Famous Scaled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Progress of Spring

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 THE groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o'er the Southern sea, 
Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee: 
Come Spring, for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O'er his uncertain...Read more of this...

Lui Et Elle

by D. H. Lawrence
 She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a year
And put up with her husband,
I don't know.

She likes to eat.
She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs
When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when...Read more of this...

Wind

by Ted Hughes
 This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet 

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. 

At noon I scaled along...Read more of this...

The Warden of the Cinque Ports

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A MIST was driving down the British Channel, 
The day was just begun, 
And through the window-panes, on floor and panel, 
Streamed the red autumn sun. 

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling pennon, 5 
And the white sails of ships; 
And, from the frowning rampart, the black cannon 
Hailed it with feverish lips. 

Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, and...Read more of this...

Dictated Before The Rhone Glacier

by Victor Hugo
 ("Souvent quand mon esprit riche.") 
 
 {VII., May 18, 1828.} 


 When my mind, on the ocean of poesy hurled, 
 Floats on in repose round this wonderful world, 
 Oft the sacred fire from heaven— 
 Mysterious sun, that gives light to the soul— 
 Strikes mine with its ray, and above the pole 
 Its upward...Read more of this...

To My Enemy

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Let those who will of friendship sing,
And to its guerdon grateful be,
But I a lyric garland bring
To crown thee, O, mine enemy! 

Thanks, endless thanks, to thee I owe
For that my lifelong journey through
Thine honest hate has done for me
What love perchance had failed to do. 

I had not scaled such weary heights
But that I held thy scorn in...Read more of this...

Supernatural Songs

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ribh at the Tomb of Baile and Aillinn

Because you have found me in the pitch-dark night
With open book you ask me what I do.
Mark and digest my tale, carry it afar
To those that never saw this tonsured head
Nor heard this voice that ninety years have cracked.
Of Baile and Aillinn you need not speak,
All know their tale, all know...Read more of this...

Jobson Of The Star

by Robert William Service
 Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
To Tripoli and Trebizond and Timbuctoo mayhap,
Or any magic name beyond I find upon the...Read more of this...

The Rhyme Of The Remittance Man

by Robert William Service
 There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
 And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
 And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
 On the water where the silver salmon...Read more of this...

Philosophy

by Amy Levy
 Ere all the world had grown so drear,
When I was young and you were here,
'Mid summer roses in summer weather,
What pleasant times we've had together!

We were not Phyllis, simple-sweet,
And Corydon; we did not meet
By brook or meadow, but among
A Philistine and flippant throng

Which much we scorned; (less rigorous
It had no scorn at all for us!)
How many an eve of...Read more of this...

The Children's Hour

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Between the dark and the daylight, 
When the night is beginning to lower, 
Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
That is known as the Children's Hour. 

I hear in the chamber above me 
The patter of little feet, 
The sound of a door that is opened, 
And voices soft and sweet. 

From my study I see in the lamplight,...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Gum-Boot Ben

by Robert William Service
 He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
 He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
 He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
 To question his veracity, this is the tale he told.

"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust;
I am not...Read more of this...

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand

by Amy Lowell
 A music-stand of crimson lacquer, long since brought
In some fast clipper-ship from China, quaintly wrought
With bossed and carven flowers and fruits in blackening gold,
The slender shaft all twined about and thickly scrolled
With vine leaves and young twisted tendrils, whirling, curling,
Flinging their new shoots over the four wings, and swirling
Out on the three wide feet in golden lumps and streams;
Petals...Read more of this...

Love Letter

by Sylvia Plath
 Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks...Read more of this...

The Aristocrat

by G K Chesterton
 The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids...Read more of this...

The Veiled Statue At Sais

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...

The Andante of Snakes

by Arthur Symons
 They weave a slow andante as in sleep, 
Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white; 
With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep 
A treachery of silence; infinite 

Ancestral angers brood in these dull eyes 
Where the long-lineaged venom of the snake 
Meditates evil; woven intricacies 
Of Oriental arabesque awake, 

Unfold, expand, contract, and raise and sway 
Swoln heart-shaped...Read more of this...

257. Ode on the Departed Regency Bill

by Robert Burns
 DAUGHTER of Chaos’ doting years,
 Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears,
 Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade
 (The rights of sepulture now duly paid)
 Spread abroad its hideous form
 On the roaring civil storm,
 Deafening din and warring rage
 Factions wild with factions wage;
Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound,
 Among the demons of the earth,
With groans that make the mountains shake,
...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...

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