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Famous Speeding Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...lead she'll have and the lead she'll hold, 
But at length gives way to the black and gold, 
Which right to the front is speeding. 

Carry them on and keep it up -- 
A flying race is the Melbourne Cup, 
You must race and stay to win it; 
And old Commotion, Victoria's pride, 
Now takes the lead with his raking stride, 
And a mighty roar goes far and wide -- 
"There's only Commotion in it!" 

But one draws out from the beaten ruck 
And up on the rails by a piece of luck 
He ...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...vast surrounding, 
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; 
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, 
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; 
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; 
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul....Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...Well . . .
"Mickey, leaping like the devil"--why
gild it, although deer sounds better--
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather."Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back.A blur.
It's gone.You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...--
Castor has tamed the planet Lion, see!
And of the Bear has Pollux mastery:
A third is in the race! who is the third,
Speeding away swift as the eagle bird?
 The ramping Centaur!
The Lion's mane's on end: the Bear how fierce!
The Centaur's arrow ready seems to pierce
Some enemy: far forth his bow is bent
Into the blue of heaven. He'll be shent,
 Pale unrelentor,
When he shall hear the wedding lutes a playing.--
Andromeda! sweet woman! why delaying
So timidly among t...Read more of this...



by Kinnell, Galway
...ne cracked . . .

I would not have heard his cry
if my electric saw had been working,
its carbide teeth speeding through the bland spruce of our 
time, or
burning
black arcs into some scavenged hemlock plank,
like dark circles under eyes
when the brain thinks too close to the skin,
but I was sawing by hand and I heard that cry
as though he were attacked; we ran out,
when we bent over him he said, "Galway, In¨¦s, I saw a 
pond!"
His face went gray, hi...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell....Read more of this...

by Homer,
...chariot and the strong Slayer of Argus took reins and whip in his dear hands and drove forth from the hall, the horses speeding readily. Swiftly they traversed their long course, and neither the sea nor river-waters nor grassy glens nor mountain-peaks checked the career of the immortal horses, but they clave the deep air above them as they went. And Hermes brought them to the place where rich-crowned Demeter was staying and checked them before her fragrant temple.Read more of this...

by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song! 

All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest­
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast! 

Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine! 

Sweet, its cradle-lilt partaking,
Dreams that hover o...Read more of this...

by Edson, Russell
...ompany
of an afternoon friendship.

 I don't mind sipping water with a fern, even though,
had I my druthers, I'd be speeding through the sky for
Stockholm, sipping a bloody mary with a wedge of lime.

 And so we sit one lonely afternoon sipping water
together. The fern looking out of its fronds, and I, looking
out of mine . . ....Read more of this...

by Estep, Maggie
...the sheets and out of the tub then passed out on the
bed and caught up on the sleep we'd missed from being up all night speeding.


When we got fired, we became waitresses at an International House of Pancakes.


We were much happier there....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...rns; 
I see mechanics working—I see buildings everywhere founded, going up, or
 finish’d; 
I see trains of cars swiftly speeding along railroad tracks, drawn by the locomotives; 
I see the stores, depots, of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans; 
I see far in the west the immense area of grain—I dwell awhile, hovering;
I pass to the lumber forests of the north, and again to the southern plantation, and again
 to
 California; 
Sweeping the whole, I see the countless prof...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ave distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call anything close again, when I desire it. 

In vain the speeding or shyness; 
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach; 
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones; 
In vain objects stand leagues off, and assume manifold shapes;
In vain the ocean settling in hollows, and the great monsters lying low; 
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky; 
In vain the s...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...elled from the Master's daughter! 
On many a dreary and misty night, 
'T will be seen by the rays of the signal light, 
Speeding along through the rain and the dark, 
Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, 
The pilot of some phantom bark, 
Guiding the vessel, in its flight, 
By a path none other knows aright! 
Behold, at last, 
Each tall and tapering mast 
Is swung into its place; 
Shrouds and stays 
Holding it firm and fast! 
Long ago, 
In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, 
W...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...to know,

The hours, the years of waiting

Gather loss on loss until

My hopes are brief as days

That rush and go like speeding trains

That never stop. You drink, I pay,

You ramble through an odd text-book

And go and eat and drink and talk

And lose your way, then phone

‘To set things straight’ but nothing’s

Ever straight with you, the binges

Start and stop, a local train that

Locals know will never go beyond

The halt where only you get off....Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...on't (and they can't), it's strange;
   Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...reach the Falls of Death 
Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange—yet who would change 
Time's course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone, 
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
Indemnifying fleetness; 
And those of youth, a seeming length, 
Proportion'd to their sweetness....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...scerned
Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
Which God makes his especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
And tenderly, life's little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...er-time.

And then it winnowed the elysian air
Which ever hung about that Lady bright,
With its etherial vans: and, speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.

The water flashed,--like sunlight, by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven;
The still air seemed as...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over 

radar wheels, black smoke 

drifts from tailfins 

Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains 
Oil from Texas, Bahrein, Venezuela Mexico 
Oil that turns General Motors 

revs up Ford 
lights up General Electric, oil that crackles 

thru International Business Machine computers, 

charges dynamos for ITT 
sparks Western 
Electric 

runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires 

Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jer...Read more of this...

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