Famous Range Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Cautious Lovers

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Silvia, let's from the Crowd retire; 
For, What to you and me 
(Who but each other do desire) 
Is all that here we see? 

Apart we'll live, tho' not alone; 
For, who alone can call 
Those, who in Desarts live with One, 
If in that One they've All? 

The World a vast Meander is, 
Where Hearts confus'dly stray; 
Where...Read more of this...

A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign

by Vachel Lindsay
 I LOOK on the specious electrical light 
Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, 
Wickedly red or malignantly green 
Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. 
Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, 
The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, 
By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, 
Starting new fads for the shame-weary girl, 
By maggotry motions...Read more of this...

What Have the Cavalry Done?

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What have the cavalry done? 
Cantered and trotted about, 
Routin' the enemy out, 
Causin' the beggars to run! 
And we tramped along in the blazin' heat, 
Over the veldt on our weary feet. 
Tramp, tramp, tramp 
Under the blazin' sun, 
With never the sight of a bloomin' Boer, 
'Cause they'd hunted 'em long before -- 
That's what the cavalry...Read more of this...

To the Reader of These Sonnets

by Michael Drayton
 Into these Loves who but for Passion looks, 
At this first sight here let him lay them by 
And seek elsewhere, in turning other books, 
Which better may his labor satisfy. 
No far-fetch'd sigh shall ever wound my breast, 
Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring, 
Nor in Ah me's my whining sonnets drest; 
A libertine, fantasticly...Read more of this...

Gods Funeral

by Thomas Hardy
 I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my...Read more of this...

Once there came a man

by Stephen Crane
 Once there came a man
Who said,
"Range me all men of the world in rows."
And instantly
There was terrific clamour among the people
Against being ranged in rows.
There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.
It endured for ages;
And blood was shed
By those who would not stand in rows,
And by those who pined to stand in rows.
Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.
And those who...Read more of this...

The City of Dreadful Thirst

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke-- 
"They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk. 
But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define 
A kind of new phenomenon that came to Narromine. 

"Last summer up in Narromine 'twas gettin' rather warm-- 
Two hundred in the water bag, and lookin' like a storm--...Read more of this...

The Star of Australasia

by Henry Lawson
 We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime; 
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time. 
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before 
I tell you the Star of the South shall rise -- in the lurid clouds of war. 
It ever...Read more of this...

The Bush Girl

by Henry Lawson
 So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” 

Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn--- 

You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect 

That you were glad to be gone; 

You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her 

By the homestead receding from view, 

And you breathed with relief as you rounded...Read more of this...

How Poetry Comes to Me

by Gary Snyder
How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the
 Boulders at night, it stays
 Frightened outside the
 Range of my campfire
 I go to meet it at the
 Edge of the light
...Read more of this...

To Be Amused

by Henry Lawson
 You ask me to be gay and glad 
While lurid clouds of danger loom, 
And vain and bad and gambling mad, 
Australia races to her doom. 
You bid me sing the light and fair, 
The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings – 
While you have wives who will not bear, 
And beer to drown the fear of things. 

A...Read more of this...

Thoughts On The Works Of Providence

by Phillis Wheatley
 A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur'd, rise
To praise the monarch of the earth and skies,
Whose goodness and benificence appear
As round its centre moves the rolling year,
Or when the morning glows with rosy charms,
Or the sun slumbers in the ocean's arms:
Of light divine be a rich portion lent
To guide my soul, and favour my intend.
Celestial muse,...Read more of this...

Early Love Revisited

by Victor Hugo
 ("O douleur! j'ai voulu savoir.") 
 
 {XXXIV. i., October, 183-.} 


 I have wished in the grief of my heart to know 
 If the vase yet treasured that nectar so clear, 
 And to see what this beautiful valley could show 
 Of all that was once to my soul most dear. 
 In how short a...Read more of this...

My Comrade

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Out from my window westward 
I turn full oft my face; 
But the mountains rebuke the vision 
That would encompass space; 
They lift their lofty foreheads 
To the kiss of the clouds above, 
And ask, "With all our glory, 
Can we not win your love?"

I answer, "No, oh mountains! 
I see that you are grand; 
But you have not...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 131. O living will that shalt endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until...Read more of this...

Range-Finding

by Robert Frost
 The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had...Read more of this...

Over The Range

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed, 
Playing alone in the creek-bed dry, 
In the small green flat on every side 
Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high; 
Tell me the tale of your lonely life 
'Mid the great grey forests that know no change. 
"I never have left my home," she said, 
"I have never been over the Moonbi Range. 
"Father...Read more of this...

A Tale of Starvation

by Amy Lowell
 There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,
And he cursed eternally.
He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,
And he blasted the winds in the sky.
He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,
And he raved at the birds as they fly.
His oaths were many,...Read more of this...

Easter 1916

by William Butler Yeats
 I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But...Read more of this...

The Conversazzhony

by Eugene Field
 What conversazzhyonies wuz I really did not know,
For that, you must remember, wuz a powerful spell ago;
The camp wuz new 'nd noisy, 'nd only modrit sized,
So fashionable sossiety wuz hardly crystallized.
There hadn't been no grand events to interest the men,
But a lynchin', or a inquest, or a jackpot now an' then.
The wimmin-folks wuz mighty scarce, for wimmin, ez a...Read more of this...

The Progress of Poesy

by Thomas Gray
 A Pindaric Ode

Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers that round them blow
Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign;
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it...Read more of this...

Conroys Gap

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 This was the way of it, don't you know -- 
Ryan was "wanted" for stealing sheep, 
And never a trooper, high or low, 
Could find him -- catch a weasel asleep! 
Till Trooper Scott, from the Stockman's Ford -- 
A bushman, too, as I've heard them tell -- 
Chanced to find him drunk as a lord 
Round at the...Read more of this...

Called Into Play

by A R Ammons
 Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should...Read more of this...

Brother and Sister

by D. H. Lawrence
 The shorn moon trembling indistinct on her path,
Frail as a scar upon the pale blue sky, 
Draws towards the downward slope: some sorrow hath
Worn her down to the quick, so she faintly fares 
Along her foot-searched way without knowing why
She creeps persistent down the sky’s long stairs. 

Some day they see, though I have never seen, 
The dead moon...Read more of this...

Eurunderee

by Henry Lawson
 There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not, 
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot. 
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze 
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees, 
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange, 
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range. 

Still I see in my fancy...Read more of this...

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