Famous Sweep Through Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Song of My Cottage Unroofed By Autumn Gales

by Du Fu
 Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers  Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...

I sweep the tavern threshold with my hair,

by Omar Khayyam
I sweep the tavern threshold with my hair,
For both world's good and ill I take no care;
Should the two worlds roll to my house, like balls,
When drunk, for one small coin I'd sell the pair!...Read more of this...

Stanzas To The Po

by George (Lord) Byron
 River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What...Read more of this...

King Louis Xvii

by Victor Hugo
 ("En ce temps-là du ciel les portes.") 
 
 {Bk. I. v., December, 1822.} 


 The golden gates were opened wide that day, 
 All through the unveiled heaven there seemed to play 
 Out of the Holiest of Holy, light; 
 And the elect beheld, crowd immortal, 
 A young soul, led up by young angels bright, 
...Read more of this...

Water makes many Beds

by Emily Dickinson
 Water makes many Beds
For those averse to sleep --
Its awful chamber open stands --
Its Curtains blandly sweep --
Abhorrent is the Rest
In undulating Rooms
Whose Amplitude no end invades --
Whose Axis never comes....Read more of this...

That sacred Closet when you sweep --

by Emily Dickinson
 That sacred Closet when you sweep --
Entitled "Memory" --
Select a reverential Broom --
And do it silently.

'Twill be a Labor of surprise --
Besides Identity
Of other Interlocutors
A probability --

August the Dust of that Domain --
Unchallenged -- let it lie --
You cannot supersede itself
But it can silence you --...Read more of this...

Out of sight? What of that?

by Emily Dickinson
 Out of sight? What of that?
See the Bird -- reach it!
Curve by Curve -- Sweep by Sweep --
Round the Steep Air --
Danger! What is that to Her?
Better 'tis to fail -- there --
Than debate -- here --

Blue is Blue -- the World through --
Amber -- Amber -- Dew -- Dew --
Seek -- Friend -- and see --
Heaven is shy...Read more of this...

That Half-Crown Sweep

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The run of Billabong-go-dry 
Is just beyond Lime Burner's Gap; 
Its waterhole and tank supply 
Is excellent -- upon the map. 
But lacking nature's liquid drench, 
The station staff are wont to try 
With "Bob-in Sweeps" their thirst to quench, 
Or nearly quench, at Bong-go-dry. 
The parson made five-yearly rounds 
That soil of arid souls to delve, 
He wrote,...Read more of this...

Praise In Summer

by Richard Wilbur
 Obscurely yet most surely called to praise,
As sometimes summer calls us all, I said
The hills are heavens full of branching ways
Where star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead;
I said the trees are mines in air, I said
See how the sparrow burrows in the sky!
And then I wondered why this mad instead
Perverts our praise to uncreation, why
Such savour's in this wrenching...Read more of this...

The Sewing-Girl

by Robert William Service
 The humble garret where I dwell
Is in that Quarter called the Latin;
It isn't spacious -- truth to tell,
There's hardly room to swing a cat in.
But what of that! It's there I fight
For food and fame, my Muse inviting,
And all the day and half the night
You'll find me writing, writing, writing.

Now, it was in the month of May
As, wrestling with...Read more of this...

Lines Written on the Sea-Coast

by Mary Darby Robinson
 SWIFT o'er the bounding deep the VESSEL glides,
Its streamers flutt'ring in the summer gales,
The lofty mast the breezy air derides,
As gaily o'er the glitt'ring surf she sails. 

Now beats each gallant heart with innate joys,
Bright hopes and tender fears alternate vie,
Dear schemes of pure delight the mind employs,
And the soul glistens in the tearful eye. 

The fond expecting Maid...Read more of this...

Ode to the Northeast Wind

by Charles Kingsley
 Welcome, wild Northeaster! 
Shame it is to see 
Odes to every zephyr; 
Ne'er a verse to thee. 
Welcome, black Northeaster! 
O'er the German foam; 
O'er the Danish moorlands, 
From thy frozen home. 
Tired are we of summer, 
Tired of gaudy glare, 
Showers soft and steaming, 
Hot and breathless air. 
Tired of listless dreaming, 
Through the lazy day-- 
Jovial wind...Read more of this...

