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Famous Sedge Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...river's trembling edge 25 
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank'd with white, 
And starry river-buds among the sedge, 
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; 30 
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 

Methought that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 
That the same hues, whic...Read more of this...



by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.

And slow, slow as...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...ith laughter, claimed his pledge; 
Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, 
Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge 
The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. 

Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, 
Near him untrue to all but her till now, 
Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile 
Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. 

And clad in armour, a tall man of stone 
Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; 
But, staring at the vessel's t...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...rched with thirst and faint beneath
The summer's scorching sun.

For sometimes when no passing breeze
The long lank sedges waved,
All white with foam and heaving high
Its deafening billows raved;

And when the tempest from its base
The rooted pine would shake,
The powerless storm unruffling swept
Across the calm dead lake.

And ever then when Death drew near
The house of Arlinkow,
Its dark unfathom'd depths did send
Strange music from below.

The Lord of Arlinkow ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...so low that sacred head of thine. 
 Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow, 
His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge, 
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. 
Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? 
Last came, and last did go, 
The Pilot of the Galilean lake, 
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, 
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) 
He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, 
How well co...Read more of this...



by Rossetti, Christina
...I have hedged me with a thorny hedge, 
I live alone, I look to die alone: 
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge, 
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back, 
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown 
On sometime summer's unreturning track....Read more of this...

by Smart, Christopher
...astle friends the voice of the raven and heart of the oak. 

For I bless God for every feather from the wren in the sedge to the CHERUBS and their MATES....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...'O WHAT can ail thee knight-at-arms  
Alone and palely loitering? 
The sedge is wither'd from the lake  
And no birds sing. 

'O what can ail thee knight-at-arms 5 
So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel's granary is full  
And the harvest 's done. 

'I see a lily on thy brow 
With anguish moist and fever dew; 10 
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
Fast withereth too.' 

'I met a lady in the meads  
...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...ubed, 
Surveyed their crystal streams and banks so green 
And beauties ere this never naked seen. 
Through the vain sedge, the bashful nymphs he eyed: 
Bosoms, and all which from themselves they hide. 
The sun much brighter, and the skies more clear, 
He finds the air and all things sweeter here. 
The sudden change, and such a tempting sight 
Swells his old veins with fresh blood, fresh delight. 
Like am'rous victors he begins to shave, 
And his new face looks...Read more of this...

by Doolittle, Hilda
...e tide and river meet. 

Ah kingly kiss -- 
no more regret 
nor old deep memories 
to mar the bliss; 
where the low sedge is thick, 
the gold day-lily 
outspreads and rests 
beneath soft fluttering 
of red swan wings 
and the warm quivering 
of the red swan's breast....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...o low that sacred head of thine.
 Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow,
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, Rmy dearest pledge?"
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean Lake;
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake:--
...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...utumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades 
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge 
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
From the safe shore their floating carcases 
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, 
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the fl...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...hness. So She 
hurried to the river. At the edge
She stood a moment charmed by the swift blue Beyond 
the river sedge.
She watched it curdling, crinkling, and the snow
Purfled upon its wave-tops. Then, "Hullo,
My Beauty, gently, or you'll wriggle through."

VII
The Lady Eunice caught a willow spray To save 
herself from tumbling in the shallows
Which rippled to her feet. Then straight away She 
peered down stream among the budding sallows.
A youth ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...he turquoise sky to burnished gold was turned.

O how my heart with boyish passion burned,
When far away across the sedge and mere
I saw that Holy City rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers! - On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna's walls at last!


II.


How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...onds, the lakes, the rivers, 
Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, 
Drove the cormorant and curlew 
To their nests of sedge and sea-tang 
In the realms of Shawondasee.
Once the fierce Kabibonokka
Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts 
From his home among the icebergs, 
And his hair, with snow besprinkled, 
Streamed behind him like a river, 
Like a black and wintry river, 
As he howled and hurried southward, 
Over frozen lakes and moorlands.
There among the reeds and ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...t. We sat: the Lady glanced: 
Then Florian, but not livelier than the dame 
That whispered 'Asses' ears', among the sedge, 
'My sister.' 'Comely, too, by all that's fair,' 
Said Cyril. 'Oh hush, hush!' and she began. 

'This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the centre set the starry tides, 
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 
The planets: then the monster, then the man; 
Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 
Raw from the prime, and...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...in and out,
The wan stars danced between.

And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge;
And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.

The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.

The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...es there, joyously sprouts the good seed.
In its possessions exulting, industry gladly is kindled.
And from the sedge of the stream smilingly signs the blue god.
Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly;
Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load.
Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened;
Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends.
Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of t...Read more of this...

by Brodsky, Joseph
...gy phone books
you are starring no longer; father eastward surge on
brown mountain ranges; wild mares carousing
in tall sedge; the cheeckbones get yellower
as they turn numerous. And still farther east, steam dreadnoughts
 or cruisers,
and the expanse grows blue like lace underwear....Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...ich therein shines,
Narcissus like, the Sun too pines.

Oh what a Pleasure 'tis to hedge
My Temples here with heavy sedge;
Abandoning my lazy Side,
Stretcht as a Bank unto the Tide;
Or to suspend my sliding Foot
On the Osiers undermined Root,
And in its Branches tough to hang,
While at my Lines the Fishes twang!

But now away my Hooks, my Quills,
And Angles, idle Utensils.
The Young Maria walks to night:
Hide trifling Youth thy Pleasures slight.
'Twere shame that ...Read more of this...

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