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Famous Spares Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to reply...Read More



by Dryden, John
...last, his time for fury found,
He shoots with sudden vengeance from the ground:
The prostrate vulgar, passes o'er, and spares;
But with a lordly rage, his hunters tears.
Your case no tame expedients will afford;
Resolve on death, or conquest by the sword,
Which for no less a stake than life, you draw;
And self-defence is Nature's eldest law.
Leave the warm people no considering time;
For then rebellion may be thought a crime.
Prevail yourself of what occasion giv...Read More

by Wilmot, John
...oles, and Women, praise 'em more. 
But Witcherley, earnes hard, what e're he gaines, 
He wants noe Judgment, nor he spares noe paines; 
He frequently excells, and at the least, 
Makes fewer faults, than any of the best. 
Waller, by Nature for the Bayes design'd, 
With force, and fire, and fancy unconfin'd, 
In Panigericks does Excell Mankind: 
He best can turne, enforce, and soften things, 
To praise great Conqu'rours, or to flatter Kings. 
For poynted Satyrs, I w...Read More

by Service, Robert William
...llets faster flew,
How they picks the werry best men, and they lets the rotters through;
So indiscriminatin' like, they spares a man of sin,
And a rare lad wot's a husband and a father gets done in.
And while havin' these reflections and advancin' on the run,
A bullet biffs me shoulder, and says I: "That's number one."

Well, it downed me for a jiffy, but I didn't lose me calm,
For I knew that I was needed: I'm a bomber, so I am.
I 'ad lost me cap and rifle, but I...Read More

by Carew, Thomas
...ease, my peace, my joys, 
Breaks my sweet sleeps, invades my harmless rest, 
Robs me of all the treasure of my breast, 
Spares not my heart, nor yet a greater wrong, 
For, having stol'n my heart, she binds my tongue. 
But at the last her melting eyes unseal'd 
My lips, enlarged my tongue : then I reveal'd 
To her own ears the story of my harms, 
Wrought by her virtues and her beauty's charms. 
Now hear, just judge, an act of savageness ; 
When I complain, in hope to f...Read More



by Keats, John
...lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dy...Read More

by Milton, John
...atan returned:-- 
 "So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange 
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand, 
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds 
What it intends, till first I know of thee 
What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why, 
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st 
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son. 
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 
Sight more detestable than him and thee." 
 T' whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied...Read More

by Drayton, Michael
...hus each other entertain: 
"In Love there is no lack," thus I begin; 
"Fair words make fools," replieth he again; 
"Who spares to speak doth spare to speed," quoth I; 
"As well," saith he, "too forward as too slow"; 
"Fortune assists the boldest," I reply; 
"A hasty man," quoth he, "ne'er wanted woe"; 
"Labor is light where Love," quoth I, "doth pay"; 
Saith he, "Light burden's heavy, if far borne"; 
Quoth I, "The main lost, cast the bye away"; 
"You have spun a fair thread,"...Read More

by Petrarch, Francesco
...lass=smcap>Alas! well know I what sad havoc makesDeath of our kind, how Fate no mortal spares!How soon the world whom once it loved forsakes,How short the faith it to the friendless bears!Much languishment, I see, small mercy wakes;For the last day though now my heart prepares,Love not a whit my cruel prison breaks,...Read More

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...yields,
And pow'rs more strong my countless tears command;
Love strikes the feeling heart with ruthless hand,
And only spares the breast which dullness shields!
Since, then, capricious nature but bestows
The fine affections of the soul, to prove
A keener sense of desolating woes,
Far, far from me the empty boast remove;
If bliss from coldness, pain from passion flows,
Ah! who would wish to feel, or learn to love?...Read More

by Hugo, Victor
...nd wide, 
 O'er sea and land; 'mid all this work of woe, 
 Vesuvius still, though close its crater-glow, 
 Forgetful spares—Heaven wills that it should spare, 
 The lonely cell where kneels an aged priest in prayer. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine. 


 




...Read More

by Byron, George (Lord)
...
Reverberate along that vale
More suited to the shepherds tale:
Though few the numbers - theirs the strife
That neither spares nor speaks for life!
Ah! fondly youthful hearts can press,
To seize and share the dear caress;
But love itself could never pant
For all that beauty sighs to grant
With half the fervour hate bestows
Upon the last embrace of foes,
When grappling in the fight they fold
Those arms that ne'er shall lose their hold:
Friends meet to part; love laughs at fait...Read More

by de Lamartine, Alphonse
...of bliss
That you have stolen from us?

O lake, mute rocks, thick rushes, hidden caves, dark forest,
You whom time spares or can rejuvenate,
Beautiful nature, keep forevermore at least
The memory of that night.

Let it be in your slumber, and in your fierce storm,
And in the features of your laughing banks,
And in those dense black firs, and in that wild scarp
That above your shoreline hangs.

Let it be in the sounds that echo from your borders,
In the fine spr...Read More

by Pope, Alexander
...Visions, now believ'd too late!
See the poor Remnants of these slighted Hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy Rapine spares:
These, in two sable Ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new Beauties to the snowie Neck. 
The Sister-Lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its Fellow's Fate foresees its own;
Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal Sheers demands;
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious Hands.
Oh hadst thou, Cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any Hairs bu...Read More

by Pope, Alexander
...sions, now believ'd too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These, in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck.
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurl'd it hangs, the fatal shears demands
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands.
Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hai...Read More

by Keats, John
...y the winnowing wind; 15 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep  
Drowsed with the fume of poppies while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twin¨¨d flowers; 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20 
Or by a cider-press with patient look  
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay where are they? 
Think not of them thou hast thy music too ¡ª 
While barr¨¨d clouds bl...Read More

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
- And seem'd at first "a thing enskied,"
As Shakespeare has it, airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
On...Read More

by Lindsay, Vachel
...the world's proverb of successful shame, 
Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, 
Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame? 

If once or twice within his new won hall 
His vote had counted for the broken men; 
If in his early days he wrought some good — 
We might a great soul's sins forgive him then. 

But must the Senator from Illinois 
Be vindicated by fat kings of gold? 
And must he be belauded by the smirched, 
The sleek, uncanny chiefs in lies...Read More

by Frost, Robert
...ing block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A w...Read More

by Plath, Sylvia
...ath's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner....Read More

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