Famous Rolls Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Midnight

by Louise Gluck
 The stars are soft as flowers, and as near;
The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun;
No separate leaf or single blade is here-
All blend to one.

No moonbeam cuts the air; a sapphire light
Rolls lazily. and slips again to rest.
There is no edged thing in all this night,
Save in my breast....Read more of this...

Wordsworth

by Henry Van Dyke
 Wordsworth, thy music like a river rolls 
Among the mountains, and thy song is fed 
By living springs far up the watershed; 
No whirling flood nor parching drought controls 
The crystal current: even on the shoals
It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed
Darkens below mysterious cliffs of dread, 
Thy voice of peace grows deeper in our souls. 

But...Read more of this...

Public Waste

by Rudyard Kipling
 By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the...Read more of this...

The Consecrating Mother

by Anne Sexton
 I stand before the sea
and it rolls and rolls in its green blood
saying, "Do not give up one god
for I have a handful."
The trade winds blew
in their twelve-fingered reversal
and I simply stood on the beach
while the ocean made a cross of salt
and hung up its drowned
and they cried Deo Deo.
The ocean offered them up in the vein of its...Read more of this...

A Good Knight In Prison

by William Morris
 Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.

While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.

Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong....Read more of this...

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

by Adrienne Rich
 The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes,...Read more of this...

An Evening Song

by Anonymous
How radiant the evening skies!Broad wing of blue in heaven unfurled,God watching with unwearied eyesThe welfare of a sleeping world.He rolls the sun to its decline,And speeds it on to realms afar,To let the modest glowworm shine,And men behold the evening star.He lights the wild flower in the wood,He rocks the sparrow in her nest,He guides the angels on their...Read more of this...

La Solitude de St. Amant

by Katherine Philips
 1

O! Solitude, my sweetest choice
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult, and from noise,
How you my restless thoughts delight!
O Heavens! what content is mine,
To see those trees which have appear'd
From the nativity of Time,
And which hall ages have rever'd,
To look to-day as fresh and green,
As when their beauties first were seen!


2

A cheerful wind does court them so,
And with such...Read more of this...

What Being in Rank-Old Nature

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 What being in rank-old nature should earlier have that breath been
That h?re p?rsonal tells off these heart-song powerful peals?— 
A bush-browed, beetle-br?wed b?llow is it? 
With a so?th-w?sterly w?nd bl?stering, with a tide rolls reels 
Of crumbling, fore-foundering, thundering all-surfy seas in; seen
?nderneath, their glassy barrel, of a fairy green.
. . . . . . . . 
Or a...Read more of this...

Inscription 07 - For A Tablet On The Banks Of A Stream

by Robert Southey
 Stranger! awhile upon this mossy bank
Recline thee. If the Sun rides high, the breeze,
That loves to ripple o'er the rivulet,
Will play around thy brow, and the cool sound
Of running waters soothe thee. Mark how clear
It sparkles o'er the shallows, and behold
Where o'er its surface wheels with restless speed
Yon glossy insect, on the sand below
How the swift shadow flies. The...Read more of this...

Memory

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A treasured link of shining pearls,
  A by-gone melody,
A shower of tears with smiles between—
  And this is memory.
A thing so light a breath of air
  May waft its life away;
A thing so dark that moments of pain
  Seem like some endless day.
A careless word may wound the heart,
  And quickly it may die;
Yet in...Read more of this...

Renascence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains...Read more of this...

A Satyre on Charles II

by John Wilmot
 [Rochester had to flee the court for several months
after handing this to the King by mistake.]


In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get reknown
Like the French fool, that wanders up and...Read more of this...

Boots

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We've travelled per Joe Gardiner, a humping of our swag 
In the country of the Gidgee and Belar. 
We've swum the Di'mantina with our raiment in a bag, 
And we've travelled per superior motor car, 
But when we went to Germany we hadn't any choice, 
No matter what our training or pursuits, 
For they gave us no selection 'twixt...Read more of this...

Britannias Pastorals

by William Browne
 Now as an angler melancholy standing
Upon a green bank yielding room for landing,
A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook,
Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook:
Here pulls his line, there throws it in again,
Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain,
He long stands viewing of the curled stream;
At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream
Snatch...Read more of this...

Roast Leviathan

by Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...

The Negro Girl

by Mary Darby Robinson
 I. 

Dark was the dawn, and o'er the deep
The boist'rous whirlwinds blew;
The Sea-bird wheel'd its circling sweep,
And all was drear to view--
When on the beach that binds the western shore
The love-lorn ZELMA stood, list'ning the tempest's roar.


II. 

Her eager Eyes beheld the main,
While on her DRACO dear
She madly call'd, but call'd in vain,
No sound could DRACO hear,
Save the shrill...Read more of this...

The Exeter Road

by Amy Lowell
 Panels of claret and blue which shine
Under the moon like lees of wine.
A coronet done in a golden scroll,
And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll
Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track.
They daren't look back!
They are whipping and cursing the horses. Lord!
What brutes men are when they think they're scored.
Behind, my bay gelding gallops with me,
In a...Read more of this...

Heccar and Gaira

by Thomas Chatterton
 Where the rough Caigra rolls the surgy wave, 
Urging his thunders thro' the echoing cave; 
Where the sharp rocks, in distant horror seen, 
Drive the white currents thro' the spreading green; 
Where the loud tiger, pawing in his rage, 
Bids the black archers of the wilds engage; 
Stretch'd on the sand, two panting warriors lay, 
In all the burning...Read more of this...

I Go Back To The House For A Book

by Billy Collins
 I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,
another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,
a ghost in his ghost...Read more of this...

from Jubilate Agno Fragment B lines 695-768

by Christopher Smart
 For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which...Read more of this...

The Revolutionary

by D. H. Lawrence
 Look at them standing there in authority 
The pale-faces, 
As if it could have any effect any more. 

Pale-face authority,
Caryatids, 
Pillars of white bronze standing rigid, lest the skies fall. 

What a job they've got to keep it up. 
Their poor, idealist foreheads naked capitals 
To the entablature of clouded heaven. 

When the skies are going to fall, fall...Read more of this...

Psalm LXXIII: Now Im Convinced the Lord Is Kind

by Isaac Watts
 Now I 'm convinced the Lord is kind
To men of heart sincere;
Yet once my foolish thoughts repined,
And bordered on despair.

I grieved to see the wicked thrive,
And spoke with angry breath,
"How pleasant and profane they live !
How peaceful is their death !

"With well-fed flesh and haughty eyes,
They lay their fears to sleep;
Against the heav'ns their slanders rise,
While saints in silence...Read more of this...

The Harvest Moon

by Ted Hughes
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon. 
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum. 

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and...Read more of this...

Beacons

by Charles Baudelaire
 Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.

Leonardo da Vinci, sinister mirror,
Where these charming angels with sweet smiles
Charged with mystery, appear in shadows
Of glaciers and pines that close off the country.

Rembrandt, sad hospital full of...Read more of this...

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