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Famous Spelled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...he could elude
 them by running away. They were happy just to see him run
 away. The coward! All Jews were yellow.
They spelled Jew with a small j jew.
And now they find out they are Jews themselves.
It happened at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
To escape persecution, they pretended to convert to Christianity.
They came to this country and settled in the Southwest.
At some point oral tradition failed the family, and their
 secret faith died.
No one would ever have known...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David



...ars
Nobody knows the Place
Agony that enacted there
Motionless as Peace

Weeds triumphant ranged
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone Orthography
Of the Elder Dead

Winds of Summer Fields
Recollect the way --
Instinct picking up the Key
Dropped by memory --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...arm, he called out

the disturbing news.
What lovely echoes, the prisoners said,
what a fine musical place to live.

He spelled it out, then, in clear prose
on paper scraps, which he floated down.
But in the semi-dark they read his words

with the indulgence of those who seldom read:
It's about my father's death, one of them said.
No, said the others, it's a joke.

By this time he no longer was sure
of what he'd seen. Wasn't sunlight a shadow too?
Wasn't there always a source...Read more of this...
by Dunn, Stephen
...Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
to an audience that already knew them,
and there were bottles of Evian at the table.
As air to the lungs of a drowning man was
a glass of this water to my dry lips. I recommend it
...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David
...Joe.
She holds her breath like a seal
and is whiter & smoother.

Rilke was a jerk.
I admit his griefs & music
& titled spelled all-disappointed ladies.
A threshold worse than the circles
where the vile settle & lurk,
Rilke's. As I said,—...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John



...

*

The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back of the byre door, biding its time
Until spring airs spelled lime in a work-bucket
And a potstick to mix it in with water.
Those smells brought tears to the eyes, we inhaled
A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone.
But the slop of the actual job
Of brushing walls, the watery grey
Being lashed on in broad swatches, then drying out
Whiter and whiter, all that worked like magic.
Where had we come from, ...Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus
...camp, that loved to laugh and drink and joke, 
But no man saw him smile again (and no one saw him smoke), 
And, when we spelled at night, he'd lie with eyes still open wide, 
And watch the stars as if they'd point the place where Marshall died. 

The search was made as searches are (and often made in vain), 
And on the seventh day we saw a smoke across the plain; 
We left the track and followed back -- 'twas Crowbar still that led, 
And when his horse gave out at last he walk...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...lived some forty years ago?
I'd like to see the Newton boys and Quincy Adams Brown,
And Hepsy Hall and Ella Cowles, who spelled the whole school down!
And Gracie Smith, the Cutler boys, Leander Snow, and all
Who I am sure would answer could they only hear my call!

I'd like to see Bill Warner and the Conkey boys again
And talk about the times we used to wish that we were men!
And one--I shall not name her--could I see her gentle face
And hear her girlish treble in this distan...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...ng in foreign tongues. Broom and water
and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit,
and machine grime of the day.
Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling
miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for
money. The sign speaks till midnight.

Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence
holds. . . Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor
and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip
pockets. . . Steel safes stand in corners. Money
is stacked in them...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...ting a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.

Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances.

Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought us bubbles beautiful to forget floating long arm women across sunny autumn hills.

Our bones cry and cry, no let-up, cry their telegrams:
More, more—a yen is on, a long yen and God only knows when it will end.

In the old days six bits got us snow and stopped the yen—now the gover...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...man eating soup.
I say he was lifting a fat broth
Into his mouth with a spoon.
His name was in the newspapers that day
Spelled out in tall black headlines
And thousands of people were talking about him.

 When I saw him,
He sat bending his head over a plate
Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...eld 
In his enchanted hands the fateful key 
Of that tempestuous hour's mystery, 
And with controlling wand our spirits spelled, 
With him to wander by a sun-bright shore, 
To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly 
With disembodied Ariel once more 
Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh 
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud, 
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud. 


I

Floating upon a swelling wave of sound, 
We seemed to overlook an endless sea: 
Poised 'tw...Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma
...the realms below,
A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held;
The very furies at the Thracian's woe,
Were moved and music-spelled.

In the Elysian grove
The shades renewed the pleasures life held dear:
The faithful spouse rejoined remembered love,
And rushed along the meads the charioteer;
There Linus poured the old accustomed strain;
Admetus there Alcestis still could greet; his
Friend there once more Orestes could regain,
His arrows--Philoctetes!

More glorious than the meeds...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...The bird sits spelled upon the lithe brown wrist 
Of yonder turbaned fowler, who had lamed 
No feather limb, but the winged spirit tamed 
With his compelling eye. He need not trust 
The silken coil, not set the thick-limed snare; 
He lures the wanderer with his steadfast gaze, 
It shrinks, it quails, it trembles yet obeys. 
And, lo! he has enslaved the thing of air. 
The ...Read more of this...
by Lazarus, Emma
...each exquisite embrasure. 
On the shaft the letters laced, 
As if dryads lunar-chaste 
With the satyrs were embraced, 
Spelled the secret of the key: 
Sic pervenias. And he 
Went his wizard way, inweaving 
Dreams of things beyond believing. 

When he will, the weary world 
Of the senses closely curled 
Like a serpent round his heart 
Shakes herself and stands apart. 
So the heart's blood flames, expanding, 
Strenuous, urgent, and commanding; 
And the key unlocks the door 
Wh...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...thought the garden-rose it far excelled;
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me,
My sense with their deliciousness was spelled:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled....Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...tte --
All at once my wrist grew limp,
And my hand moved rapidly over the board,
Till the name of "Charles Guiteau" was spelled,
Who threatened to materialize before me.
I rose and fled from the room bare-headed
Into the dusk, afraid of my gift.
And after that the spirits swarmed --
Chaucer, Caesar, Poe and Marlowe,
Cleopatra and Mrs. Surratt --
Wherever I went, with messages, --
Mere trifling twaddle, Spoon River agreed.
You talk nonsense to children, don't you?
And suppose ...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry