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Famous Phase Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brontë, Emily
...ed bliss - and cherished rest.
A thoughtful spirit taught me, soon,
That we must long till life be done;
That every phase of earthly joy
Must always fade, and always cloy: 

This I foresaw - and would not chase
The fleeting treacheries;
But, with firm foot and tranquil face,
Held backward from that tempting race,
Gazed o'er the sands the waves efface,
To the enduring seas - ;
There cast my anchor of desire
Deep in unknown eternity;
Nor ever let my spirit tire,
With lookin...Read more of this...



by Collins, Billy
...beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.

Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to ...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...A Thurn

Among them marble where the man may lie
lie chieftains grand in final phase, or pause,
'O rare Ben Jonson',
dictator too, & the thinky other Johnson,
dictator too, backhanders down of laws,
men of fears, weird & sly.

Not of these least is borne to rest.
If grandeur & mettle prompted his lone journey
neither oh crowded shelved 
nor this slab I celebrates attest
his complex slow fame forever (more or less).
I imagin...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...em rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds, 

And, moved thro' life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book; 

No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed
Of w...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...em rolling past,
A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,


And, moved thro' life of lower phase,
Result in man, be born and think,
And act and love, a closer link
Betwixt us and the crowning race


Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;


No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer'd, is but seed
Of w...Read more of this...



by Shakur, Tupac
...artner ronnie
justice stubbed her big toe on mandela
and liberty was misquoted by the indians
slavery was a learning phase
forgotten with out a verdict
while justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving black males
i mean really if anyone really valued life
and cared about the masses
theyd take em both 2 pen optical
and get 2 pair of glasses...Read more of this...

by Riley, James Whitcomb
...thing but--Fame. . . .

"A memory yet is in my mind,
So keenly clear and sharp-defined,
I picture every phase and line
Of life and death, and neither mine,--
While some fair seraph, golden-haired,
Bends over me,--with white arms bared,
That strongly plait themselves about
My drowning weight and lift me out--
With joy too great for words to state
Or tongue to dare articulate!

"And this seraphic ocean-child
And heroine was Orlie Wilde:
And thus it was I came to...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...as being who I am. Maybe
it's time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look 
at it, I'm passing through a phase:
gradually I'm changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours:
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...always-ready graves!
Howler and scooper of storms! capricious and dainty sea! 
I am integral with you—I too am of one phase, and of all phases. 

Partaker of influx and efflux I—extoller of hate and conciliation; 
Extoller of amies, and those that sleep in each others’ arms. 

I am he attesting sympathy;
(Shall I make my list of things in the house, and skip the house that supports
 them?) 

I am not the poet of goodness only—I do not decline to be the poet...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...ce turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes....Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...n our twenty thousand painful days
We may touch something: but there lives--beyond
The best of art, or nature's kindest phase--
The hope whereof our spirit is fain and fond: 
The cause of beauty given to man's desires
Writ in the expectancy of starry skies,
The faith which gloweth in our fleeting fires,
The aim of all the good that here we prize;
Which but to love, pursue and pray for well
Maketh earth heaven, and to forget it, hell. 

66
My wearied heart, whenever, after...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...surer, quicker proof-- 
Oh if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches, than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death, 
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes, 
Or down the fiery gulf as talk of it, 
To compass our dear sisters' liberties.' 

She bowed as if to veil a noble tear; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods, 
And danced the colour, an...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...fine, 
Her eyes, sea-green, slanted away from mine,
From any one's, as if to meet the gaze
Of others was too intimate a phase
For one as cool and beautiful as she.

We were not friends or foes. She seemed to be
Always a little irked— fretted to find
That other women lived among mankind.
Now for the first time after years of meeting,
Never exchanging more than formal greeting,
She spoke to me— that sharp determined way
People will speak when they have things to say...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...The cosey nook where we partook
Of sweeter cheer than fabled nectar?

Oh, happy days, when youth's wild ways
Knew every phase of harmless folly!
Oh, blissful nights, whose fierce delights
Defied gaunt-featured Melancholy!
Gone are they all beyond recall,
And I--a shade, a mere reflection--
Am forced to feed my spirit's greed
Upon the husks of retrospection!

And lo! to-night, the phantom light,
That, as a sprite, flits on the fender,
Reveals a face whose girlish grace
Brings ...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...e thy waves,
As each on each the dark shore laves
And breaks in ripples and retreats.
There is a poem in thine every phase;
Thou still has sung through all thy days.
Tell me, Miami, how it was with thee
When years ago Tecumseh in his prime
His birch boat o'er thy waters sent,
And pitched upon thy banks his tent.
In that long-gone, poetic time,
Did some bronze bard thy flowing stream sit by
And sing thy praises, e'en as I?[Pg...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...I've witnessed Bandmann's peerless hardihood,
With Arthur Cambridge have I wrought where walking was not good;
In every phase of horror have I bravely borne my part,
And even on my uppers have I proudly stood for Art!
And, after all my suffering, it were not hard to show
That I got my allopathic dose with Brutus at St. Jo!

That army fell upon me in a most bewildering rage
And scattered me and mine upon that histrionic stage;
My toga rent, my helmet gone and smashed to sm...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things