Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Tending Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Larkin, Philip
...nd organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative 

Bored uninformed knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation--marriage and birth 
And death and thoughts of these--for which was built
This special shell? For though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth 
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious hou...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...sperous growth of this tall wood.
 LADY. Nay, gentle shepherd, ill is lost that praise
That is addressed to unattending ears.
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift
How to regain my severed company,
Compelled me to awake the courteous Echo
To give me answer from her mossy couch.
 COMUS: What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?
 LADY. Dim darkness and this leafy labyrinth.
 COMUS. Could that divide you from near-ushering guides?
 LADY. T...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...eathings of the house, 
And like a household Spirit at the walls 
Beat, till she woke the sleepers, and returned: 
Then tending her rough lord, though all unasked, 
In silence, did him service as a squire; 
Till issuing armed he found the host and cried, 
'Thy reckoning, friend?' and ere he learnt it, 'Take 
Five horses and their armours;' and the host 
Suddenly honest, answered in amaze, 
'My lord, I scarce have spent the worth of one!' 
'Ye will be all the wealthier,' said ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...them to his tower--
Some hold he was a table-knight of thine--
A hundred goodly ones--the Red Knight, he--
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight
Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower;
And when I cal'd upon thy name as one
That doest right by gentle and by churl,
Maim'd me and maul'd, and would outright have slain,
Save that he aware me to a message, saying,
'Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I
Have founded my Round Table in the North,
And whatsoever h...Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...ot above, and not below other peoples,
>From the ocean to the Alps,
from the Oder to the Rhein.

And because we are tending to this land,
May we love and protect it;
And may it seem to us the dearest,
Just as to others their own land seems....Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...AMILTON

Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways 
If they inveigle you to emulation; 
But where, if I may ask it, are you tending 
With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures?
You call to mind an eminent archangel 
Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall 
So far as he, to be so far remembered? 

BURR

Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, 
I shall acquaint myself a little further
With our new land’s new language, which is not— 
Peace to your dreams—an idiom to your ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ce, and, in things that live, of life; 
But more refined, more spiritous, and pure, 
As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending 
Each in their several active spheres assigned, 
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds 
Proportioned to each kind. So from the root 
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves 
More aery, last the bright consummate flower 
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit, 
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed, 
To vital spi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...by restraint; what we by day 
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 
One night or two with wanton growth derides 
Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise, 
Or bear what to my mind first thoughts present: 
Let us divide our labours; thou, where choice 
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind 
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct 
The clasping ivy where to climb; while I, 
In yonder spring of roses intermixed 
With myrtle, find what to redress till no...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ays 
In sight, to each of these three places led. 
And now their way to Earth they had descried, 
To Paradise first tending; when, behold! 
Satan, in likeness of an Angel bright, 
Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering 
His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose: 
Disguised he came; but those his children dear 
Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise. 
He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk 
Into the wood fast by; and, changing shape, 
To observe the sequel...Read more of this...

by Matthews, William
...br>
My mother comes to visit. My father's

dead. Love needs to be set alight
again and again, and in thanks
for tending it, will do its very
best not to consume us....Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...len, and died!

See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?--A God
Marshall'd them, gave them their goal.
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks
Rising all round, overawe;
Factions divide them, their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.
--Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they s...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...of Mecca! 
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Bab-el-mandeb, ruling your families and tribes!

You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa! 
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo! 
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! 
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes o...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...mind
More then the working day thy hands,
And yet perhaps more trouble is behind. 
For I descry this way
Some other tending, in his hand
A Scepter or quaint staff he bears,
Comes on amain, speed in his look.
By his habit I discern him now
A Public Officer, and now at hand.
His message will be short and voluble.

Off: Ebrews, the Pris'ner Samson here I seek.

Chor: His manacles remark him, there he sits.

Off: Samson, to thee our Lords thus bid me say; ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ress-ship of the world—here the flame of
 materials; 
Here Spirituality, the translatress, the openly-avow’d, 
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms;
The satisfier, after due long-waiting, now advancing, 
Yes, here comes my mistress, the Soul. 

7The SOUL: 
Forever and forever—longer than soil is brown and solid—longer than
 water ebbs and flows. 

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most
 spiritual poems;
And I will make the poe...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...
With flowers in her lap until they fade, 
But not come in across the sacred sill----" 
"I wonder where your oracle is tending. 
You can see that there's something wrong with it, 
Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice 
Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's 
Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them. 
They have best right to be heard in this place." 
"You seem so partial to our great-grandmother 
(Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.<...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...d performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
---And suddenly my head is covered o'er
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb---and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home,...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...em to his tower-- 
Some hold he was a table-knight of thine-- 
A hundred goodly ones--the Red Knight, he-- 
Lord, I was tending swine, and the Red Knight 
Brake in upon me and drave them to his tower; 
And when I called upon thy name as one 
That doest right by gentle and by churl, 
Maimed me and mauled, and would outright have slain, 
Save that he sware me to a message, saying, 
"Tell thou the King and all his liars, that I 
Have founded my Round Table in the North, 
And wha...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...g Autumn's wine. Let us drink and sing the 
Song of remembrance to Spring's carefree sowing, 
And Summer's watchful tending, and Autumn's 
Reward in harvest. 


Come close to me, oh beloved of my soul; the 
Fire is cooling and fleeing under the ashes. 
Embrace me, for I fear loneliness; the lamp is 
Dim, and the wine which we pressed is closing 
Our eyes. Let us look upon each other before 
They are shut. 
Find me with your arms and embrace me; let 
Slumbe...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes....Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...t lies beyond; yon azure brow 
Parts me from all Earth holds for me; 
And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow 
Thitherward tending, changelessly. 
My happiest hours, aye ! all the time, 
I love to keep in memory, 
Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime 
Decayed to dark anxiety. 

Sometimes, I think a narrow heart
Makes me thus mourn those far away, 
And keeps my love so far apart 
From friends and friendships of to-day; 
Sometimes, I think 'tis but a dream 
I measure...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Tending poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs