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Famous Reclining Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself, 
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! 
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! 
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! 
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 

3
Ever upon t...Read more of this...



by Campbell, Thomas
...egin.

It was in this lonely valley she would charm
The lingering noon, where flowers a couch had strown;
Her cheek reclining, and her snowy arm
On hillock by the pine-tree half o'ergrown:
And aye that volume on her lap is thrown,
Which every heart of human mould endears;
With Shakspear's self she speaks and smiles alone,
And no intruding visitation fears,
To shame the unconscious laugh, or stop her sweetest tears.

And naught within the grove was heard or seen
But st...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...ies;
Poised in the eddy to the storm,
Before the eye it tarries. 

A woman drowned­sunk in the deep,
On a long wave reclining;
The circling waters' crystal sweep,
Like glass, her shape enshrining;
Her pale dead face, to Gilbert turned,
Seems as in sleep reposing;
A feeble light, now first discerned,
The features well disclosing. 

No effort from the haunted air
The ghastly scene could banish;
That hovering wave, arrested there,
Rolled­throbbed­but did not vanish.
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hispering, shouting aloud, 
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, 
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, 
The skin, the sun-burnt shade, freckles, hair, 
The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, 
The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of th...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."


So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words;
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs.


But, as he walk'd, King A...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...I fear
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." 

So saying, from the pavement he half rose,
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm,
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere
Remorsefully regarded thro' his tears,
And would have spoken, but he found not words,
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee,
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands,
And rising bore him thro' the place of tombs. 

But, as he walk'd, King A...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...hers I to others give;
But you are mine to yield to Beauty,
To glean Romance, to greatly live.
For in my easy-chair reclining . . .
I feel the sting of ocean spray;
And yonder wondrously are shining
The Magic Isles of Far Away.

Beyond the comber's crashing thunder
Strange beaches flash into my ken;
On jetties heaped head-high with plunder
I dance and dice with sailor-men.
Strange stars swarm down to burn above me,
Strange shadows haunt, strange voices...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...e wide; 
Flaming METEORS swiftly glide; 
Or along the milky way, 
Vapours shoot a silvery ray;
And as I mark, thy faint reclining head, 
Sinking on Ocean's pearly bed;
Let REASON tell my soul, thus all things fade. 

The Seasons change, the "garish SUN"
When Day's burning car hath run
Its fiery course, no more we view,
While o'er the mountain's golden head,
Streak'd with tints of crimson hue,
Twilight's filmy curtains spread,
Stealing o'er Nature's face, a desolating shad...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...l, we resorted,
To pore o'er the precepts by Pedagogues taught.

Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wander'd,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.

I once more view the room, with spectators surrounded,
Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alonzo o'erthrown;
While, to swell my young pride, such applauses resounded,
I fancied that Mossop himself was outshone.

...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...my soul, I see thee yet,
With eyes so languid, breast so fair,
And lips, though silent, breathing love.

When thus reclining on my breast,
Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet,
As half reproach'd yet rais'd desire,
And still we near and nearer prest,
And still our glowing lips would meet,
As if in kisses to expire.

And then those pensive eyes would close,
And bid their lids each other seek,
Veiling the azure orbs below;
While their long lashes' darken'd gloss
See...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...WHERE like a pillow on a bed  
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest 
The violet's reclining head  
Sat we two one another's best. 

Our hands were firmly c¨¨mented 5 
By a fast balm which thence did spring; 
Our eye-beams twisted and did thread 
Our eyes upon one double string. 

So to engraft our hands as yet 
Was all the means to make us one; 10 
And pictures in our eyes to get 
Was all our propagation. 

As 'tw...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...fear 
My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' 

So saying, from the pavement he half rose, 
Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, 
And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes 
As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere 
Remorsefully regarded through his tears, 
And would have spoken, but he found not words; 
Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, 
O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, 
And rising bore him through the place of tombs. 

But, as he wal...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ng 
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; 
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining 75 
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er, 
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er 
She shall press, ah, nevermore! 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer 
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. 80 
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath...Read more of this...

by Delville, Jean
...ethereal dreams
In sidereal incense brushing against the holy land.

Far in the blue sands of the biblical desert,
Reclining in her secrecy and beatitude,
The Egyptian monster, with her half-open eye,
Gazes at eternity amid the solitude.

Not a breath in the night. But, at times, persistently,
The distant howling of an old beast that roams
And with long-drawn snuffling, turned horizonwards,
Scents the tragic exhalmations of Herod's great crime.
...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...yet 
For leave -- for leave to utter it -- one sign -- 
One word -- one little word -- to ease his pain. 


As one reclining in the banquet hall, 
Propped on an elbow, garlanded with flowers, 
Saw lust and greed and boisterous revelry 
Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he, 
Staunch in the ethic of an antique school -- 
Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind -- 
With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene, 
Himself impassive, silent, self-contained: 
So sat the Indi...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...The grove puts on its gown of nightfall;
The moon walks on the cloudy floor;
And there's the maiden - pale, delightful,
Reclining on the spellbound shore.

She looks at him, her hair she brushes,
Blows airy kisses, gestures wild,
Plays with the waves - caresses, splashes -
Now laughs, now whimpers like a child,
Moans tenderly, calls louder, louder...
"Come, monk, come, monk! To me, to me!.."
Then - disappears in limpid water,
And all is silent instantl...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
Took the largest part of me: 
For this Iosing is true dying; 
This is lordly man's down-lying, 
This his slow but sum reclining, 
Star by star his world resigning. 

O child of paradise, 
Boy who made dear his father's home, 
In whose deep eyes 
Men read the welfare of the times to come, 
I am too much bereft. 
The world dishonored thou hast left. 
O truth's and nature's costly lid 
O trusted broken prophecy! 
O richest fortunes sourly crossed! 
Born for the fut...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying,
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This is slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.

O child of Paradise!
Boy who made dear his father's home
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come;
I am too much bereft;
The world dishonored thou hast left;
O truths and natures costly lie;
O trusted, broken prophecy!
O richest fortune sourly crossed;
Born for the future, to the future lo...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...rre, enchanted 
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. 
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, 
And on thine own, upturn'd- alas, in sorrow! 

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight- 
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) 
That bade me pause before that garden-gate, 
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? 
No footstep stirred: the hated world an slept, 
Save o...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ood star, 
Or better thing, have made them what they are, 
That good I may not grudge, nor turn to ill. 


As when, reclining on some verdant hill -- 
What season the hot sun least veils his power 
That lightens all, and in that gloaming hour 
The fly resigns to the shrill gnat -- even then, 
As rustic, looking down, sees, o'er the glen, 
Vineyard, or tilth where lies his husbandry, 
Fireflies innumerable sparkle: so to me, 
Come where its mighty depth unfolded, straight ...Read more of this...

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