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Famous Spiring Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Yeats, William Butler
..., thought's crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind,

And haughtier-headed Burke that prove...Read More



by Plath, Sylvia
...ay, a sodden one it was
In black November. After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.

Hauled sudden from solitude,
Hair prickling on his head,
Father Shawn perceived a ghost
Shaping itself from that mist.

'How now,' Father Shawn crisply addressed the ghost
Wavering there, gauze-edged, smelling of woodsmoke,
'What manner of business are you...Read More

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...orying round her hair
And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the Queen.
And when she heard the feet of Tristram grind
The spiring stone that scaled about her tower,
Flush'd, started, met him at the doors, and there
Belted his body with her white embrace,
Crying aloud, "Not Mark--not Mark, my soul!
The footstep flutter'd me at first: not he:
Catlike thro' his own castle steals my Mark,
But warrior-wise thou stridest thro' his halls
Who hates thee, as I him--ev'n to the death.Read More

by Lanier, Sidney
...make each day an Alp sublime
Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear,
-- One crystal of the true-loves of all time
Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere;
And I would make each night an awful vale
Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty,
With every star in heaven trembling pale
O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see.
Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? --
When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught.


IV.

Let no man say, `He at h...Read More

by Nemerov, Howard
...catalpa? Dreadful doubt.
It may be weeks before you see an elm
Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,
A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretious says,
Little by little, you do start to learn;
And learn as well, maybe, what language does
And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with
Experience while cooperating with
Experience, and keeping an obstinate
Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Thi...Read More



by Chesterton, G K
...They spoke of Progress spiring round, 
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward-- 
It is not true to say I frowned, 
Or ran about the room and roared; 
I might have simply sat and snored-- 
I rose politely in the club 
And said, `I feel a little bored; 
Will someone take me to a pub?' 

The new world's wisest did surround 
Me; and it pains me to record 
I did not think their views profound,...Read More

by Blake, William
...e began,
In heavy pain striving, struggling. 
Two Ears in close volutions.
From beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified
As they grew. And a fourth Age passed
And a state of dismal woe. 

10. In ghastly torment sick;
Hanging upon the wind;
Two Nostrils bent down to the deep. 
And a fifth Age passed over;
And a state of dismal woe.

11. In ghastly torment sick;
Within his ribs bloated round, 
A craving Hungry Cavern;
Thence aros...Read More

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ing round her hair 
And glossy-throated grace, Isolt the Queen. 
And when she heard the feet of Tristram grind 
The spiring stone that scaled about her tower, 
Flushed, started, met him at the doors, and there 
Belted his body with her white embrace, 
Crying aloud, `Not Mark--not Mark, my soul! 
The footstep fluttered me at first: not he: 
Catlike through his own castle steals my Mark, 
But warrior-wise thou stridest through his halls 
Who hates thee, as I him--even to th...Read More

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...re were flowers, and jugs, bright-glancing, 
And old Italian swords -- and looks, 
A moment's glance of fire, of fire, 
Spiring, leaping, flaming higher, 
Into the intense, the cloudless blue, 
Until two souls were one, and flame, 
And very flesh, and yet the same! 
As if all springs were crushed anew 
Into one globed drop of dew! 
But for the most I thought of heat, 
Desiring greatly. . . . Hot white sand 
The lazy body lies at rest in, 
Or sun-dried, scented...Read More

by Yeats, William Butler
...d music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image gr...Read More

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