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Famous Singing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...nt, Acadian farmers.
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and their country,
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and wayworn,
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended
Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and their daughters.
Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their voices,
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions:--
"Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain!...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...ep away the leaden-footed hours. 


III. 

The air is bright with hues of light
And rich with laughter and with singing:
Young hearts beat high in ecstasy,
And banners wave, and bells are ringing:
But silence falls with fading day,
And there's an end to mirth and play.
Ah, well-a-day 

Rest your old bones, ye wrinkled crones!
The kettle sings, the firelight dances.
Deep be it quaffed, the magic draught
That fills the soul with golden fancies!
For Youth and Ple...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...om the 
 superhuman tomb 
I'm with you in Rockland 
 where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com- 
 rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale 
I'm with you in Rockland 
 where we hug and kiss the United States under 
 our bedsheets the United States that coughs all 
 night and won't let us sleep 
I'm with you in Rockland 
 where we wake up electrified out of the coma 
 by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the 
 roof they've come to drop angelic b...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...t knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tr...Read more of this...



by Angelou, Maya
...ou yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tr...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...arble, as ye flow, 
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise. 
Join voices, all ye living Souls: Ye Birds, 
That singing up to Heaven-gate ascend, 
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. 
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk 
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep; 
Witness if I be silent, morn or even, 
To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade, 
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise. 
Hail, universal Lord, be bounteous still 
To...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...1
SINGING my days, 
Singing the great achievements of the present, 
Singing the strong, light works of engineers, 
Our modern wonders, (the antique ponderous Seven outvied,) 
In the Old World, the east, the Suez canal,
The New by its mighty railroad spann’d, 
The seas inlaid with eloquent, gentle wires, 
I sound, to commence, the cry, with thee, O soul, 
The P...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...air, -
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,
The little clouds that race across the sky;
And fair the violet's gentle drooping head,
The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,
The rose that burgeons on the climbing briar,
The crocus-bed, (that seems a moon of fire
Round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring);
And all the flower...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...k.

"The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.

"The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green w...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...rth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and plan...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...t a rosy feeling 
Good ale makes floors seem like the ceiling, 
And how the moon give shiny light 
To lads as roll home singing by't. 
My blood did leap, my flesh did revel, 
Saul Kane was tokened to the devil. 

From '61 to'71 
I lived in disbelief of Heaven. 
I drunk, I fought, I poached, I whored, 
I did despite unto the Lord. 
I cursed, 'would make a man look pale, 
And nineteen times I went to gaol 

Now, friends, observe and look upon me, 
Mark how the L...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...gry too.
Brown with his lilt of saucy rhyme, Brown with his tilt of tender mirth
Garretless in the gloom and grime, singing his glad, mad songs of earth:
So at last with a faith divine, down and down to the Hunger-line.

There as he stood in a woeful plight, tears a-freeze on his sharp cheek-bones,
Who should chance to behold his plight, but the publisher, the plethoric Jones;
Peered at him for a little while, held out a bill: "NOW, will you sell?"
Brown scanned it wi...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n the rolling sea. 
But always in the quiet house I heard, 
Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark, 
A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower 
To the eastward: up I climbed a thousand steps 
With pain: as in a dream I seemed to climb 
For ever: at the last I reached a door, 
A light was in the crannies, and I heard, 
`Glory and joy and honour to our Lord 
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail.' 
Then in my madness I essayed the door; 
It gave; and through a stormy gl...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...

     Ballad.

     Alice Brand.

     Merry it is in the good greenwood,
          When the mavis and merle are singing,
     When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
          And the hunter's horn is ringing.

     'O Alice Brand, my native land
          Is lost for love of you;
     And we must hold by wood and word,
          As outlaws wont to do.

     'O Alice, 't was all for thy locks so bright,
          And 't was all for thine eyes so ...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...r and
wonderful love. In the morning Cass was up making breakfast. She seemed quite calm and
happy. She was singing. I stayed in bed and enjoyed her happiness. Finally she came over
and shook me, 
"Up, bastard! Throw some cold water on your face and pecker and come enjoy the
feast!" 
I drove her to the beach that day. It was a weekday and not yet summer so things were
splendidly deserted. Beach bums in rags slept on the lawns above the sand. Ot...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...pull, 
And 'a pull altogether,' as they say 
At sea — which drew most souls another way. 

II 

The angels all were singing out of tune, 
And hoarse with having little else to do, 
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, 
Or curb a runaway young star or two, 
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon 
Broke out of bounds o'er th' ethereal blue, 
Splitting some planet with its playful tail, 
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale. 

III 

The guardian seraphs had retire...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ater
 And water 
 A spring
 A pool among the rock
 If there were the sound of water only
 Not the cicada
 And dry grass singing
 But sound of water over a rock
 Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
 Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
 But there is no water
 Who is the third who walks always beside you? 
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mant...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time,
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behid.

And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round
She would ascend, and win the Spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortal...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...n the way, the words of love and freedom,
They're flying faster than the moment flies
And I am in stage fright before singing -
My lips have grown colder than ice.

But soon that place, where, leaning to the windows
The tender birches make dry rustling sound,
The voices will be ringing of the shadows
And roses will in blackened wreaths be wound.

And further onward still -- the light is generous
Unbearably as though ¡®t were red hot wine..
And now ...Read more of this...

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