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Famous Spreading Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...’t;
Whiles glitter’d to the nightly rays,
 Wi’ bickerin’, dancin’ dazzle;
Whiles cookit undeneath the braes,
 Below the spreading hazel
 Unseen that night.


Amang the brachens, on the brae,
 Between her an’ the moon,
The deil, or else an outler quey,
 Gat up an’ ga’e a croon:
Poor Leezie’s heart maist lap the hool;
 Near lav’rock-height she jumpit,
But mist a fit, an’ in the pool
 Out-owre the lugs she plumpit,
 Wi’ a plunge that night.


In order, on the clean heart...Read more of this...



by Shakespeare, William
...sting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied
Love to myself and to no love beside.

'But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit--it was to gain my grace--
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face:
Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...d or New,
But blame the False, and value still the True.

Some ne'er advance a Judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading Notion of the Town;
They reason and conclude by Precedent,
And own stale Nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of Authors' Names, not Works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the Writings, but the Men.
Of all this Servile Herd the worst is He
That in proud Dulness joins with Quality,
A constant Critick at the Great-man's Board,
To fetch ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...m’d at your breast, 
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children—saw in dreams your dilating form; 
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)

19
I will confront these shows of the day and night! 
I will know if I am to be less than they! 
I will see if I am not as majestic as they! 
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they! 
I will see if I am to be less generous than they!
I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have meaning!...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...s of this tangled wood?
My brothers, when they saw me wearied out
With this long way, resolving here to lodge
Under the spreading favour of these pines,
Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side
To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit
As the kind hospitable woods provide.
They left me then when the grey-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
But where they are, and why they came not back,
Is now the ...Read more of this...



by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
..., 
Rough remnant of a prehistoric day, 
Thou, with the red man, too, must shortly pass away.



LII.
Upon those spreading plains is there not room
For man and bison, that he seals its doom? 
What pleasure lies and what seductive charm
In slaying with no purpose but to harm? 
Alas, that man, unable to create, 
Should thirst forever to exterminate, 
And in destruction find his fiercest joy.
The gods alone create, gods only should destroy.



LIII.
The flying...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth:
Be still a symbol of immensity;
A firmament reflected in a sea;
An element filling the space between;
An unknown--but no more: we humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And giving out a shout most heaven rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Paean,
U...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station descended
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village.
Strongly built were the hous...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bow'd head seem'...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ery!
She brooded o'er the luxury alone:
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring, "Where? O where?"

XXXI.
But Selfishness, Love's cousin, held not long
Its fiery vigil in her single breast;
She fretted for the golden hour, and hung
Upon the time with feverish unrest--
Not long--for soon into her heart a throng
Of higher occupants, a richer zest,
Came tragic; pas...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...Dread not their taunts, my little life!  I am thy father's wedded wife;  And underneath the spreading tree  We two will live in honesty.  If his sweet boy he could forsake,  With me he never would have stay'd:  From him no harm my babe can take,  But he, poor man! is wretched made,  And every day we two will pray  For him that's gone and far away.<...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...h glitt'ring dew, 
At breezy morn's refreshing hour, 
Glows with pure tints of varying hue, 
Beneath an aged oak's wide spreading shade, 
Where no rude winds, or beating storms invade. 
Transplanted from its lonely bed, 
No more it scatters perfumes round, 
No more it rears its gentle head, 
Or brightly paints the mossy ground; 
For ah! the beauteous bud, too soon, 
Scorch'd by the burning eye of day; 
Shrinks from the sultry glare of noon, 
Droops its enamell'd brow, and...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...; go, and be strong! 
So saying he dismissed them; they with speed 
Their course through thickest constellations held, 
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan, 
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse 
Then suffered. The other way Satan went down 
The causey to Hell-gate: On either side 
Disparted Chaos overbuilt exclaimed, 
And with rebounding surge the bars assailed, 
That scorned his indignation: Through the gate, 
Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed, 
A...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...thy dream!) 

5
Passage to India! 
Struggles of many a captain—tales of many a sailor dead!
Over my mood, stealing and spreading they come, 
Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach’d sky. 

Along all history, down the slopes, 
As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now again to the surface rising, 
A ceaseless thought, a varied train—Lo, soul! to thee, thy sight, they rise,
The plans, the voyages again, the expeditions: 
Again Vasco de Gama sails forth; 
Again the knowl...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...rostration of the earth
Under men's hands and their minds,
The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city,
The spreading fungus, the slime-threads
And spores; my own coast's obscene future: I remember the farther
Future, and the last man dying
Without succession under the confident eyes of the stars.
It was only a moment's accident,
The race that plagued us; the world resumes the old lonely immortal
Splendor; from here I can even
Perceive that that snuffed candle...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree:
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round;
And still as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each ...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...ay's dewy prime;  The swans, that, when I sought the water-side,  From far to meet me came, spreading their snowy pride.   The staff I yet remember which upbore  The bending body of my active sire;  His seat beneath the honeyed sycamore  When the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire;  When market-morning came, the neat attire  With which, though bent on hast...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...he fields of fight.Then great Volumnius, who expell'd the pestWhose spreading ills the Romans long distress'd.Rutilius Cassus, Philo next in sightAppear'd, like twinkling stars that gild the night.Three men I saw advancing up the vale,Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail;Dentatus, lo...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...,
And felt that wondrous Lady all alone,--
And she felt him upon her emerald throne.

And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every Shepherdess of Ocean's flocks
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company,--
All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth:
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.

The herdsmen and the mounta...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...f. 

Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all; 
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light; 
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d
 light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing
 forever. 

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! 
You have not known what you are—you have slumber’d upon yourself all you...Read more of this...

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