Famous Multitudinous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Display Of Mackeral

by Mark Doty
 They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail, 
each a foot of luminosity 
barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections 

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery 

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soap-bubble sphere, 

think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor, 
and not a one in any way 

distinguished from the other
--nothing about them
of individuality....Read more of this...

The Invitation

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
BEST and brightest come away ¡ª 
Fairer far than this fair day  
Which like thee to those in sorrow 
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 
To the rough year just awake 5 
In its cradle on the brake. 
The brightest hour of unborn Spring 
Through the winter wandering  
Found it seems the halcyon morn 
To hoar February born;...Read more of this...

Sheep

by Carl Sandburg
 Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous
drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over--
thousands and thousands of them in the grey...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

Rome at the Pyramid of Cestius Near the Graves of Shelley and Keats

by Thomas Hardy
 Who, then, was Cestius, 
 And what is he to me? - 
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous 
 One thought alone brings he. 

 I can recall no word 
 Of anything he did; 
For me he is a man who died and was interred 
 To leave a pyramid 

 Whose purpose was exprest 
 Not with...Read more of this...

The Nympholept

by Alan Seeger
 There was a boy -- not above childish fears -- 
With steps that faltered now and straining ears, 
Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, 
Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill 
Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue 
And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, 
Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, 
Walked up into the...Read more of this...

The Eavesdropper

by Bliss Carman
 In a still room at hush of dawn,
My Love and I lay side by side
And heard the roaming forest wind
Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
Because the round day was so fair;
While memories of reluctant night
Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
Outside, a yellow maple tree,
Shifting upon the silvery blue
With tiny multitudinous sound,
Rustled to...Read more of this...

Boadicea

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 While about the shore of Mona those Neronian legionaries
Burnt and broke the grove and altar of the Druid and Druidess,
Far in the East Boadicea, standing loftily charioted,
Mad and maddening all that heard her in her fierce volubility,
Girt by half the tribes of Britain, near the colony Camulodune,
Yell'd and shriek'd between her daughters o'er a wild confederacy. 

`They that scorn...Read more of this...

Modern Love XLVII: We Saw the Swallows

by George Meredith
 We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, 
And in the osier-isle we heard them noise. 
We had not to look back on summer joys, 
Or forward to a summer of bright dye: 
But in the largeness of the evening earth 
Our spirits grew as we went side by side. 
The hour became her husband and my bride. 
Love...Read more of this...

Mental Cases

by Wilfred Owen
 Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

Mary and Gabriel

by Rupert Brooke
 Young Mary, loitering once her garden way,
Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day,
As wine that blushes water through. And soon,
Out of the gold air of the afternoon,
One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire,
Bound back above his ears with golden wire,
Baring the eager marble of his face.
Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace
Rounding the limbs...Read more of this...

Monotone

by Carl Sandburg
 The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.

 The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.

 A face I know is beautiful--
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain....Read more of this...

New Years Chimes

by Francis Thompson
 What is the song the stars sing?
(And a million songs are as song of one)
This is the song the stars sing:
(Sweeter song's none)

One to set, and many to sing,
(And a million songs are as song of one)
One to stand, and many to cling,
The many things, and the one Thing,
The one that runs not, the many that run.


The ever new...Read more of this...

Prometheus Unbound: Act I (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 SCENE.--A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione areseated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made...Read more of this...

The Olive Tree

by Karl Shapiro
 Save for a lusterless honing-stone of moon
The sky stretches its flawless canopy
Blue as the blue silk of the Jewish flag
Over the valley and out to sea.
It is bluest just above the olive tree.
You cannot find in twisted Italy
So straight a one; it stands not on a crag,
Is not humpbacked with bearing in scored stone,
But perfectly erect in my front...Read more of this...

The Shroud of Color

by Countee Cullen
 "Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great...Read more of this...

Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...

Doom and She

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 There dwells a mighty pair - 
 Slow, statuesque, intense - 
 Amid the vague Immense: 
None can their chronicle declare, 
 Nor why they be, nor whence. 

,h II 

 Mother of all things made, 
 Matchless in artistry, 
 Unlit with sight is she. - 
And though her ever well-obeyed 
 Vacant of feeling he....Read more of this...

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