Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Swarms Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
I...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...de others disdainfully toss’d. 

13
Rhymes and rhymers pass away—poems distill’d from foreign poems pass away, 
The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes; 
Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soul of literature;
America justifies itself, give it time—no disguise can deceive it, or conceal from
 it—it is impassive enough, 
Only toward the likes of itself will it advance to meet them, 
If its poets appear, it will in due time advance to m...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...-clouds hover;
Flying snow is set alight
By the moon whose form they cover;
Blurred the heavens, blurred the night.
Swarms of devils come to rally,
Hurtle in the boundless height;
Howling fills the whitening valley,
Plaintive screeching rends my heart...


Translated by Genia Gurarie July 29, 1995.
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write person...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...always loved it dear, 
Now thinks all but too little for their fear. 
Hyde stamps, and straight upon the ground the swarms 
Of current Myrmidons appear in arms, 
And for their pay he writes, as from the King-- 
With that cursed quill plucked from a vulture's wing-- 
Of the whole nation now to ask a loan 
(The eighteen-hundred-thousand pound was gone). 

This done, he pens a proclamation stout, 
In rescue of the banquiers banquerout, 
His minion imps that, in his secre...Read more of this...

by Meredith, George
...ipe-shadowed orchard,
Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink.
Busy in the grass the early sun of summer
Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes
Call my darling up with round and roguish challenge:
Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy
Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,
Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine;
O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed c...Read more of this...



by Clare, John
...d hunt oer and oer again
And talk to every blossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...h aid of pensions,
Hush'd down all murmurs of dissensions,
And with the sound of potent metal
Brought all their buzzing swarms to settle;
Who rain'd his ministerial manna,
Till loud Sedition sung hosanna;
The grave Lords-Bishops and the Kirk
United in the public work;
Rebellion, from the northern regions,
With Bute and Mansfield swore allegiance;
All hands combin'd to raze, as nuisance,
Of church and state the Constitutions,
Pull down the empire, on whose ruins
They meant to ...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ming days.
For lo, before our second-sight,
The Continent ascends in light.
From north to south, what gath'ring swarms
Increase the pride of rebel arms!
Through every State our legions brave
Speed gallant marches to the grave,
Of battling Whigs the frequent prize,
While rebel trophies stain the skies.
Behold o'er northern realms afar
Extend the kindling flames of war!
See famed St. John's and Montreal
Doom'd by Montgomery's arm to fall!
Where Hudson with majes...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, 
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; 
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that
 concerns
 them, 
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men
 in
 them, 
What stranger miracles are there?...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...stress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O
 pioneers! 

12
See, my children, resolute children, 
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers! 

13
 On and on, the compact ranks, 
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d, 
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!


14
 O to die advan...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e obi. 

I see African and Asiatic towns; 
I see Algiers, Tripoli, Derne, Mogadore, Timbuctoo, Monrovia; 
I see the swarms of Pekin, Canton, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta, Yedo;
I see the Kruman in his hut, and the Dahoman and Ashanteeman in their huts; 
I see the Turk smoking opium in Aleppo; 
I see the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva, and those of Herat; 
I see Teheran—I see Muscat and Medina, and the intervening sands—I see the caravans
 toiling
 onward; 
I see Egy...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...e.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm ...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...al amplitude, 
Falls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod 
With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. 

The swarms that hum about her collar-bones 
As the lascivious streams caress the stones, 
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, 
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes 

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays 
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, 
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae. 
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...rless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Nake...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...eams shudder at the strain.
Black and blue breeches,
Pigtails bound and shining:
Like ants crawling about,
The hull swarms with carpenters, running in and out.
Joiners, calkers,
And they are all terrible talkers.
Jem Wilson has been to sea and he tells some wonderful tales
Of whales, and spice islands,
And pirates off the Barbary coast.
He boasts magnificently, with his mouth full of nails.
Stephen Pibold has a tenor voice,
He shifts his quid of tobacco an...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...last!
     Who e'er so mad but might have guessed
     That all this Highland hornet's nest
     Would muster up in swarms so soon
     As e'er they heard of bands at Doune?—
     Like bloodhounds now they search me out,—
     Hark, to the whistle and the shout!—
     If farther through the wilds I go,
     I only fall upon the foe:
     I'll couch me here till evening gray,
     Then darkling try my dangerous way.'
     XXIX.

     The shades of eve come slowly...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...word-
 edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg- and body-plates
 quivering violently when it retaliates
 and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill
 on the hat-brim of Gargallo's hollow iron head of a
 matador, he will drop and will
 then walk away
 unhurt, although if unintruded on,
 he cautiously works down the tree, helped

by his tail. The giant-pangolin-
 tail, graceful tool, as a prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like
an elephant's tru...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;
And, as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
"One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew wh...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d studies failed; seldom she spoke: but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field: void was her use, 
And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 
O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, 
Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, 
And suck the blinding splendour from the sand, 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 
Expunge the world:...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ng that Christ's own flesh enforms; 
And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows by 
And through the portal's carven entry swarms. 
Maddened he peers upon each passing face 
Till the long drab procession terminates. 
No princess passes out with proud majestic pace. 
She has not come, the woman that he waits. 


Back in the empty silent church alone 
He walks with aching heart. A white-robed boy 
Puts out the altar-candles one by one, 
Even as by inches darken...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Swarms poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things