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Famous Surging Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...rivers in the sea were lost;
There, mountains to the skies were toss’t:
Here, tumbling billows mark’d the coast,
 With surging foam;
There, distant shone Art’s lofty boast,
 The lordly dome.


Here, Doon pour’d down his far-fetch’d floods;
There, well-fed Irwine stately thuds:
Auld hermit Ayr staw thro’ his woods,
 On to the shore;
And many a lesser torrent scuds,
 With seeming roar.


Low, in a sandy valley spread,
An ancient borough rear’d her head;
Still, as in Sc...Read more of this...



by Jennings, Elizabeth
...Over the surging tides and the mountain kingdoms,
Over the pastoral valleys and the meadows,
Over the cities with their factory darkness,
Over the lands where peace is still a power,
Over all these and all this planet carries
A power broods, invisible monarch, a stranger
To some, but by many trusted. Man's a believer
Until corrupted. This huge trusted power
I...Read more of this...

by Martí, José
...
Upon my head softly fall,
Rays formed of the purest light
From beauty celestial.

I have seen wings that were surging
From beautiful women's shoulders,
And seen butterflies emerging
From the refuse heap that moulders.

I have known a man to live
With a dagger at his side,
And never once the name give
Of she by whose hand he died.

Twice, for an instant, did I
My soul's reflection espy:
Twice: when my poor father died
And when she bade me good-by...Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...ack!’ 
He bawls, and swings his thong with volleying crack,— 
All the clean thrill of autumn in his blood, 
And hunting surging through him like a flood 
In joyous welcome from the untroubled past;
While the war drifts away, forgotten at last. 

Now a red, sleepy sun above the rim 
Of twilight stares along the quiet weald, 
And the kind, simple country shines revealed 
In solitudes of peace, no longer dim.
The old horse lifts his face and thanks the light, 
Then stret...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ars their confessors, or told
Their dearest secret to the downy moth
That will not fly at noonday, through the foam and surging froth

Came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes
And lit upon the ship, whose timbers creaked
As though the lading of three argosies
Were in the hold, and flapped its wings and shrieked,
And darkness straightway stole across the deep,
Sheathed was Orion's sword, dread Mars himself fled down the steep,

And the moon hid behind a tawny mask
Of drift...Read more of this...



by Lawrence, D. H.
...I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corru...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...r
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly,...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ly disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving....Read more of this...

by Crane, Hart
...oiled shell.

Yet, love endures, though starving and alone.
A dove's wings clung about my heart each night
With surging gentleness, and the blue stone
Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...le gasp.

Ah! I remember me
How once conspiracy was rife
Against my life--
The languor of it and the dreaming fond;
Surging, the grasses dizzied me of thought,
The breeze three odors brought,
And a gem-flower waved in a wand!

Then when I was distraught
And could not speak,
Sidelong, full on my cheek,
What should that reckless zephyr fling
But the wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!

I found that wing broken today!
For thou art dead, I said,
And the strang birds say.
I ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...composer—haply thy pensive life 
Was fill’d with aspirations high—unform’d ideals, 
Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging, 
That now, ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,
Gives out to no one’s ears but mine—but freely gives to mine, 
That I may thee translate. 

3
Blow, trumpeter, free and clear—I follow thee, 
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, 
The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day, withdraw;
A holy calm desce...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...mutiny had from her axle torn 
The steadfast Earth. At last his sail-broad vans 
He spread for flight, and, in the surging smoke 
Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, 
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets 
A vast vacuity. All unawares, 
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops 
Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour 
Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, 
The strong rebuff of some tumu...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...he vast immeasurable abyss 
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, 
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds 
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault 
Heaven's highth, and with the center mix the pole. 
Silence, ye troubled Waves, and thou Deep, peace, 
Said then the Omnifick Word; your discord end! 
Nor staid; but, on the wings of Cherubim 
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode 
Far into Chaos, and the world unborn; 
For Chaos heard his voice: Him all his train 
Fol...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...wave, 
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, 
Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect 
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape 
And lovely; never since of serpent-kind 
Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed, 
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god 
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed 
Am...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-press where sweet must is poured,
Beat off, returns as oft with humming sound;
Or surging waves against a solid rock,
Though all to shivers dashed, the assault renew,
(Vain battery!) and in froth or bubbles end— 
So Satan, whom repulse upon repulse
Met ever, and to shameful silence brought,
Yet gives not o'er, though desperate of success,
And his vain importunity pursues.
He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountai...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ver degrades another degrades me; 
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. 

Through me the afflatus surging and surging—through me the current and
 index.

I speak the pass-word primeval—I give the sign of democracy; 
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
 same terms. 

Through me many long dumb voices; 
Voices of the interminable generations of slaves; 
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform’d perso...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...under-crash, and many a curse, and groan and yell—and rifle-volleys
 cracking sharp, 
And moving masses, as wild demons surging—and lives as nothing risk’d, 
For thy mere remnant, grimed with dirt and smoke, and sopp’d in blood;
For sake of that, my beauty—and that thou might’st dally, as now, secure up there, 
Many a good man have I seen go under. 

14
Now here, and these, and hence, in peace all thine, O Flag! 
And here, and hence, for thee, O universal Muse! and thou f...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...a flat, 
red plate,
the branches creak and grate. She screams and cowers, 
for the green foliage
is a lowering wave surging to smother her. But she sees 
nothing.
The stake holds firm. The body writhes, the body squirms.
The blue spots widen, the flesh tears, but the stake wears well
in the deep, black ground. It holds the body in the still, 
black ground.

Two years! The body has been in the ground two years. It 
is worn away;
it is clay to cl...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...e
Around her Phoebus in unbounded space;
True to her course th' impetuous storm derides,
Triumphant o'er the winds, and surging tides.
Almighty, in these wond'rous works of thine,
What Pow'r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine!
And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor'd,
And yet creating glory unador'd!
Creation smiles in various beauty gay,
While day to night, and night succeeds to day:
That Wisdom, which attends Jehovah's ways,
Shines most conspicuous in the solar ray...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...strap's undone -- that worries you).
You glare around. You think you're all alone.
 But no; your chums come surging left and right.
The nearest chap flops down without a groan,
 His face still snarling with the rage of fight.
Ha! here's the second trench -- just like the first,
 Only a little more so, more "laid out";
More pounded, flame-corroded, death-accurst;
 A pretty piece of work, beyond a doubt.
Now for the third, and there your job is done,
 So...Read more of this...

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