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Famous Summons Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Poe, Edgar Allan
...rt from Heaven's Eternity- and yet how far from Hell!
What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim,
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for Heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover-
O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen- 'mid "tears of perfect moan."
He was a goodly spirit- he who fell:
A wanderer b...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...d well, made soon of all my toil
An evanescent and a vain evasion; 
And it was half as in expectancy 
That I obeyed the summons of his wife 
A little before dawn, and was again 
With Avon in the room where I had left him,
But not with the same Avon I had left. 
The doctor, an august authority, 
With eminence abroad as well as here, 
Looked hard at me as if I were the doctor 
And he the friend. “I have had eyes on Avon
For more than half a year,” he said to me, 
“And I...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ly glance;
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head
From thy coral-paven bed,
And bridle in thy headlong wave,
Till thou our summons answered have.
 Listen and save!

SABRINA rises, attended by water-nymphs, and sings.

By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
 My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate, and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue, and emerald green,
 That in the channel strays;
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printle...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...hat they cry'd in vain,
"Come hither, Sister of the Island!" Plain
Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake
A higher summons:--still didst thou betake
Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won
A full accomplishment! The thing is done,
Which undone, these our latter days had risen
On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison
Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets
Our spirit's wings: despondency besets
Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn
See...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...daughter!
Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith!

So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons sonorous
Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a drum beat.
Thronged erelong was the church with men. Without, in the churchyard,
Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on the headstones
Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens fresh from the forest.
Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudl...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...s who would urge them over-much,
A flat and yet decided negative -
Photographers love such. 

There comes a welcome summons - hope revives,
And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken. 

Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion -
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean. 

And thus they give the time, that Nature m...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...h was still a name. 
The moment came, the hour when Otho thought 
Secure at last the vengeance which he sought 
His summons found the destined criminal 
Begirt by thousands in his swarming hall, 
Fresh from their feudal fetters newly riven, 
Defying earth, and confident of heaven. 
That morning he had freed the soil-bound slaves 
Who dig no land for tyrants but their graves! 
Such is their cry — some watchword for the fight 
Must vindicate the wrong, and warp the righ...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...his laughter's spleen: 
None but himsef must choose the King a Queen), 
But when he came the odious clause to pen 
That summons up the Parliament again, 
His writing master many a time he banned 
And wished himself the gout to seize his hand. 
Never old lecher more repugnance felt, 
Consenting, for his rupture, to be gelt; 
But still then hope him solaced, ere they come, 
To work the peace and so to send them home, 
Or in their hasty call to find a flaw, 
Their acts to vi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...st proclaim 
A solemn council forthwith to be held 
At Pandemonium, the high capital 
Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called 
From every band and squared regiment 
By place or choice the worthiest: they anon 
With hundreds and with thousands trooping came 
Attended. All access was thronged; the gates 
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall 
(Though like a covered field, where champions bold 
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair 
Defied the best o...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...present, past, and future,) on such day 
As Heaven's great year brings forth, the empyreal host 
Of Angels by imperial summons called, 
Innumerable before the Almighty's throne 
Forthwith, from all the ends of Heaven, appeared 
Under their Hierarchs in orders bright: 
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced, 
Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear 
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve 
Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees; 
Or in their glittering tissues b...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...r spring, 
By the waters of life, where'er they sat 
In fellowships of joy, the sons of light 
Hasted, resorting to the summons high; 
And took their seats; till from his throne supreme 
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will. 
O Sons, like one of us Man is become 
To know both good and evil, since his taste 
Of that defended fruit; but let him boast 
His knowledge of good lost, and evil got; 
Happier! had it sufficed him to have known 
Good by itself, and evil not ...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...rompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!" 
Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew; 
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e limpsey tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe thither, 
The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty, 
The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce and parley;
The sack of an old city in its time, 
The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly, 
Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness, 
Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the gripe of brigands, 
Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...stles; 
For know a better, fresher, busier sphere—a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. 

3
Responsive to our summons, 
Or rather to her long-nurs’d inclination,
Join’d with an irresistible, natural gravitation, 

She comes! this famous Female—as was indeed to be expected; 
(For who, so-ever youthful, ’cute and handsome, would wish to stay in mansions such as
 those,

When offer’d quarters with all the modern improvements, 
With all the fun that ’s going—and all the...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...reared,
     Hollow and hoarse his voice was heard:
     'When flits this Cross from man to man,
     Vich-Alpine's summons to his clan,
     Burst be the ear that fails to heed!
     Palsied the foot that shuns to speed!
     May ravens tear the careless eyes,
     Wolves make the coward heart their prize!
     As sinks that blood-stream in the earth,
     So may his heart's-blood drench his hearth!
     As dies in hissing gore the spark,
     Quench thou his lig...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...dew?
Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew?
Confiscate his evening ****** under which my conies ran,
And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
 And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
 Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

 Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that fl...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ly he sent after Constance:
But truste well, her liste not to dance.
When that she wiste wherefore was that sond,* *summons
Unneth* upon her feet she mighte stand. *with difficulty

When Alla saw his wife, fair he her gret,* *greeted
And wept, that it was ruthe for to see,
For at the firste look he on her set
He knew well verily that it was she:
And she, for sorrow, as dumb stood as a tree:
So was her hearte shut in her distress,
When she remember'd his unkindeness.Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...be rocked in:
For there's no human life at the full or the dark.
From the first crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to adventure and the man
Is always happy like a bird or a beast;
But while the moon is rounding towards the full
He follows whatever whim's most difficult
Among whims not impossible, and though scarred.
As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,
His body moulded from within his body
Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and then
Athene takes Achilles ...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...red haunt of Lapland moors,
With rhymes uncouth the bloody caldron bless;
Though Murder wan beneath thy shrouding shade
Summons her slow-eyed votaries to devise
Of secret slaughter, while by one blue lamp
In hideous conference sits the listening band,
And start at each low wind, or wakeful sound;
What though thy stay the pilgrim curseth oft,
As all-benighted in Arabian wastes
He hears the wilderness around him howl
With roaming monsters, while on his hoar head
The black-desce...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...orld was gay.
All but the Sylph---With careful Thoughts opprest,
Th' impending Woe sate heavy on his Breast.
He summons strait his Denizens of Air;
The lucid Squadrons round the Sails repair:
Soft o'er the Shrouds Aerial Whispers breathe,
That seem'd but Zephyrs to the Train beneath.
Some to the Sun their Insect-Wings unfold,
Waft on the Breeze, or sink in Clouds of Gold. 
Transparent Forms, too fine for mortal Sight,
Their fluid Bodies half dissolv'd in Light...Read more of this...

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