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Famous Sphere Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shakespeare, William
...h, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear....Read more of this...



by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ms, 
Fierce as the storm which tempests all her waves. 


Thus in its dawn did sacred truth prevail, 
In either hemisphere from north to south, 
From east to west through the long tract of day. 
From Shinar's plain to Thule's utmost isle, 
From Persia's bay to Scandanavia's shores. 
Cheer'd by its ray now ev'ry valley smiles, 
And ev'ry lawn smote by its morning beam. 
Now ev'ry hill reflects a purer ray, 
Than when Aurora paints his woods in gold, 
Or when th...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...tory
Will I to children utter, and repent.
There never liv'd a mortal man, who bent
His appetite beyond his natural sphere,
But starv'd and died. My sweetest Indian, here,
Here will I kneel, for thou redeemed hast
My life from too thin breathing: gone and past
Are cloudy phantasms. Caverns lone, farewel!
And air of visions, and the monstrous swell
Of visionary seas! No, never more
Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore
Of tangled wonder, breathless and aghast.Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ce; 
Yet serves to second too some other use. 
So Man, who here seems principal alone, 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 
When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains 
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; 
When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, 
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God:(7) 
Then shall Man's pride and dullness comprehend 
His actions', ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...e between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;
Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.---
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must---it must
Be of ripe progress---...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...e to her in such voice as few 
 In that grim place had heard, so low, so clear, 
 So toned and cadenced from the Utmost Sphere, 
 The Unattainable Heaven from which she came. 
 'O Mantuan Spirit,' she said, 'whose lasting fame 
 Continues on the earth ye left, and still 
 With Time shall stand, an earthly friend to me, 
 - My friend, not fortune's - climbs a path so ill 
 That all the night-bred fears he hastes to flee 
 Were kindly to the thing he nears. The tale 
 M...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...of the bridge that springs
>From earths's dim shore of half-remembered things
To reach the spirit's home, the heavenly sphere
Where nothing silent is and nothing dark.
So when I see the rainbow's arc
Spanning the showery sky, far-off I hear
Music, and every colour sings:
And while the symphony builds up its round
Full sweep of architectural harmony
Above the tide of Time, far, far away I see
A bow of colour in the bow of sound.

Red as the dawn the trumpet rings,
Imp...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...belong not to the dawn, 
Sure pledge of day, that crownest the smiling morn 
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere, 
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime. 
Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul, 
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise 
In thy eternal course, both when thou climbest, 
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fallest. 
Moon, that now meetest the orient sun, now flyest, 
With the fixed Stars, fixed in their orb tha...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...law; 
By which all causes else, according still 
To the reception of their matter, act; 
Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say 
That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, 
Bereaving sense, but endless misery 
From this day onward; which I feel begun 
Both in me, and without me; and so last 
To perpetuity;--Ay me!that fear 
Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution 
On my defenceless head; both Death and I 
Am found eternal, and incorporate both; 
Nor I on ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...This is not my true country, I have lived banish’d from my true country—I now go back
 there,
I return to the celestial sphere, where every one goes in his turn. 

7
I see the battle-fields of the earth—grass grows upon them, and blossoms and corn; 
I see the tracks of ancient and modern expeditions. 

I see the nameless masonries, venerable messages of the unknown events, heroes, records of
 the
 earth. 

I see the places of the sagas;
I see pine-trees and fir-tr...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ho' I grant but little music there)
Went both to make your dream: but if there were
A music harmonizing our wild cries,
Sphere-music such as that you dream'd about,
Why, that would make our passions far too like
The discords dear to the musician. No--
One shriek of hate would jar all the hymns of heaven:
True Devils with no ear, they howl in tune
With nothing but the Devil!' 

`"True" indeed!
One of our town, but later by an hour
Here than ourselves, spoke with me on the ...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...ty dooms in advance its
Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.
Francesco, your hand is big enough
To wreck the sphere, and too big,
One would think, to weave delicate meshes
That only argue its further detention.
(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,
Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom
In relation to the tiny, self-important ship
On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim
That everything is surface. The surface is what's there
And nothing can exis...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sing things; 
Corroborating forever the triumph of things. 

Illustrious every one! 
Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnumber’d spirits;
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect; 
Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the body; 
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the
 western
 sky! 
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last. 

Good in all,
In the satisfac...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...colony that should extend 
329 To the dusk of a whistling south below the south. 
330 A comprehensive island hemisphere. 
331 The man in Georgia waking among pines 
332 Should be pine-spokesman. The responsive man, 
333 Planting his pristine cores in Florida, 
334 Should prick thereof, not on the psaltery, 
335 But on the banjo's categorical gut, 
336 Tuck tuck, while the flamingos flapped his bays. 
337 Sepulchral se?ors, bibbing pale mescal, 
338 ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...;
Because maybe some fancied shame or fear,
Bred of disease or melancholy fate,
Hath driven the owner from his rightful sphere
To wander nameless save to pity or hate: 
What is the wreck of all he hath in fief
When he that hath is wrecking? nought is fine
Unto the sick, nor doth it burden grief
That the house perish when the soul doth pine.
Thus I my state despise, slain by a sting
So slight 'twould not have hurt a meaner thing. 

15
Who builds a ship must first lay d...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...s and calumets, 
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 
Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, 
The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm: and higher on the walls, 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 
His own forefathers' arms and armour hung. 

And 'this' he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt; 
And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: 
A good knight he! we keep a chronicle 
With all about him'--whi...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on . . .
The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
The million with fierce song and maniac dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ye, as if 'twere less their will 
Than destiny to make the eternal years 
Their date of war, and their 'champ clos' the spheres. 

XXXIII 

But here they were in neutral space: we know 
From Job, that Satan hath the power to pay 
A heavenly visit thrice a year or so; 
And that the 'sons of God', like those of clay, 
Must keep him company; and we might show 
From the same book, in how polite a way 
The dialogue is held between the Powers 
Of Good and Evil — but 'twould tak...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...case my experience falls within
my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its
elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround
it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul,
the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul."
425. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher
King.
428. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148.
 "'Ara vos prec
per aquella valor...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ed beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light. A knell
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.

All day the Wizard Lady sat aloof;
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon he...Read more of this...

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