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Famous Swathed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...es of Time,
Forecasting Days that are to these
As day to night.
So sit we all as one.
So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves,
The Buddha walks with Christ!
And Al-Koran and Bible both be holy!
Almighty Word!
In this Thine awful sanctuary,
First and flame-haunted City of the Widened World,
Assoil us, Lord of Lands and Seas!
We are but weak and wayward men,
Distraught alike with hatred and vainglory;
Prone to despise the Soul that breathes within—
High visio...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...n by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body, - lo! was found
Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand
A little seed, which sown in English ground
Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear
And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

With such strange arts this flower did allure
That all forgotten was the asphodel,
And the brown bee, the lily's paramour,
Forsook t...Read more of this...

by Tynan, Katharine
...
Where primulas and wallflowers are 
And crocuses in flocks. 

God keep the little rooms that ope 
One to another, swathed in green, 
Where honeysuckle lifts her cup 
With jessamine between. 

God bless the quiet old grey head 
That dreams beside the fire of me, 
And makes home there for me indeed 
Over the Irish Sea....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and d...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...e, 
 These cattle black were his by surest right, 
 Like things but seen in horrid dreams of night. 
 The steeds are swathed in trappings manifold, 
 The armed knights are grave, and stern, and cold, 
 Terrific too; the clench'd fists seem to hold 
 Some frightful missive, which the phantom hands 
 Would show, if opened out at hell's commands. 
 The dusk exaggerates their giant size, 
 The shade is awed—the pillars coldly rise. 
 Oh, Night! why are these awful warri...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e had lighted on his wound, 
And tearing off her veil of faded silk 
Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, 
And swathed the hurt that drained her dear lord's life. 
Then after all was done that hand could do, 
She rested, and her desolation came 
Upon her, and she wept beside the way. 

And many past, but none regarded her, 
For in that realm of lawless turbulence, 
A woman weeping for her murdered mate 
Was cared as much for as a summer shower: 
One took him ...Read more of this...

by Allingham, William
...Here the white-ray'd anemone is born, 
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish'd buttercup; 
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up, 
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn, 
Gray ash, and beech with rusty leaves outworn. 
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest 
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn, 
Whose partner cheers her little brooding breast, 
Piping from some near bough. O simple song! 
O cistern deep of that harmonious rillet, 
And these fair juicy st...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...to you? Don't forget!'
And then the postick quickening the gruel,
The steam crown swirled, everything intimate
And fear-swathed brightening for a moment,
Then going dull and fatal and away.

*

Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood
In spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot
Where his head had been, other stains subsumed
In the parched wall he leant his back against
That morning like any other morning,
Part-time reservist, toting his lunch-box.
A car came slow ...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...Old man in the crystal morning after snow,
Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent
Figure building the snow man which is meant
For the grandchild's target,
 do you know
This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal
Nears you each time your breath smokes the air,
Lewdly grinning out of a private nightmare?
He is the white cold shadow of your soul.

You build his comic head, you place his comic hat;
Old a...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...the Water-Sprite, 
Whose screams forebode that wreck is nigh. 

‘Last night the gifted Seer did view 
A wet shroud swathed round lady gay; 
Then stay thee, Fair, in Ravensheuch; 
Why cross the gloomy firth to-day?’ 

’Tis not because Lord Lindesay’s heir 
Tonight at Roslin leads the ball, 
But that my lady-mother there 
Sits lonely in her castle-hall.

’Tis not because the ring they ride, 
And Lindesay at the ring rides well, 
But that my sire the wine will chide 
If...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sophies, cut in slabs of sand-stone, or on
 granite-blocks; 
I see at Memphis mummy-pits, containing mummies, embalm’d, swathed in linen cloth, lying
 there
 many centuries; 
I look on the fall’n Theban, the large-ball’d eyes, the side-drooping neck, the hands
 folded
 across the breast. 

I see the menials of the earth, laboring; 
I see the prisoners in the prisons;
I see the defective human bodies of the earth; 
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lu...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...th as the black racoon--
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday--
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...The grain of the exposed boards

Speaks through the wall of the years

We are back in our cottage

On the wind-swathed hills

Watching late winter dawns

Gather like kindled flame.

We are back with those winter dusks, -

The hyaline air hung in darkness

And a vale of stars, waking in blankets

Laid on bare boards, making a fire

From our dreams.

We are walking through mist

On snow-skirled roads, taking turns

On a swing in a deserted park,

Hearing the rh...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...n.

Whose hand is stretched forth upon her?
Whose curb is white with her foam?
Clothed with the cloud of his deeds,
Swathed in the shroud of his creeds,
Who is this that has trapped her and leads,
Who turns to despair and dishonour
Her name, her name that was Rome?

Over fields without harvest or culture,
Over hordes without honour or love,
Over nations that groan with their kings,
As an imminent pestilence flings
Swift death from her shadowing wings,
So he, who hath claw...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ts flinty side, 
Or else, unpushed, had fallen. And my guide, 
Observing me so moved, spake, saying: "Behold 
Where swathed each in his unconsuming fold, 
The spirits lie confined." Whom answering, 
"Master," I said, "thy words assurance bring 
To that which I already had supposed; 
And I was fain to ask who lies enclosed 
In the embrace of that dividing fire, 
Which seems to curl above the fabled pyre, 
Where with his twin-born brother, fiercely hated, 
Eteocles was ...Read more of this...

by Cowper, William
...nd pleasures never wasting,
And Wisdom is my name.

"When, like a tent to dwell in,
He spread the skies abroad,
And swathed about the swelling
Of Ocean's mighty flood;
He wrought by weight and measure,
And I was with Him then:
Myself the Father's pleasure,
And mine, the sons of men."

Thus Wisdom's words discover
Thy glory and Thy grace,
Thou everlasting lover
Of our unworthy race!
Thy gracious eye survey'd us
Ere stars were seen above;
In wisdom thou hast made us,
An...Read more of this...

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