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Famous Stretched Out Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Stretched 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 stretched out poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stretched out poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...e at first meeting; 
Love me with thine heart, that all 
Neighbours then see beating. 

V 

Love me with thine hand stretched out 
Freely -- open-minded: 
Love me with thy loitering foot, -- 
Hearing one behind it. 

VI 

Love me with thy voice, that turns 
Sudden faint above me; 
Love me with thy blush that burns 
When I murmur 'Love me!' 

VII 

Love me with thy thinking soul, 
Break it to love-sighing; 
Love me with thy thoughts that roll 
On through living -- dyin...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...chott when the cock crew!

The next time that Peter denied his Lord
The Babe in the Manger awakened and stirred,
And He stretched out His arms for the playmates
 He knew--
When the cock crew--when the cock crew--
But the waters had covered them when the cock crew!

The next time that Peter denied his Lord
 'Twas Earth in her agony waited his word,
But he sat by the fire and naught would he do,
 Though the cock crew--though the cock crew--
Over all Christendom, though the cock...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...nature of the ocean 
 spines?
 The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
 The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
 in the deep places like a thread in the water?

 I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its 
 jewel boxes
 is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
 and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the 
 petal
 hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
 and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
 from...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d, and made him gray 
And grayer, till himself became as mist 
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom. 

Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud 
`Oh Arthur!' there her voice brake suddenly, 
Then--as a stream that spouting from a cliff 
Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base 
Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale-- 
Went on in passionate utterance: 

`Gone--my lord! 
Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain! 
And he forgave me, and I could not spea...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...fall in no time.
A light will circle the lame, skinny horse.
And the treeless space, in this hopeless landscape
stretched out before me like the body of a hard man,
will suddenly be filled with stars.
We'll reach the inevitable end once more,
which is to say the stage is set
again today for an elaborate nostalgia.
Me,
the man inside,
once more I'll exhibit my customary talent,
and singing an old-fashioned lament
in the reedy voice of my childhood,
once more, b...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...grey:
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...chor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged might see 
How all...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...> 
And for the Heaven's wide circuit, let it speak 
The Maker's high magnificence, who built 
So spacious, and his line stretched out so far; 
That Man may know he dwells not in his own; 
An edifice too large for him to fill, 
Lodged in a small partition; and the rest 
Ordained for uses to his Lord best known. 
The swiftness of those circles attribute, 
Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, 
That to corporeal substances could add 
Speed almost spiritual: Me thou thinkest...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...visions of God. It was a hill, 
Of Paradise the highest; from whose top 
The hemisphere of earth, in clearest ken, 
Stretched out to the amplest reach of prospect lay. 
Not higher that hill, nor wider looking round, 
Whereon, for different cause, the Tempter set 
Our second Adam, in the wilderness; 
To show him all Earth's kingdoms, and their glory. 
His eye might there command wherever stood 
City of old or modern fame, the seat 
Of mightiest empire, from the des...Read more of this...

by Muldoon, Paul
...I am stretched out under the lean-to
Of an old tobacco-shed
On a farm in North Carolina.
A cardinal sings from the dogwood
For the love of marijuana.
His song goes over my head.
There is such splendour in the grass
I might be the picture of happiness.
Yet I am utterly bereft
Of the low hills, the open-ended sky,
The wave upon wave of pasture
Rolli...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...en a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs
And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come
With the spring-time,---so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V.

Then...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
.... 
And now, Sylvia, 
you again 
with death again, 
that ride home 
with our boy.) 
And I say only 
with my arms stretched out into that stone place, 
what is your death 
but an old belonging, 
a mole that fell out 
of one of your poems? 
(O friend, 
while the moon's bad, 
and the king's gone, 
and the queen's at her wit's end 
the bar fly ought to sing!) 
O tiny mother, 
you too! 
O funny duchess! 
O blonde thing!...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...On the striped ground
The snake was wound.
For a moment Clotilde paused in alarm,
Then she rolled up her sleeve and stretched out her arm.
She thought she heard steps, she must be quick.
She darted her hand out, and seized the thick
Wriggling slime,
Only just in time.
The old gardener came muttering down the path,
And his shadow fell like a broad, black swath,
And covered Clotilde and the angry snake.
He bit her, but what difference did that make!
The Virg...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the wanderer, lonely, friendless, 
In foreign harbors shall behold 
That flag unrolled, 
'T will be as a friendly hand 
Stretched out from his native land, 
Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless! 
All is finished! and at length 
Has come the bridal day 
Of beauty and of strength. 
To-day the vessel shall be launched! 
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, 
And o'er the bay, 
Slowly, in all his splendors dight, 
The great sun rises to behold the sight. 
T...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...y follow that first dire daemonic dawn
When he did split
My spirit with his lightnings and enveloped it!

XXIX

So I am stretched out naked to the knife,
My whole soul twitching with the stress
Of the expected yet surprising strife,
A martyrdom of blessedness.
Though Death came, I could kiss him into life;
Though Life came, I
Could kiss him into death, and yet nor live nor die!

***

Yet I that am the babe, the sire, the dam,
Am also none of these at all; 
For now that co...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...Jesus was all virtue and acted from im[PL 24]pulse: 
not from rules.
When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out
his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well 
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they wi...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...eartaching sight
Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer --
And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace,
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face --
In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea,
Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pall...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ran, 
And Abraham proved him an "even time" man, 
But the goat -- now a speck they could scarce keep their eyes on -- 
Stretched out in his stride in a style most surprisin' 
And vanished ere long o'er the distant horizon. 

Away in the camp the bill-sticker's tramp 
Is heard as he wanders with paste, brush, and notices, 
And paling and wall he plasters them all, 
"I wonder how's things gettin' on with the goat," he says, 
The pulls out his bills, "Use Solomon's Pills" 
...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
 and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before 
 and ...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, bl...Read more of this...

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