Famous Parallel Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Parallel poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous parallel poems. These examples illustrate what a famous parallel poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...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
distingu...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...I have been one acquainted with the night" - Robert Frost
Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird
Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and
attitudes
The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,
Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced
On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident.
Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish
Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights
Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew pa...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...
Since i can't go
where i need
to go . . . then i must . . . go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
When i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
I know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry ...Read more of this...
by
Giovanni, Nikki
...ral;
Thus the shadowless man or ox, and the pictured devil,
In seizure of silence commit the dead nuisance.
The natural parallel.
My images stalk the trees and the slant sap's tunnel,
No tread more perilous, the green steps and spire
Mount on man's footfall,
I with the wooden insect in the tree of nettles,
In the glass bed of grapes with snail and flower,
Hearing the weather fall.
Intricate manhood of ending, the invalid rivals,
Voyaging clockwise off the symboled harbour,
...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...f all these without compare the best
2.69 (Whom none but great Aurelius could quell)
2.70 Yet for our Queen is no fit parallel:
2.71 She was a Ph{oe}nix Queen, so shall she be,
2.72 Her ashes not reviv'd more Ph{oe}nix she.
2.73 Her personal perfections, who would tell,
2.74 Must dip his Pen i' th' Heliconian Well,
2.75 Which I may not, my pride doth but aspire
2.76 To read what others write and then admire.
2.77 Now say, have women worth, or have they none?
2.78 Or...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...of all are the words that shape the leaves –
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform –
And their venation – palmate and parallel –
And tips – acute, truncate, auriculate.
Sufficiently provided, you may now
Go forth to the forests and the shady streets
To see how the chaos of experience
Answers to catalogue and category.
Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree
May differ among themselves more than they do
From other species, so you have to find,
All blandly says the book, "a...Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...thus by its own warp and weight,
And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
The woman walks on the pavement verge,
Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like Turk's-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things,
The rain clams her apron till it clings. --
So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys....Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...e he has read the primer of right thought,
A man may claim between two smithy strokes
Beatitude enough to realize
God's parallel completeness in the vague
And incommensurable excellence
That equitably uncreates itself
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.
VIII
There is no loneliness: -- no matter where
We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends
Forsake us in the seeming, we are all
At one with a complete companionship;
And though forlornly joyless be the ways
We tr...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...nt Friends in vain;
With fault'ring Speech, and dying Wishes calls
Those, whom perhaps, their own Domestick Walls
By parallel Distress, or swifter Death retains.
O Wells! thy Bishop's Mansion we lament,
So tragical the Fall, so dire th'Event!
But let no daring Thought presume
To point a Cause for that oppressive Doom.
Yet strictly pious KEN! had'st Thou been there,
This Fate, we think, had not become thy share;
Nor had that awful Fabrick bow'd,
Sliding from its l...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...e to open sight
Of day-spring, and the sun, who, scarce up-risen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim,
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landskip all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains,
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquen...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s straight --
Nor stile, nor gate;
For milestones -- towns!
Voluminous, vanishing, white,
The steam plume trails;
Parallel streaks of light,
THe polished rails.
Oh, who can follow?
The little swallow,
The trout of the sky:
But the sun
Is outrun,
And Time passed by.
O'er bosky dens,
By marsh and mead,
Forest and fens
Embodied speed
Is clanked and hurled;
O'er rivers and runnels;
And into the earth
And out again
In death and birth
That know no pain,
Fo...Read more of this...
by
Davidson, John
...monds, Pearls, and gold,
But such as Angels' heads infold.
The City where I hope to dwell,
There's none on Earth can parallel.
The stately Walls both high and trong
Are made of precious Jasper stone,
The Gates of Pearl, both rich and clear,
And Angels are for Porters there.
The Streets thereof transparent gold
Such as no Eye did e're behold.
A Crystal River there doth run
Which doth proceed from the Lamb's Throne.
Of Life, there are the waters sure
Which shall re...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...team into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines....Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...ental
woodland grew, shaft by shaft in perfect rows
where its stub branches held and its spokes fell.
It was a place of parallel trees, their lives
filed out in exile where we walked too alien to know
our sameness and how our sameness survives.
Outside of us the village cars followed
the white line we had carefully walked
two nights before toward our single beds.
We lay halfway up an ugly hill and if we fell
it was here in the woods where the woods were caught
in their dying...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...Diamonds, Pearls, and gold,
But such as Angels' heads infold.
The City where I hope to dwell,
There's none on Earth can parallel.
The stately Walls both high and trong
Are made of precious Jasper stone,
The Gates of Pearl, both rich and clear,
And Angels are for Porters there.
The Streets thereof transparent gold
Such as no Eye did e're behold.
A Crystal River there doth run
Which doth proceed from the Lamb's Throne.
Of Life, there are the waters sure
Which shall remain forev...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...e!
How shall I praise or curse to thy desert,
Or separate thy sound from thy corrupted part?
I called thee Nile; the parallel will stand:
Thy tides of wealth o'erflow the fattened land;
Yet monsters from thy large increase we find
Engendered on the slime thou leavest behind.
Sedition has not wholly seized on thee,
Thy nobler parts are from infection free.
Of Israel's tribes thou hast a numerous band,
But still the Canaanite is in the land.
Thy military chiefs are b...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...Dust and Gore.
And will the Suffering World never bestow
Upon th'Accursed Causers of such Woe,
A vengeance that may parallel their Loss,
Fix Publick Thieves and Robbers on the Cross?
Such as call Ruine, Conquest, in their Pride,
And having plagu'd Mankind, in Triumph ride.
Like that renowned Murderer who staines
In these our days Alsatias fertile Plains,
Only to fill the future Tromp of Fame,
Though greater Crimes, than Glory it proclame.
Alcides, Scourge of Thiev...Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...ment,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless. A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.
"Why does the strange sea make no sound?
Is it because we're far away?
Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor,
or in Mongolia?"
An ancient promontory,
an ancient principality whose artist-prince
might have wanted to build a monument
to mark a tomb or boundary, or ma...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...water with this language
but it does promote international bird on shoulder.
This foretaste now lays its knife and fork parallel....Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...ur dogs do our living for us
But man discover.
It is a fine ambition,
But the wrong tools. Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky
the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth....Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
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