The Prisoner

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer-
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the...Read more of this...

White Christmas

by Robert William Service
 My folks think I'm a serving maid
Each time I visit home;
They do not dream I ply a trade
As old as Greece or Rome;
For if they found I'd fouled their name
And was not white as snow,
I'm sure that they would die of shame . . .
Please, God, they'll never know.

I clean the paint from off my face,
In sober black I...Read more of this...

Memory

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A treasured link of shining pearls,
  A by-gone melody,
A shower of tears with smiles between—
  And this is memory.
A thing so light a breath of air
  May waft its life away;
A thing so dark that moments of pain
  Seem like some endless day.
A careless word may wound the heart,
  And quickly it may die;
Yet in...Read more of this...

Mine Sweepers

by Rudyard Kipling
 Dawn off the Foreland--the young flood making
 Jumbled and short and steep--
Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking--
 Awkward water to sweep.
 "Mines reported in the fairway,
 "Warn all traffic and detain.
"'Sent up Unity, Cralibel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden
 Gain."

 Noon off the Foreland--the first ebb making
 Lumpy and strong in the bight.
 Boom after boom, and...Read more of this...

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

by Robert William Service
 Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!

Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West;
Men from the farms and the cities, into...Read more of this...

The Great Yellow River Inundation in China

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, and on the 28th of September,
Which many people of Honan, in China, will long remember;
Especially those that survived the mighty deluge,
That fled to the mountains, and tops of trees, for refuge. 

The river burst its embankments suddenly at dead of night,
And the rushing torrent swept all before it left and right;
All over the...Read more of this...

Ye Mariners of England

by Thomas Campbell
 1 Ye Mariners of England
2 That guard our native seas,
3 Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
4 The battle and the breeze--
5 Your glorious standard launch again
6 To match another foe!
7 And sweep through the deep,
8 While the stormy winds do blow,--
9 While the battle rages loud and long,
10 And the stormy winds do blow.

11 The spirits of your...Read more of this...

Many People Come to Visit and Bring Wine After I Fell Off My Horse, Drunk

by Du Fu
 Fu (this) duke old guest Finish wine drunk sing open gold halberd Ride horse suddenly remember youth time Scatter hoof pour fall Qutang stone Baidicheng gate water cloud outside Lower body straight down eight thousand feet Whitewashed battlements lightning pass purple loose reins East gain level ridge out heaven cliff River village country hall fight enter eye...Read more of this...

thirteeners

by Rg Gregory
 18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back

where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away

eventually there'll be no going back
once new symbols breed...Read more of this...

Temple Tree Path

by Wang Wei
 Narrow path sunless temple locust tree 
Deep dark much green moss 
Should gate except meet sweep 
In case have hill monk come 


A narrow, sunless path to the temple tree, 
Deep and dark; abundant green moss. 
Wait by the gate when finished sweeping the yard, 
In case a monk should come down from the hill....Read more of this...

Release

by Adelaide Crapsey
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life. ...Read more of this...

The Song Of Shadows

by Walter de la Mare
 "Sweep thy faint strings, Musician,
With thy long lean hand;
Downward the starry tapers burn,
Sinks soft the waning sand;
The old hound whimpers couched in sleep,
The embers smoulder low;
Across the walls the shadows
Come, and go.

Sweep softly thy strings, Musician,
The minutes mount to hours;
Frost on the windless casement weaves
A labyrinth of flowers;
Ghosts linger in the darkening air,
Hearken at the open door;
Music hath called...Read more of this...

The Hemp

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 (A Virginia Legend.) 

The Planting of the Hemp.

Captain Hawk scourged clean the seas 
(Black is the gap below the plank) 
From the Great North Bank to the Caribbees 
(Down by the marsh the hemp grows rank). 

His fear was on the seaport towns, 
The weight of his hand held hard the downs. 
And the merchants cursed him, bitter and...Read more of this...

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