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Famous Muir Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...t her ten-pund lands o’ tocher gude;
Were a’ the charms his lordship lo’ed.
 My lady’s gown, &c.


Out o’er yon muir, out o’er yon moss,
Whare gor-cocks thro’ the heather pass,
There wons auld Colin’s bonie lass,
A lily in a wilderness.
 My lady’s gown, &c.


Sae sweetly move her genty limbs,
Like music notes o’lovers’ hymns:
The diamond-dew in her een sae blue,
Where laughing love sae wanton swims.
 My lady’s gown, &c.


My lady’s dink, my lady’s dres...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...AN HONEST man here lies at rest
As e’er God with his image blest;
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so informed:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this....Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...uns the wale,
An’ by my pouther an’ my hail,
An’ by my hen, an’ by her tail,
 I vow an’ swear!
The game shall pay, o’er muir an’ dale,
 For this, niest year.


As soon’s the clockin-time is by,
An’ the wee pouts begun to cry,
Lord, I’se hae sporting by an’ by
 For my gowd guinea,
Tho’ I should herd the buckskin kye
 For’t in Virginia.


Trowth, they had muckle for to blame!
’Twas neither broken wing nor limb,
But twa-three draps about the wame,
 Scarce thro’ the feath...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...ks,
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks:
Though there, his heresies in Church and State
Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate:
Still she undaunted reels and rattles on,
And dares the public like a noontide sun.
What scandal called Maria’s jaunty stagger
The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger?
Whose spleen (e’en worse than Burns’ venom, when
He dips in gall unmix’d his eager pen,
And pours his vengeance in the burning line,)—
Who christen’d thus Maria’s l...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...ik’d to shed their bluid,
 An’ sell their skin.


What herd like Russell tell’d his tale;
His voice was heard thro’ muir and dale,
He kenn’d the L—’s sheep, ilka tail,
 Owre a’ the height;
An’ saw gin they were sick or hale,
 At the first sight.


He fine a mangy sheep could scrub,
Or nobly fling the gospel club,
And New-Light herds could nicely drub
 Or pay their skin;
Could shake them o’er the burning dub,
 Or heave them in.


Sic twa-O! do I live to see’t?—
Sic...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...ALTHO’ my bed were in yon muir,
 Amang the heather, in my plaidie;
Yet happy, happy would I be,
 Had I my dear Montgomerie’s Peggy.


When o’er the hill beat surly storms,
 And winter nights were dark and rainy;
I’d seek some dell, and in my arms
 I’d shelter dear Montgomerie’s Peggy.


Were I a baron proud and high,
 And horse and servants waiting ready;
Then a’ ’twad gie o’...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham
Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture
Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks
With the meandering art of wavering water
That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way.
He came, rested and prospered, and went on,
Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms,
And over each one its own particular...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...‘I give you half of me; 
No more, lest I should make 
A ground for perjury. 
For your sake, for my sake, 
Half will you take?’ 

‘Half I’ll not take nor give, 
For he who gives gives all. 
By halves you cannot live; 
Then let the barrier fall, 
In one circle have all.’ 

“A wise and ancient scorner 
Said to me once: Beware 
The road that has no...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...I've been in love for long
With what I cannot tell
And will contrive a song
For the intangible
That has no mould or shape,
From which there's no escape.

It is not even a name,
Yet is all constancy;
Tried or untried, the same,
It cannot part from me;
A breath, yet as still
As the established hill.

It is not any thing,
And yet all being is;
Being, ...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day,
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger
Across the memory and the wave?
Or a runner who'll outrun
Man's long shadow driving on,
Break through the gate of memory
And hang the apple on the tree?
Will your magic ever show
The sleeping bride shut in...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,
The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,
The green road winding up the ferny brae.
But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...Now the ice lays its smooth claws on the sill,
The sun looks from the hill
Helmed in his winter casket,
And sweeps his arctic sword across the sky.
The water at the mill
Sounds more hoarse and dull.
The miller's daughter walking by
With frozen fingers soldered to her basket
Seems to be knocking 
Upon a hundred leagues of floor
With her light heels,...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...They do not live in the world, 
Are not in time and space. 
From birth to death hurled 
No word do they have, not one 
To plant a foot upon, 
Were never in any place. 

For with names the world was called 
Out of the empty air, 
With names was built and walled, 
Line and circle and square, 
Dust and emerald; 
Snatched from deceiving death 
By the a...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...All through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret wall
We watched the mowers in the hay
And the enemy half a mile away
They seemed no threat to us at all. 

For what, we thought, had we to fear
With our arms and provender, load on load,
Our towering battlements, tier on tier,
And friendly allies drawing near
On every leafy summer road.<...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse,
And bid you so farewell.
That I can leave you, quite go out,
Go out, go out beyond all doubt,
My father says, is the miracle.

You are so great, and I so small:
I am nothing, you are all:
Being nothing, I can take this way.
Oh I need neither rise nor fall,
For when I do not move at ...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...It was not meant for human eyes,
That combat on the shabby patch
Of clods and trampled turf that lies
Somewhere beneath the sodden skies
For eye of toad or adder to catch.

And having seen it I accuse
The crested animal in his pride,
Arrayed in all the royal hues
Which hide the claws he well can use
To tear the heart out of the side.

Body of leopa...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...Our fathers all were poor,
Poorer our fathers' fathers;
Beyond, we dare not look.
We, the sons, keep store
Of tarnished gold that gathers 
Around us from the night,
Record it in this book
That, when the line is drawn,
Credit and creditor gone,
Column and figure flown, 
Will open into light.

Archaic fevers shake
Our healthy flesh and blood
Plumped ...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...If a good man were ever housed in Hell
By needful error of the qualities,
Perhaps to prove the rule or shame the devil,
Or speak the truth only a stranger sees,

Would he, surrendering quick to obvious hate,
Fill half eternity with cries and tears,
Or watch beside Hell's little wicket gate
In patience for the first ten thousand years,

Feeling the curse cl...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a war...Read more of this...

by Muir, Edwin
...The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,
And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae.
I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,
Christ, man and creature in their inner day.
How could our race betray
The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake
Who chose this form and fashion for our sake? 

The Word made flesh here is made word again
A wo...Read more of this...

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