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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A slash of Blue

by Emily Dickinson
 A slash of Blue --
A sweep of Gray --
Some scarlet patches on the way,
Compose an Evening Sky --
A little purple -- slipped between --
Some Ruby Trousers hurried on --
A Wave of Gold --
A Bank of Day --
This just makes out the Morning Sky....Read more of this...

Possibilities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
 A fortnight fully to be missed,
 Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.

His place forgets him; other men
 Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.
 His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,

Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
 Our mundance...Read more of this...

Berket And The Stars

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 A day on the boulevards chosen out of ten years of 
student poverty! One best day out of ten good ones.
Berket in high spirits—"Ha, oranges! Let's have one!"
And he made to snatch an orange from the vender's cart.

Now so clever was the deception, so nicely timed 
to the full sweep of certain wave summits, 
that the rumor of the...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...

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...

The Funeral of the Late Ex-Provost Rough Dundee

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1888, and on the 19th of November,
Which the friends of the late Ex-Provost Rough will long remember,
Because 'twas on the 19th of November his soul took its flight
To the happy land above, the land of pure delight. 

Take him for all in all, he was a very good man,
And during his Provostship he couldn't...Read more of this...

Elegy to the Memory of David Garrick Esq

by Mary Darby Robinson
 DEAR SHADE OF HIM, who grac'd the mimick scene,
And charm'd attention with resistless pow'r;
Whose wond'rous art, whose fascinating mien,
Gave glowing rapture to the short-liv'd hour! 

Accept the mournful verse, the ling'ring sigh,
The tear that faithful Mem'ry stays to shed;
The SACRED TEAR, that from Reflection's eye,
Drops on the ashes of the sainted dead. 

Lov'd by the grave, and courted by...Read more of this...

The Basket

by Amy Lowell
 I
The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies 
white and unspotted,
in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness 
sweep into
the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The 
air
is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 (Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni)

1

The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending splendor, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, - with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild...Read more of this...

To Longfellow

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The crown of stars is broken in parts,
Its jewels brighter than the day,
Have one by one been stolen away
To shine in other homes and hearts.
—[Hanging of the Crane.]
Each poem is a star that shines
  Within your crown of light;
Each jeweled thought—a fadeless gem
  That dims the stars of night.
A flower here and there, so sweet,
  Its fragrance...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...

To Horror

by Robert Southey
 Dark HORROR, hear my call!
Stern Genius hear from thy retreat
On some old sepulchre's moss-cankered seat,
Beneath the Abbey's ivied wall
That trembles o'er its shade;
Where wrapt in midnight gloom, alone,
Thou lovest to lie and hear
The roar of waters near,
And listen to the deep dull groan
Of some perturbed sprite
Borne fitful on the heavy gales of night.

Or whether o'er some wide waste hill
Thou...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...

How noteless Men and Pleiads stand

by Emily Dickinson
 How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand,
Until a sudden sky
Reveals the fact that One is rapt
Forever from the Eye --

Members of the Invisible,
Existing, while we stare,
In Leagueless Opportunity,
O'ertakenless, as the Air --

Why didn't we detain Them?
The Heavens with a smile,
Sweep by our disappointed Heads
Without a syllable --...Read more of this...

Sestina VIII

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 210] SESTINA VIII. Là ver l' aurora, che sì dolce l' aura. SHE IS MOVED NEITHER BY HIS VERSES NOR HIS TEARS.  When music warbles from each thorn,And Zephyr's dewy wingsSweep the young flowers; what time the mornHer crimson radiance flings:Then, as the smiling year renews,I...Read more of this...

A March in the Ranks Hard-prest

by Walt Whitman
 A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown; 
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; 
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; 
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building; 
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted...Read more of this...

In Guernsey - To Theodore Watts

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 The heavenly bay, ringed round with cliffs and moors,
Storm-stained ravines, and crags that lawns inlay,
Soothes as with love the rocks whose guard secures
The heavenly bay.

O friend, shall time take ever this away,
This blessing given of beauty that endures,
This glory shown us, not to pass but stay?

Though sight be changed for memory, love ensures
What memory, changed by love to sight,...Read more of this...

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it *****
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The...Read more of this...

John Skelton

by Robert Graves
 What could be dafter 
Than John Skelton’s laughter? 
What sound more tenderly 
Than his pretty poetry? 
So where to rank old Skelton? 
He was no monstrous Milton, 
Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,” 
So wondered at by most, 
Phrased so disdainfully, 
Composed so painfully. 
He struck what Milton missed, 
Milling an English grist 
With homely turn and twist. 
He was...Read more of this...

I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night

by Stephen Crane
 I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night,
The sweep of each sad lost wave,
The dwindling boom of the steel thing's striving,
The little cry of a man to a man,
A shadow falling across the greyer night,
And the sinking of the small star;
Then the waste, the far waste of waters,
And the soft lashing of black waves
For long and in...Read more of this...

Hymn to the Night

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted...Read more of this...

The Old Mans Grave

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Make it where the winds may sweep 
Through the pine boughs soft and deep, 
And the murmur of the sea 
Come across the orient lea, 
And the falling raindrops sing 
Gently to his slumbering. 

Make it where the meadows wide 
Greenly lie on every side, 
Harvest fields he reaped and trod, 
Westering slopes of clover sod, 
Orchard lands where...Read more of this...

Psalm 91 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.9-16 
C. M.
Protection from death, guard of angels, victory and deliverance.

Ye sons of men, a feeble race,
Exposed to every snare,
Come, make the Lord your dwelling-place,
And try and trust his care.

No ill shall enter where you dwell;
Or if the plague come nigh,
And sweep the wicked down to hell,
'Twill raise his saints on high.

He'll give his angels charge to keep
Your feet...Read more of this...

To Jane Addams at the Hague

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. SPEAK NOW FOR PEACE


Lady of Light, and our best woman, and queen,
Stand now for peace, (though anger breaks your heart),
Though naught but smoke and flame and drowning is seen.

Lady of Light, speak, though you speak alone,
Though your voice may seem as a dove's in this howling flood,
It is heard to-night by every senate and throne.

Though the widening battle...Read more of this...

Liberty Enlightening the World

by Henry Van Dyke
 Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhatten Bay, 
The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away: 
Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand 
To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land. 

No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee, 
While friends are fighting...Read more of this...

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