Famous Spray Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Flood

by John Clare
 On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I've seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o'er its wall to watch the dashing spray
As their old stations would be washed away
Crash came the ice against the jambs and then
A shudder jarred the arches—yet once more
It breasted raving waves and stood agen
To wait...Read more of this...

Cino

by Ezra Pound
 Italian Campagna 1309, the open road


Bah! I have sung women in three cities,
But it is all the same;
And I will sing of the sun.

Lips, words, and you snare them,
Dreams, words, and they are as jewels,
Strange spells of old deity,
Ravens, nights, allurement:
And they are not;
Having become the souls of song.

Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.
Being upon the road once...Read more of this...

A Birthday Song. To S. G

by Sidney Lanier
 For ever wave, for ever float and shine
Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine
Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine,

A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread
Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead,
Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o'erhead.

This vine bore many blossoms, which were years.
Their petals, red with joy, or...Read more of this...

Sonnet XL

by Edmund Spenser
 MArk when she smiles with amiable cheare,
And tell me whereto can ye lyken it:
when on each eyelid sweetly doe appeare,
an hundred Graces as in shade to sit.
Lykest it seemeth in my simple wit
vnto the fayre sunshine in somers day:
that when a dreadfull storme away is flit,
thrugh the broad world doth spred his goodly ray
At sight whereof each bird that...Read more of this...

Epistle To Augusta

by George (Lord) Byron
 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same— 
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,— 
A world to roam through, and a...Read more of this...

Seascape

by Elizabeth Bishop
 This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,
flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise 
in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections; 
the whole region, from the highest heron 
down to the weightless mangrove island 
with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings 
like illumination in silver, 
and down to the suggestively Gothic...Read more of this...

Last Love

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 The first flower of the spring is not so fair 
Or bright, as one the ripe midsummer brings. 
The first faint note the forest warbler sings 
Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare 
As when, full master of his art, the air 
Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings 
Like silver spray from beak, and...Read more of this...

The Paroo

by Henry Lawson
 It was a week from Christmas-time, 
As near as I remember, 
And half a year since, in the rear, 
We'd left the Darling timber. 
The track was hot and more than drear; 
The day dragged out for ever; 
But now we knew that we were near 
Our camp - the Paroo River. 
With blighted eyes and blistered feet, 
With...Read more of this...

The Caterpillar

by Robert Graves
 Under this loop of honeysuckle, 
A creeping, coloured caterpillar, 
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray, 
I nibble it leaf by leaf away. 

Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses; 
Rooks flap croaking across the lane. 
I eat and swallow and eat again. 

Here come raindrops helter-skelter; 
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm. 
I’ll mind my business:...Read more of this...

Elegy For My Father

by Annie Finch
 HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997

“Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.”
—Hart Crane, “Voyages”

“If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly
past the long edge of the last human shore,
there are deep windows the waves haven't opened,
where night is...Read more of this...

Massachusetts To Virginia

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay:
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel,

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along our highways go;
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies the snow;
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon their errands far,
A...Read more of this...

Clear with Light Variable Winds

by Amy Lowell
 The fountain bent and straightened itself
In the night wind,
Blowing like a flower.
It gleamed and glittered,
A tall white lily,
Under the eye of the golden moon.
From a stone seat,
Beneath a blossoming lime,
The man watched it.
And the spray pattered
On the dim grass at his feet.
The fountain tossed its water,
Up and up, like silver marbles.
Is that an arm he sees?
And for one moment
Does...Read more of this...

Fancy

by John Keats
EVER let the Fancy roam, 
Pleasure never is at home: 
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, 
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth; 
Then let wing¨¨d Fancy wander 5 
Through the thought still spread beyond her: 
Open wide the mind's cage-door, 
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. 
O sweet Fancy! let her loose; 
Summer's joys are spoilt by use, 10 
And...Read more of this...

In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen

by William Butler Yeats
 Five-and-twenty years have gone
Since old William pollexfen
Laid his strong bones down in death
By his wife Elizabeth
In the grey stone tomb he made.
And after twenty years they laid
In that tomb by him and her
His son George, the astrologer;
And Masons drove from miles away
To scatter the Acacia spray
Upon a melancholy man
Who had ended where his breath began.
Many a son and daughter...Read more of this...

Sea Fever

by John Masefield
 I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, 
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, 
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking. 

I must go...Read more of this...

Sonnet On Approaching Italy

by Oscar Wilde
 I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
And when from out the mountain's heart I came
And saw the land for which my life had yearned,
I laughed as one who some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise sky to...Read more of this...

For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand, 
He wakes lost echoes from song's classic shore, 
And brings their crystal cadence back once more 
To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land 
Where God's truth, cramped and fettered with a band 
Of iron creeds, he cheers with golden lore 
Of heroes and the men that long before 
Wrought...Read more of this...

Towards Break Of Day

by William Butler Yeats
 Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?

I thought: "There is a waterfall
Upon Ben Bulben side
That all my childhood counted dear;
Were I to travel far and wide
I could not find a thing so dear.'
My memories had magnified
So many times childish delight.

I would have...Read more of this...

A Prayer For My Daughter

by William Butler Yeats
 Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for...Read more of this...

The Garden Wall

by Denise Levertov
 Bricks of the wall, 
so much older than the house - 
taken I think from a farm pulled down 
when the street was built - 
narrow bricks of another century. 

Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets, 
a wall behind the flowers - 
roses and hollyhocks, the silver 
pods of lupine, sweet-tasting 
phlox, gray 
lavender - 
unnoticed - 
but...Read more of this...

The Rock and The Bubble

by Louisa May Alcott
 Oh! a bare, brown rock 
Stood up in the sea, 
The waves at its feet 
Dancing merrily. 

A little bubble 
Once came sailing by, 
And thus to the rock 
Did it gayly cry,-- 

"Ho! clumsy brown stone, 
Quick, make way for me: 
I'm the fairest thing 
That floats on the sea. 

"See my rainbow-robe, 
See my crown of light,...Read more of this...

The Blue Mountains

by Henry Lawson
 Above the ashes straight and tall, 
Through ferns with moisture dripping, 
I climb beneath the sandstone wall, 
My feet on mosses slipping. 

Like ramparts round the valley's edge 
The tinted cliffs are standing, 
With many a broken wall and ledge, 
And many a rocky landing. 

And round about their rugged feet 
Deep ferny dells are hidden 
In shadowed depths,...Read more of this...

The Furl of Fresh-Leaved Dogrose Down

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The furl of fresh-leaved dogrose down 
His cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sun 
Had swarthed about with lion-brown 
Before the Spring was done. 

His locks like all a ravel-rope’s-end,
With hempen strands in spray— 
Fallow, foam-fallow, hanks—fall’n off their ranks, 
Swung down at a disarray. 

Or like a juicy and jostling shock 
Of bluebells sheaved in May
Or wind-long fleeces on the flock...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

On A Clean Book

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Like sea-washed sand upon the shore,
So fine and clean the tale,
So clear and bright I almost see,
The flashing of a sail.
The tang of salt is in its veins,
The freshness of the spray
God give you love and lore and strength,
To give us such alway.
...Read more of this...

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