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Famous Paths Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Teasdale, Sara
...ies see.
When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks
And come out on the drowsy park, they look
Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here
They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,
Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance
About it in a windy ring and make
A circle round it only they can cross
When they come back again!" . . . Look at the lake --
Do you remember how we watched the swans
That night in late October while they slept?
Swans must...Read more of this...



by Smart, Christopher
...s zest invites, 
The sense, that in the scene delights, 
 Commands desire be chaste. 

 LXX 
For ADORATION, all the paths 
Of grace are open, all the baths 
 Of purity refresh; 
And all the rays of glory beam 
To deck the man of God's esteem, 
 Who triumphs o'er the flesh. 

 LXXI 
For ADORATION, in the dome 
Of Christ, the sparrows find a home; 
 And on His olives perch: 
The swallow also dwells with thee, 
O man of God's humility, 
 Within his Saviour CHURCH. 

...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...hen to repress, and when indulge our Flights:
High on Parnassus' Top her Sons she show'd,
And pointed out those arduous Paths they trod,
Held from afar, aloft, th' Immortal Prize,
And urg'd the rest by equal Steps to rise;
Just Precepts thus from great Examples giv'n,
She drew from them what they deriv'd from Heav'n
The gen'rous Critick fann'd the Poet's Fire,
And taught the World, with Reason to Admire.
Then Criticism the Muse's Handmaid prov'd,
To dress her Charms, and ...Read more of this...

by Aldington, Richard
...
And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones, 
And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," 
And its gravel paths. 

And on Sundays they rang the bells, 
From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. 
They had a Salvation Army. 
I was taken to a High Church; 
The parson's name was Mowbray, 
"Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it --" 
That's what I heard people say. 

I took a little black book 
To that cold, grey, damp, smelling c...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ny is an incestuous Queen,
Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene
And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!

For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful air, the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And women chaste, these are the things which lift
Our souls up more than even Agnolo's
Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o'er the scroll of human woes,

Or Tit...Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...human breast 
But holds to rob the heart within of rest! — 
With none to check, and few to point in time 
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime; 
Then, when he most required commandment, then 
Had Lara's daring boyhood govern'd men. 
It skills not, boots not, step by step to trace 
His youth through all the mazes of its race; 
Short was the course his restlessness had run, 
But long enough to leave him half undone. 

III. 

And Lara left in youth his fat...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...arden ways
We chase the light-foot tune,
And in and out the flowery maze,
With eager haste and fond delays,
In pleasant paths of June.

For us the fields are new,
For us the woods are rife
With fairy secrets, deep and true,
And heaven is but a tent of blue
Above the game of life.

The world is far away:
The fever and the fret,
And all that makes the heart grow gray,
Is out of sight and far away,
Dear Music, while I hear thee play
That olden, golden roundelay,
"Remembe...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...end of human life. 
For not to irksome toil, but to delight, 
He made us, and delight to reason joined. 
These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands 
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide 
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long 
Assist us; But, if much converse perhaps 
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield: 
For solitude sometimes is best society, 
And short retirement urges sweet return. 
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm 
Bef...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...f that hearth are still; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 
We tread the paths their feet have worn, 
We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn; 
We turn the pages that they read, 
Their written words we linger o'er. 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
No step is on the conscious floor! 
Yet love will dream, and Faith will trus...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...enitals rub against me, it shall be you! 
Broad, muscular fields! branches of live oak! loving lounger in my winding
 paths! it shall be you! 
Hands I have taken—face I have kiss’d—mortal I have ever
 touch’d! it shall be you. 

I dote on myself—there is that lot of me, and all so luscious;
Each moment, and whatever happens, thrills me with joy. 

O I am wonderful! 
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish; 
Nor the cause o...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., time out of mind, made on the granite walls rough sketches of the sun,
 moon,
 stars, ships, ocean-waves; 
Served the paths of the irruptions of the Goths—served the pastoral tribes and nomads; 
Served the long, long distant Kelt—served the hardy pirates of the Baltic;
Served before any of those, the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia; 
Served the making of helms for the galleys of pleasure, and the making of those for war; 
Served all great works on land, and all great...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...om diffusion my meanings, and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers! 
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides! 
I think you are latent with unseen existences—you are so dear to me. 

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! 
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs! 
You porches and...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
A...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...od,  And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,  Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.  But never elsewhere in one place I knew  So many Nightingales: and far and near  In wood and thicket over the wide grove  They answer and provoke each other's songs—  With skirmish and capricious passagings,  And murmurs musical and swift jug jug  And on...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...pite of grace fresh woe begin,
Even as our anger soon is past and dead
Be Thy remembrance mortal of our sin:
By Thee in paths of peace Thy sheep be led,
And in the vale of terror comforted....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________

PLATE 3

As a new heave...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...f childhood slipping and sliding

In my tired imagination, the icicles on the kitchen window,

The ashes scattered over paths in patches of grey and black.



We have so much to comprehend, too much for any mortal,

The madness of youth, so fierce, so compulsive,

The cocktails of alcohol and drugs, the quarrels with knives and guns

Entered into as lightly as love was once with us.



Our generation awaits the taste of death

With none of the anticipated solace,

No ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ins whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
With overarching elms & caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old ....
And as I gazed methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.--
And a cold glare, intenser than the n...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...race is run;
I cannot die as ye must.--Over me
Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth; and so farewell."

She spoke and wept. The dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light. A knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing forms, o'er the serene
Of the whit...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...

Only fiery sleep will come to me,
I'll enter a temple on the hill,
Five-domed, white, and stone-hewn,
On the paths remembered well.



x x x

The spring was still mysteriously swooning,
Across the hills wandered transparent wind
And the deep lake was growing blue among us --
A temple forged and kept not by mankind.

You were affrighted of our first encounter,
And prayed already for the second one,
And now today once more is the hot evening --...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things