wolde
Han yeven Antenor for yow anoon, 
If he ne wiste that the citee sholde
Destroyed been? Why, nay, so mote I goon!
He knew ful wel ther shal not scapen oon
That Troyan is; and for the grete fere,
He dorste not, ye dwelte lenger there. 

'What wole ye more, lufsom lady dere?
Lat Troye and Troyan fro your herte pace!
Dryf out that bittre hope, and make good chere,
And clepe ayein the beautee of your face,
That ye with salte teres so deface. 
For Troye ...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things