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Famous Stretch Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...curse against my brother.

'For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.'

'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.'

'Not so,' I answered. 'Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land's sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:

'For parked-up honors that g...Read more of this...



by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...not peace with a scar.



Be not as tyrant or slave,
England; be not as these,
Thou that wert other than they.
Stretch out thine hand, but to save;
Put forth thy strength, and release;
Lest there arise, if thou slay,
Thy shame as a ghost from the grave....Read more of this...

by Guillen, Rafael
....

The population has disappeared
into the coffee bean, and a tide of white lightning
seeps in to cover them. I stretch out a hand, pluck
the red berry, submit it to the test
of water, scrub it, wait for the fermentation
of the sweet pulp to release the bean.
How many centuries, now? How much misery
does it cost to become a man? How much mourning?
With a few strokes of the rake, the stripped bean
dries in the sun. It crackles, and I feel it
under my feet. ...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ning love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon begins

a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...lantic mountains mow down all this great starry harvest of six thousand years?
92 And shall Necker, the hind of Geneva, stretch out his crook'd sickle o'er fertile France
93 Till our purple and crimson is faded to russet, and the kingdoms of earth bound in sheaves,
94 And the ancient forests of chivalry hewn, and the joys of the combat burnt for fuel;
95 Till the power and dominion is rent from the pole, sword and sceptre from sun and moon,
96 The law and gospel from fire and...Read more of this...



by Watts, Isaac
...Complaint of desertion and temptations.

Dear Lord! behold our sore distress;
Our sins attempt to reign;
Stretch out thine arm of conquering grace,
And let thy foes be slain.

[The lion with his dreadful roar
Affrights thy feeble sheep:
Reveal the glory of thy power,
And chain him to the deep.

Must we indulge a long despair?
Shall our petitions die?
Our mourning's never reach thine ear,
Nor tears affect thine eye?]

If thou despise a mortal groan,
Yet ...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...I indeed drink wine, but I commit no disorder. I
stretch out my hand, but it is only to seize the cup.
Would you know why I am an adorer of wine? It is
because I do not wish to imitate you and be an adorer
of myself....Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...he leaves.
And if on a fine evening, out of the depths of the plain, a couple came along, holding hands, the oak would stretch out its broad and powerful shade like a wing over their path, and the rose would waft them its frail perfume....Read more of this...

by Levy, Amy
...>

What ails my love; what ails her? She is paling;
Faint grows her face, and slowly seems to fade!
I cannot clasp her--stretch out unavailing
My arms across the silence and the shade....Read more of this...

by Qabbani, Nizar
...In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me....Read more of this...

by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...when you lay yourself beside me
   All the planets reel around me—fade away,
   And the sands grow dim, uncertain,—I stretch out my hands towards you
   While I try to speak but know not what I say!

   I am faint with love and longing, and my burning eyes are gazing
   Where the furtive Jackals wage their famished strife,
   Oh, your shadow on the mangroves! and your step upon the sandhills,—
   This is the loveliest evening of my Life!...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
Stretch out your limbs and sleep a long Saturnian sleep;
I have loved you better than my soul for all my words,
And there is none so fit to keep a watch and keep
Unwearied eyes upon those horrible green birds....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...chaos. 

6 

His cold horrors silent, dark Urizen
Prepar'd; his ten thousands of thunders,
Rang'd in gloom'd array, stretch out across
The dread world; and the rolling of wheels,
As of swelling seas, sound in his clouds,
In his hills of stor'd snows, in his mountains
Of hail and ice; voices of terror
Are heard, like thunders of autumn
When the cloud blazes over the harvests....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...able chaos

6. His cold horrors silent, dark Urizen
Prepar'd: his ten thousands of thunders
Rang'd in gloom'd array stretch out across
The dread world, & the rolling of wheels 
As of swelling seas, sound in his clouds
In his hills of stor'd snows, in his mountains
Of hail & ice; voices of terror,
Are heard, like thunders of autumn,
When the cloud blazes over the harvests...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...lantic mountains mow down all this great starry harvest of six thousand years?
92 And shall Necker, the hind of Geneva, stretch out his crook'd sickle o'er fertile France
93 Till our purple and crimson is faded to russet, and the kingdoms of earth bound in sheaves,
94 And the ancient forests of chivalry hewn, and the joys of the combat burnt for fuel;
95 Till the power and dominion is rent from the pole, sword and sceptre from sun and moon,
96 The law and gospel from fire and...Read more of this...

by Delville, Jean
...Thus, the souls of dismal feudal lineage,
Perpetuating their pride in illustrious sepulchres,
Stretch out their long, marble sleep upon the flagstones,
Weighted with dead centuries and funereal pasts,

The heraldic and grandiose white cadavers,
With righteous hands joined in ardent rigidity,
Pallid with faith, that rise from their bosoms
With sacerdotal gestures of prayer in eternity.

Beneath a heavy mourning of shadows in the tumulous crypt...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...f we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I do not like the things that you say
And I hate the games that you want to play.
No matter how frightfully hard you try,
We've little in common, you and I.
The interest I take in m...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...see below the hill,
The lichened branches of a wood
In summer silver cool and still;
And there the Shade of Evil could
Stretch out at us from Shilla Mill.
Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

But when a storm was at its height,
And feathery slate was black in rain,
And tamarisks ...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...ith pain the night's brown savagery.
And dark scents whisper; and dim waves creep to me,
Gleam like a woman's hair, stretch out, and rise;
And new stars burn into the ancient skies,
Over the murmurous soft Hawaian sea.

And I recall, lose, grasp, forget again,
And still remember, a tale I have heard, or known,
An empty tale, of idleness and pain,
Of two that loved -- or did not love -- and one
Whose perplexed heart did evil, foolishly,
A long while since, and by some ...Read more of this...

by Hesse, Hermann
...e alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all around me the cold night grows still.
The star in the window shines clearly-
Where is your blond hair,
Where your sweet mouth?

Now I drink pain in every delight
And poison in every wine;
I never knew it...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs