Famous Swollen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Satyre Against Mankind

...ho's a knave of the first rate

All this with indignation have I hurled
At the pretending part of the proud world,
Who, swollen with selfish vanity, devise,
False freedoms, holy cheats, and formal lies,
Over their fellow slaves to tyrannise.

But if in Court so just a man there be,
(In Court, a just man - yet unknown to me)
Who does his needful flattery direct
Not to oppress and ruin, but protect:
Since flattery, which way soever laid,
Is still a tax: on that unhappy trade.
I...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John


A Tale of the Sea

...rs was looking very pale,
Stretched on a sofa at the boarding-house, making his wail:
Poor fellow! his feet was greatly swollen, and with a melancholy air,
He gave the following account of the distressing affair: 

We belonged to the American fishing schooner named "Cicely",
And our captain was a brave man, called McKenzie;
And the vessel had fourteen hands altogether
And during the passage we had favourable weather. 

'Twas on March the 17th we sailed from Gloucester on the ...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Beowulf (Modern English)

...r them into the shadows, when the Measurer willed it not—
but that one, watching and wakeful, wrathful in his rancor,
swollen-minded awaited the end of this struggle. (ll. 702b-709)

 

XI.

Then he came off the moors under towering mist,
Grendel creeping, bearing God’s ire.
The wicked harmer intended to snatch up
some human in that high hall.
He came under heavy skies until he readily
perceived the wine-house, the golden hall of humanity,
spangled with treasure...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...essay at hour of morn
on the road-of-sails their ruthless quest, --
and sea-snakes and monsters. These started away,
swollen and savage that song to hear,
that war-horn’s blast. The warden of Geats,
with bolt from bow, then balked of life,
of wave-work, one monster, amid its heart
went the keen war-shaft; in water it seemed
less doughty in swimming whom death had seized.
Swift on the billows, with boar-spears well
hooked and barbed, it was hard beset,
done to death...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Endymion: Book I

...one attend! for in good truth
Our vows are wanting to our great god Pan.
Are not our lowing heifers sleeker than
Night-swollen mushrooms? Are not our wide plains
Speckled with countless fleeces? Have not rains
Green'd over April's lap? No howling sad
Sickens our fearful ewes; and we have had
Great bounty from Endymion our lord.
The earth is glad: the merry lark has pour'd
His early song against yon breezy sky,
That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity."

 Thus ending, on the ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Endymion: Book II

...esponding, o'er the marble floor's cold thrill.
But 'twas not long; for, sweeter than the rill
To its old channel, or a swollen tide
To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied,
And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns
Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns
Itself, and strives its own delights to hide--
Nor in one spot alone; the floral pride
In a long whispering birth enchanted grew
Before his footsteps; as when heav'd anew
Old ocean rolls a lengthened wave...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book III

...this young soul in age's mask
Went forward with the Carian side by side:
Resuming quickly thus; while ocean's tide
Hung swollen at their backs, and jewel'd sands
Took silently their foot-prints. "My soul stands
Now past the midway from mortality,
And so I can prepare without a sigh
To tell thee briefly all my joy and pain.
I was a fisher once, upon this main,
And my boat danc'd in every creek and bay;
Rough billows were my home by night and day,--
The sea-gulls not more const...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book IV

...ark 'gainst which he leant
A crescent he had carv'd, and round it spent
His skill in little stars. The teeming tree
Had swollen and green'd the pious charactery,
But not ta'en out. Why, there was not a slope
Up which he had not fear'd the antelope;
And not a tree, beneath whose rooty shade
He had not with his tamed leopards play'd.
Nor could an arrow light, or javelin,
Fly in the air where his had never been--
And yet he knew it not.

