Famous Quintain (English) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Christ-sword

by George William Russell
 THE WHILE my mad brain whirled around
She only looked with eyes elate
Immortal love at me. I found
How deep the glance of love can wound,
How cruel pity is to hate.


I was begirt with hostile spears:
My angel warred in me for you
Whose gentle calmness all too fierce
Made unseen lightnings to pierce
My heart that dripped with ruddy dew.


I know how on the...Read more of this...

Flight

by Rupert Brooke
 Voices out of the shade that cried,
And long noon in the hot calm places,
And children's play by the wayside,
And country eyes, and quiet faces --
All these were round my steady paces.

Those that I could have loved went by me;
Cool gardened homes slept in the sun;
I heard the whisper of water nigh me,
Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone
In the...Read more of this...

The World

by George Herbert
Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,
And spinning fancies, she was heard to say
That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,
Whereas they were supported by the same;
But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.

The Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion,
Began to make balconies, terraces,
Till she had weakened all by alteration;
But reverend laws, and many a proclomation
Reform?d all at length...Read more of this...

The Beautiful City of Perth

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Ancient City of Perth,
One of the grandest on the earth,
With your stately mansions and streets so clean,
And situated between two Inches green,
Which are most magnificent to be seen 

The North Inch is beautiful to behold,
Where the daisies and butter-cups their petals unfold,
In the warm summer time of the year,
While the clear silvery Tay rolls by quite near,
And such...Read more of this...

Perinde AC Cadaver

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 In a vision Liberty stood
By the childless charm-stricken bed
Where, barren of glory and good,
Knowing nought if she would not or would,
England slept with her dead.

Her face that the foam had whitened,
Her hands that were strong to strive,
Her eyes whence battle had lightened,
Over all was a drawn shroud tightened
To bind her asleep and alive.

She turned and laughed in her dream
With...Read more of this...

Sundown

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 The summer sun is sinking low;
Only the tree-tops redden and glow:
Only the weathercock on the spire
Of the neighboring church is a flame of fire;
All is in shadow below.

O beautiful, awful summer day,
What hast thou given, what taken away?
Life and death, and love and hate,
Homes made happy or desolate,
Hearts made sad or gay!

On the road of life one mile-stone more!
In...Read more of this...

A Serenade At The Villa

by Robert Browning
 I.

That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.

Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.

Earth turned in her sleep...Read more of this...

The Rose Of The World

by William Butler Yeats
 Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.

We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the...Read more of this...

Old St Davids at Radnor

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 What an image of peace and rest
Is this little church among its graves!
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,
Here may find the repose it craves. 

See, how the ivy climbs and expands
Over this humble hermitage,
And seems to caress with its little hands
The rough, gray stones, as a child that stands
Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of...Read more of this...

Sing To Me

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Sing to me! Something of sunlight and bloom, 
I am so compassed with sorrow and gloom, 
I am so sick with the world’s noisse and strife, -
Sing of the beauty and brightness of life –
Sing to me, sing to me! 

Sing to me! Something that’s jubilant, glad! 
I am so weary, my soul so sad.
All my earth riches are...Read more of this...

Circle and Square

by Edwin Muir
 ‘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...Read more of this...

Fluttered Wings

by Christina Rossetti
 The splendour of the kindling day, 
The splendor of the setting sun, 
These move my soul to wend its way, 
And have done 
With all we grasp and toil amongst and say. 

The paling roses of a cloud, 
The fading bow that arches space, 
These woo my fancy toward my shroud, 
Toward the place 
Of faces veil’d, and heads...Read more of this...

A Commonplace Day

by Thomas Hardy
 The day is turning ghost, 
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, 
 To join the anonymous host 
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe, 
 To one of like degree. 

 I part the fire-gnawed logs, 
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends 
 Upon the shining dogs; 
Further...Read more of this...

Good Friday in my Heart

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
 GOOD FRIDAY in my heart! Fear and affright! 
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled, 
My words the words that priest and soldier said, 
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead. 
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night. 

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun. 
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to...Read more of this...

On Retirement

by Philip Freneau
 A HERMIT'S house beside a stream
 With forests planted round,
Whatever it to you may seem
More real happiness I deem
 Than if I were a monarch crowned.

A cottage I could call my own
 Remote from domes of care;
A little garden, walled with stone,
The wall with ivy overgrown,
 A limpid fountain near,

Would more substantial joys afford,
 More real bliss impart
Than all...Read more of this...

The Rain and the Wind

by William Ernest Henley
 The rain and the wind, the wind and the rain --
They are with us like a disease:
They worry the heart, they work the brain,
As they shoulder and clutch at the shrieking pane,
And savage the helpless trees.

What does it profit a man to know
These tattered and tumbling skies
A million stately stars will show,
And the ruining grace of the after-glow
And the...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude

by Conrad Aiken
 Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.

We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire,...Read more of this...

The Peace Of Dives

by Rudyard Kipling
 The Word came down to Dives in Torment where he lay:
"Our World is full of wickedness, My Children maim and slay,
 "And the Saint and Seer and Prophet
 "Can make no better of it
"Than to sanctify and prophesy and pray.

"Rise up, rise up, thou Dives, and take again thy gold,
"And thy women and thy housen as they were to...Read more of this...

Special Pleading

by Sidney Lanier
 Time, hurry my Love to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend:
`Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time...Read more of this...

Song V: Through the Trouble and Tangle

by William Morris
 Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,
Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light
I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. 

O great was my joy, though no rest was around me,
Though mid wastes of the world were we twain...Read more of this...

Ignorance

by Philip Larkin
 Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.

Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,

Even to wear...Read more of this...

The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape Waddon Vale

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours, 
 As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? 
 Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, 
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, 
 As of angel fallen from grace?" 

II 

- "Her look is but her...Read more of this...

Voices at the Window

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Who is it that, this dark night,
Underneath my window plaineth?
It is one who from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled, disdaineth
Every other vulgar light.

Why, alas, and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changeed?
Dear, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estranged,
Let my change to ruin be.

Well, in absence this will die:
Leave to see, and leave to wonder.
Absence...Read more of this...

No More Music

by Robert William Service
 The Porch was blazoned with geranium bloom;
Myrtle and jasmine meadows lit the lea;
With rose and violet the vale's perfume
Languished to where the hyacinthine sea
Dreamed tenderly . . . "And I must go," said he.

He spoke in that dim, ghostly voice of his:
"I was a singer; then the Was . . . and GAS."
(I had to lean to him, no...Read more of this...

The Pulley

by George Herbert
 When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all His treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

For...Read more of this...

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