Famous Swung Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Swung poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous swung poems. These examples illustrate what a famous swung poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
D. H. Lawrence
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.
She drips herself with...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
By night we linger'd on the lawn,
For underfoot the herb was dry;
And genial warmth; and o'er the sky
The silvery haze of summer drawn;
And calm that let the tapers burn
Unwavering: not a cricket chirr'd:
The brook alone far-off was heard,
And on the board the fluttering urn:
And bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the cold and when he comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as the fire bringer—they remember or forget—the man whose head kept singing to...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
I Ran to the forest for shelter,
Breathless, half sobbing;
I put my arms round a tree,
Pillowed my head against the rough bark.
"Protect me," I said. "I am a lost child."
But the tree showered silver drops on my face and hair.
A wind sprang up from the ends of the earth;
It lashed the forest together.
A huge green wave thundered and burst over...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
My friend went to the piano; spun the stool
A little higher; left his pipe to cool;
Picked up a fat green volume from the chest;
And propped it open.
Whitely without rest,
His fingers swept the keys that flashed like swords,
. . . And to the brute drums of barbarian hordes,
Roaring and thunderous and weapon-bare,
An...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma,
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes,
In his birch canoe exulting
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water
He could see the fishes swimming
Far down in the depths below him;
See the yellow...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
A vanished house that for an hour I knew
By some forgotten chance when I was young
Had once a glimmering window overhung
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew.
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.
Somewhere within there were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
After the whipping he crawled into bed,
Accepting the harsh fact with no great weeping.
How funny uncle's hat had looked striped red!
He chuckled silently. The moon came, sweeping
A black, frayed rag of tattered cloud before
In scorning; very pure and pale she seemed,
Flooding his bed with radiance. On the floor
Fat motes danced. He sobbed,...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:
you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way
a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?
and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the
tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I told a truth, a tragic truth
That tore the sullen sky;
A million shuddered at my sooth
And anarchist was I.
Red righteousness was in my word
To winnow evil chaff;
Yet while I swung crusading sword
I heard the devil laugh.
I framed a lie, a rainbow lie
To glorify a thought;
And none was so surprised as I
When fast as...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
See, he sitteth on his mat
Sitteth there upright,
With the grace with which he sat
While he saw the light.
Where is now the sturdy gripe,--
Where the breath sedate,
That so lately whiffed the pipe
Toward the Spirit great?
Where the bright and falcon eye,
That the reindeer's tread
On the waving grass could spy,
Thick with dewdrops spread?
Where the limbs that used to dart
Swifter through the snow
Than...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Now hearken, ye who take delight
In boasting of your worth!
To many a man, to many a knight,
Beloved in peace and brave in fight,
The Swabian land gives birth.
Of Charles and Edward, Louis, Guy,
And Frederick, ye may boast;
Charles, Edward, Louis, Frederick, Guy--
None with Sir Eberhard can vie--
Himself a mighty host!
And then young Ulerick, his son,
Ha! how he loved the fray!
Young Ulerick,...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Hudgins
My father cinched the rope,
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste
my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got
another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand, my father
dropped me from then to then:
then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
My "place of clear water,"
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass
and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,
after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows
those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills....Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.
Out...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Trees like Tassels -- hit -- and swung --
There seemed to rise a Tune
From Miniature Creatures
Accompanying the Sun --
Far Psalteries of Summer --
Enamoring the Ear
They never yet did satisfy --
Remotest -- when most fair
The Sun shone whole at intervals --
Then Half -- then utter hid --
As if Himself were optional
And had Estates of Cloud
Sufficient to enfold Him
Eternally from...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
The day had been a day of wind and storm;--
The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,--
And stooping from the zenith, bright and warm
Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last.
I stood upon the upland slope and cast
My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene,
Where the vast plain lay girt by...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A little East of Jordan,
Evangelists record,
A Gymnast and an Angel
Did wrestle long and hard --
Till morning touching mountain --
And Jacob, waxing strong,
The Angel begged permission
To Breakfast -- to return --
Not so, said cunning Jacob!
"I will not let thee go
Except thou bless me" -- Stranger!
The which acceded to --
Light swung the silver fleeces
"Peniel" Hills beyond,
And the bewildered Gymnast
Found he had...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
How distant, the departure of young men
Down valleys, or watching
The green shore past the salt-white cordage
Rising and falling.
Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen
Simply to get away
From married villages before morning,
Melodeons play
On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water
Or late at night
Sweet under the differently-swung stars,
When the chance sight
Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage
Ramifies endlessly.
This is being young,
Assumption...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Wargeilah town is very small,
There's no cathedral nor a club,
In fact the township, all in all,
Is just one unpretentious pub;
And there, from all the stations round,
The local sportsmen can be found.
The sportsmen of Wargeilah-side
Are very few but very fit;
There's scarcely any sport been tried
But they can hold their own at...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Last night I looked across the hills
And through an arch of darkling pine
Low-swung against a limpid west
I saw a young moon shine.
And as I gazed there blew a wind,
Loosed where the sylvan shadows stir,
Bringing delight to soul and sense
The breath of dying fir.
This morn I saw a dancing host
Of poppies in a garden way,
And straight my heart...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Beyond the Rocking Bridge it lies, the burg of evil fame,
The huts where hive and swarm and thrive the sisterhood of shame.
Through all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,
A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.
From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;
And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,
You've been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You've given heaps of people lots of fun;
You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Swung poems.