 O treachery!
Why does his lady smile, pl...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Gareth And Lynette

...y lance if lance 
Were mine to use--O senseless cataract, 
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy-- 
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows 
And mine is living blood: thou dost His will, 
The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, 
Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall 
Linger with vacillating obedience, 
Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to-- 
Since the good mother holds me still a child! 
Good mother is bad mother unto me! 
A worse were better; ye...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Hyperion

...you how to burn,
And purge the ether of our enemies;
How to feed fierce the crooked stings of fire,
And singe away the swollen clouds of Jove,
Stifling that puny essence in its tent.
O let him feel the evil he hath done;
For though I scorn Oceanus's lore,
Much pain have I for more than loss of realms:
The days of peace and slumbrous calm are fled;
Those days, all innocent of scathing war,
When all the fair Existences of heaven
Carne open-eyed to guess what we would speak:---...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Pickthorn Manor

...rier set 
between them. All his rare
Joy broke to fragments -- worse than that, unreal. And 
standing lonely there,
His swollen heart burst out, and on the grass
He flung himself and wept. He knew, alas!
The loss so great his life could never heal.

XXXVIII
For days thereafter Eunice lived retired, Waited 
upon by one old serving-maid.
She would not leave her chamber, and desired Only to hide herself. She 
was afraid
Of what her eyes might trick her into seeing, Of what her l...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

September On Jessore Road

...Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions sile...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

...ok him out,
And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies:
They mocked the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.

Yet all is well; he has but passed
...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

The Drowned Man

...netting ropes
Lay spread out, the peasant father
Saw the veritable corpse.

Badly mangled, ugly, frightening,
Blue and swollen on each side...
Has he fished in storm and lightning,
Or committed suicide?
Could this be a careless drunkard,
Or a mermaid-seeking monk,
Or a merchandizer, conquered
By some bandits, robbed and sunk?

To the peasant, what's it matter!
Quick: he grabs the dead man's hair,
Drags his body to the water,
Looks around: nobody's there:
Good... relieved of ...Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander

The Everlasting Mercy

...vy drink. 
Riley was nodding to the floor 
And gurgling as he wanted more. 
His mouth was wide, his face was pale, 
His swollen face was sweating ale; 
And one of those assembled Greeks 
Had corked black crosses on his cheeks. 
Thomas was having words with Goss, 
He "wouldn't pay, the fight was cross." 
And Goss told Tom that "cross or no, 
The bets go as the verdicts go, 
By all I've ever heard or read of. 
So pay, or else I'll knock your head off." 
Jim Gurvil said his smut...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Hammers

...a fine sheen
Of leaves flutters, with the sun between.
By a spurt of fire from the forge
You can see the Sergeant, with swollen gorge,
Puffing, and gurgling, and choking;
The bellows keep on croaking.
They wheeze,
And sneeze,
Creak! Bang! Squeeze!
And the hammer strokes fall like buzzing bees
Or pattering rain,
Or faster than these,
Like the hum of a waterfall struck by a breeze.
Clank! from the bellows-chain pulled up and down.
Clank!
And sunshine twinkles on Victorine's fla...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Lady of the Lake

...his name,
     Not long shall honored Douglas dwell
     Like hunted stag in mountain cell;
     Nor, ere yon pride-swollen robber dare,—
     I may not give the rest to air!
     Tell Roderick Dhu I owed him naught,
     Not tile poor service of a boat,
     To waft me to yon mountain-side.'
     Then plunged he in the flashing tide.
     Bold o'er the flood his head he bore,
     And stoutly steered him from the shore;
     And Allan strained his anxious eye,
 ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Lovers of the Poor

...
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with th...Read more of this...
by Brooks, Gwendolyn

The Pleasures of Melancholy

...let the Moor on Desdemone
Pour the misguided threats of jealous rage.
By soft degrees the manly torrent steals
From my swollen eyes; and at a brother's woe
My big heart melts in sympathizing tears.

What are the splendours of the gaudy court,
Its tinsel trappings, and its pageant pomps?
To me far happier seems the banish'd lord,
Amid Siberia's unrejoicing wilds
Who pines all lonesome, in the chambers hoar
Of some high castle shut, whose windows dim
In distant ken discover tr...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas

The Princess (part 2)

...t be well.' 

We turned to go, but Cyril took the child, 
And held her round the knees against his waist, 
And blew the swollen cheek of a trumpeter, 
While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the child 
Pushed her flat hand against his face and laughed; 
And thus our conference closed. 
And then we strolled 
For half the day through stately theatres 
Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard 
The grave Professor. On the lecture slate 
The circle rounded under female hand...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

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