Famous Survey Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Survey poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous survey poems. These examples illustrate what a famous survey poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...l her secrets to their view!
Bids them ascend with Newton to the skies,
And trace the orbits of the rolling spheres,
Survey the glories of the universe,
Its suns and moons and ever blazing stars!
Hail city blest with liberty's fair beams,
And with the rays of mild religion blest!
ACASTO.
Nor these alone, America, thy sons
In the short circle of a hundred years
Have rais'd with toil along thy shady shores.
On lake and bay and navigable stream,
From Cape ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ough I use it more or less,
Describing alcoholic scenes,
I do not know, I must confess,
What Spirit means.
When I survey this cosmic scene,
The term "Creator" seems absurd;
The Universe has always been,
Creation never has occurred.
But in my Lexicon of Doubt
It strikes me definitely odd,
One word I never dare to flout,
One syllable the mountains shout,
Three letters that the stars spell out:
GOD....Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...Eternal Snows appear already past,
And the first Clouds and Mountains seem the last:
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing Labours of the lengthen'd Way,
Th' increasing Prospect tires our wandering Eyes,
Hills peep o'er Hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
A perfect Judge will read each Work of Wit
With the same Spirit that its Author writ,
Survey the Whole, nor seek slight Faults to find,
Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the Mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e, elastic scheme, the immigrants,
The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always sure and impregnable,
The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunters, trappers;
Surrounding the multiform agriculture, mines, temperature, the gestation of new States,
Congress convening every Twelfth-month, the members duly coming up from the uttermost
parts;
Surrounding the noble character of mechanics and farmers, especially the young men,
Responding their...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...
our plane a ship.
I call this smooth sailing, smooth as butter.
Behind us a wake of smoke floats.
Our eyes survey blue vacancies
full of glittering discs...
Below us the earth looks
like a Jaffa orange
turning gold in the sun...
By what magic have I
climbed off the ground
hundreds of minarets high,
and yet to gaze down at the earth
my mouth still waters...
FROM THE AUTHOR'S NOTEBOOK
Now our plane swims
within the hot...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ellent to the soul;
Knowledge becomes him—he likes it always—he brings everything to the test of himself;
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings at last only
here;
(Where else does he strike soundings, except here?)
The man’s body is sacred, and the woman’s body is sacred;
No matter who it is, it is sacred;
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ting lies,
On the shelved shore, and turns his eyes to see
The league-wide wastes that held him. So mine eyes
Surveyed that fear, the while my wearied frame
Rested, and ever my heart's tossed lake became
More quiet.
Then from that pass released, which yet
With living feet had no man left, I set
My forward steps aslant the steep, that so,
My right foot still the lower, I climbed.
Below
No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand
Was steril...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...boxes, he so from the chair
Can strike the die and still with them goes share.
Here, Painter, rest a little, and survey
With what small arts the public game they play.
For so too Rubens, with affairs of state,
His labouring pencil oft would recreate.
The close Cabal marked how the Navy eats,
And thought all lost that goes not to the cheats,
So therefore secretly for peace decrees,
Yet as for war the Parliament should squeeze,
And fix to the rev?nue suc...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
Diurnal,) merely to officiate light
Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night; in all her vast survey
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire,
How Nature wise and frugal could commit
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand
So many nobler bodies to create,
Greater so manifold, to this one use,
For aught appears, and on their orbs impose
Such restless revolution day by day
Repeated; while the sedentary Earth,
That better might with far less ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ach others force in camp or listed field:
And now am come to see of whom such noise
Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey,
If thy appearance answer loud report.
Sam: The way to know were not to see but taste.
Har: Dost thou already single me; I thought
Gives and the Mill had tam'd thee? O that fortune
Had brought me to the field where thou art fam'd
To have wrought such wonders with an Asses Jaw;
I should have forc'd thee soon with other arms,
Or left thy cark...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
The axe leaps!
The solid forest gives fluid utterances;
They tumble forth, they rise and form,
Hut, tent, landing, survey,
Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade,
Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable,
Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library,
Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch,
Hoe, rake, pitch-fork, pencil, wagon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce,
Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicke...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...the ear that doth thy lays esteem
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey,
If Time have any wrinkle graven there;
If any, be a satire to decay,
And make Time's spoils despised every where.
Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life;
So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife....Read more of this...
by
Dove, Rita
...She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,
I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl
down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though
she wasn't, sliding into the...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...er stain'd;
'Tis true, the purchase nearly drain'd
His ill got treasure, soon replaced.
Wouldst question whence? Survey the waste,
And ask the squalid peasant how
His gains repay his broiling brow! —
Why me the stern usurper spared,
Why thus with me the palace shared,
I know not. Shame, regret, remorse,
And little fear from infant's force;
Besides, adoption of a son
Of him whom Heaven accorded none,
Or some unknown cabal, caprice,
Preserved me thus; but n...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...hes intercept the glare
Of afternoon with eucalyptus shade;
Eastward the level valley-plains expand,
Sweet as a queen's survey of her own Fairyland.
For through that frame the ivied arches make,
Wide tracts of sunny midland charm the eye,
Frequent with hamlet grove, and lucent lake
Where the blue hills' inverted contours lie;
Far to the east where billowy mountains break
In surf of snow against a sapphire sky,
Huge thunderheads loom up behind the ranges,
Changing from go...Read more of this...
by
Goldsmith, Oliver
...up their sports beneath the spreading tree:
While many a pastime circled in the shade,
The young contending as the old surveyed;
And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round;
And still as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down!
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered roun...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...mbling for the Birth of Fate.
Part 3
CLOSE by those Meads for ever crown'd with Flow'rs,
Where Thames with Pride surveys his rising Tow'rs,
There stands a Structure of Majestick Frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its Name.
Here Britain's Statesmen oft the Fall foredoom
Of Foreign Tyrants, and of Nymphs at home;
Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey,
Dost sometimes Counsel take--and sometimes Tea.
Hither the Heroes and the Nymphs resort,
To ...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...AN class=i0>Adorn'd their triumphs and their treasures stored.Vespasian, with his son, I next survey'd,An angel soul in angel form array'd;Nor less his brother seem'd in outward grace,But hell within belied a beauteous face.Then Nerva, who retrieved the falling throne,And Trajan, by his conquering eagles known.<...Read more of this...
by
Johnson, Samuel
...1 Let observation with extensive view,
2 Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
3 Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
4 And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
5 Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
6 O'erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
7 Where wav'ring man, betray'd by vent'rous pride
8 To tread the dreary paths without a guide,
9 As treach'rous phantoms in the mist d...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...a spot
under the rose roots and the daffodils
by which dad dignified the family plot.
If buried ashes saw then I'd survey
the places I learned Latin, and learned Greek,
and left, the ground where Leeds United play
but disappoint their fans week after week,
which makes them lose their sense of self-esteem
and taking a short cut home through these graves here
they reassert the glory of their team
by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer.
This graveyard stands ...Read more of this...
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