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Famous Stretches Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...land and views 
A new, a fair a fertile world arise; 
Onward from India's isles far east, to us 
Now fair-ey'd commerce stretches her white sails, 
Learning exalts her head, the graces smile 
And peace establish'd after horrid war 
Improves the splendor of these early times. 
But come my friends and let us trace the steps 
By which this recent happy world arose, 
To this fair eminence of high renown 
This height of wealth, of liberty and fame. 



LEANDER. 
Speak ...Read more of this...



by Lawson, Henry
...shermen say, "Oh! it's nowt!" 

(Enemy, Friend or Stranger! In every sea or land, 
And across the lives of most men run stretches of Goodwin Sand; 
And across the life of a nation, as across the track of a ship, 
Lies the hidden rock, or the iceberg, within the horizon dip. 
And wise men know them, and warn us, with lightship, or voice, or pen; 
But we strike, and the fool survivors sail on to strike again.) 

But this is a song of brave men, wherever is aught to save...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...iet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up ...Read more of this...

by Finch, Annie
...>”
—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 reflected through decades of glass.
There is the nursery, there is the nanny,
there are my father’s unreachable eyes
turned towards the window. Is the child uneasy?
His is the death that is circling the stars.

In t...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...the south a light, as in autumn the blood-red
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon
Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow,
Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows together.
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the village,
Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the roadstead.
Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were
Thrust through their folds and wi...Read more of this...



by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...she heeds thy stirring cry,
She knows thy guardian spirit will be nigh,
And rising from beneath the chast'ning rod,
She stretches out her bleeding hands to God!...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ing boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The s...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long
Ere his last hour. And when the reveller,
Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on,
And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life
Like wind, thou point'st him to the dreadful goal,
And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reeling eye,
And check'st him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand
Shows to the faint of spirit the right path,
And he is warned, and fears to step aside.
Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime
Thy...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...erns bottle brushes
And summer tracks about its brink
Is fresh again where cattle drink
And on its sunny bank the swain
Stretches his idle length again
Soon as the sun forgets the day
The moon looks down on the lovly may
And the little star his friend and guide
Travelling together side by side
And the seven stars and charleses wain1
Hangs smiling oer green woods agen
The heaven rekindles all alive
Wi light the may bees round the hive
Swarm not so thick in mornings eye
As star...Read more of this...

by Boland, Eavan
...t this was a gentle art
follow this man on a moonless night
to the wretched bed he will have to make:

The Gaelic world stretches out under a hawthorn tree
and burns in the rain. This is its home,
its last frail shelter. All of it—
Limerick, the Wild Geese and what went before—
falters into cadence before he sleeps:
He shuts his eyes. Darkness falls on it....Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...g
And turbulent ocean.

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow afte...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat—lance and harpoon are ready; 
The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches;
The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar; 
The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel; 
The farmer stops by the bars, as he walks on a First-day loafe, and looks at the
 oats and rye; 
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirm’d case, 
(He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot i...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...d lies forgotten with the dead. 
Within our streets men cry for bread 
In cities built but yesterday. 
About us stretches wealth of land, 
A boundless wealth of virgin soil 
As yet unfruitful and untilled! 
Our willing workmen, strong and skilled, 
Within our cities idle stand, 
And cry aloud for leave to toil. 

The stunted children come and go 
In squalid lanes and alleys black: 
We follow but the beaten track 
Of other nations, and we grow 
In wealth for some -...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ss it, 
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it, 
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you—however long, but it
 stretches
 and
 waits for you;
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither, 
To see no possession but you may possess it—enjoying all without labor or
 purchase—abstracting
 the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it; 
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant vill...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
....

But, on the other side, thou'rt drawn
Like to Aurora in the dawn;
When in the east she slumb'ring lies,
And stretches out her milky thighs;
While all the morning choir does sing,
And manna falls, and roses spring;
And, at thy feet, the wooing doves
Sit perfecting their harmless loves.

Like an enchantress here thou show'st,
Vexing thy restless lover's ghost;
And, by a light obscure, dost rave
Over his entrails, in the cave;
Divining thence, with horr...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...tines.

Inside the car a young lady wears a corsage of bullet-sized rodents.
Her date, the handsome cornerback, stretches his talons over the
molded steering wheel.

They park and walk into the lush starlit gardens behind the disco
just as the band is striking up.

Their keen eyes and ears twitch. The other couples
look beautiful tonight. They stroll around listening
to the brilliant conversation. The passionate speeches.

Clouds drift across t...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...,-- 
A spell is in this old gray stone, 
My thoughts are with the Past alone! 

A change! -- The steepled town no more 
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore; 
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, 
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud: 
Spectrally rising where they stood, 
I see the old, primeval wood; 
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand 
I see its solemn waste expand; 
It climbs the green and cultured hill, 
It arches o'er the valley's rill, 
And leans from cliff and crag ...Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...f their days,
in the black souls of anarchists and killers
I, a gory vision, will blaze!

It’s dawning,
The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more,
it drinks up the night
sip by sip, thirstily.
The windows send off a glow.
Through the panes heat pours.
The sun, viscous, streams down onto the sleeping city.

O sacred vengeance!
Lead me again
above the dust without
and up the steps of my poetic lines.
This heart of mine,
full to the brim,
in a confession
I ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hing lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying, 
The breath ceases, and the pulse of the heart ceases,
The corpse stretches on the bed, and the living look upon it, 
It is palpable as the living are palpable. 

The living look upon the corpse with their eye-sight, 
But without eye-sight lingers a different living, and looks curiously on the corpse. 

3
To think the thought of Death, merged in the thought of materials!
To think that the rivers will flow, and the ...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...Too long and quickly have I lived to vow
The woe that stretches me shall never wane,
Too often seen the end of endless pain
To swear that peace no more shall cool my brow.
I know, I know- again the shriveled bough
Will burgeon sweetly in the gentle rain,
And these hard lands be quivering with grain-
I tell you only: it is Winter now.

What if I know, before the Summer goes
Where dwelt this bitter frenzy...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs