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Famous Traces Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...his solid globe 
Was cleft in twain--cleft east and west apart 
While strait between the deep Atlantic roll'd. 
And traces indisputable remain 
Of this unhappy land now sunk and lost; 
The islands rising in the eastern main 
Are but small fragments of this continent, 
Whose two extremities were Newfoudland 
And St. Helena.--One far in the north 
Where British seamen now with strange surprise 
Behold the pole star glitt'ring o'er their heads; 
The other in the sout...Read more of this...



by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...I write my name as one, 
On sands by waves o'errun 
Or winter's frosted pane, 
Traces a record vain. 

Oblivion's blankness claims 
Wiser and better names, 
And well my own may pass 
As from the strand or glass. 

Wash on, O waves of time! 
Melt, noons, the frosty rime! 
Welcome the shadow vast, 
The silence that shall last! 

When I and all who know 
And love me vanish so, 
What harm to them or me 
Will the lost memory be? 

I...Read more of this...

by Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...ust do a little work. My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts? We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn’t want a crown or robe from God’s grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked. Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream....Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...But like love
the archers
are blind

Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...t without let or cease,
 Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, struggling on.

Till the dogs lay down in their traces, and rose and staggered and fell;
 Till the eyes of him dimmed with shadows, and the trail was so hard to see;
Till the Wild howled out triumphant, and the world was a frozen hell--
 Then said Constable Clancy: "I guess that it's up to me."

Far down the trail they saw him, and his hands they were blanched like bone;
 His face was a blackened horr...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...Y. As smooth as Hebe's their unrazored lips.
 COMUS. Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came,
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat.
I saw them under a green mantling vine,
That crawls along the side of yon small hill,
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots;
Their port was more than human, as they stood.
I took it for a faery vision
Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colours of the rainbow...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ade him still
Nestle and turn uneasily about.
Soon were the white doves plain, with necks stretch'd out,
And silken traces lighten'd in descent;
And soon, returning from love's banishment,
Queen Venus leaning downward open arm'd:
Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charm'd
A tumult to his heart, and a new life
Into his eyes. Ah, miserable strife,
But for her comforting! unhappy sight,
But meeting her blue orbs! Who, who can write
Of these first minutes? The uncharies...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...e know 
 The hearth is cradle of such fantasies, 
 And in the smoke the cotter sees arise 
 From low-thatched but he traces cause of dread. 
 Thus rendering thanks that he is lowly bred, 
 Because from such none look for valorous deeds. 
 The peasant flies the Tower, although it leads 
 A noble knight to seek adventure there, 
 And, from his point of honor, dangers dare. 
 
 Thus very rarely passer-by is seen; 
 But—it might be with twenty years between, 
 Or hapl...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...e no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
---Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces---
Roses, you are not so fair after all!


II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...ath pluck'd the thorns of sorrow from thy feet;
While I in lonely wilderness shall greet
They little foot-prints--or by traces know
The fountain, where at noon I thought it sweet
To feed thee with the quarry of my bow,
And pour'd the lotus-horn, or slew the mountain roe.

Adieu! sweet scion of the rising sun!
But should affliction's storms thy blossom mock,
Then come again--my own adopted one!
And I will graft thee on a noble stock:
The crocodile, the condor of the rock,
...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...l days of Shah-shah, 
In the days long since departed, 
In the kingdom of the West-Wind. 
Still the hunter sees its traces 
Scattered far o'er hill and valley; 
Sees the giant bulrush growing
By the ponds and water-courses, 
Sees the masses of the Wawbeek 
Lying still in every valley.
Homeward now went Hiawatha; 
Pleasant was the landscape round him, 
Pleasant was the air above him, 
For the bitterness of anger 
Had departed wholly from him, 
From his brain the though...Read more of this...

by Storni, Alfonsina
...

Leave me alone: you hear the buds breaking through . . .
a celestial foot rocks you from above
and a bird traces a pattern for you

so you'll forget . . . Thank you. Oh, one request:
if he telephones again
tell him not to keep trying for I have left . . ....Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Though still some traces of our rustic vein
And splayfoot verse remain'd, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tir'd nation breath'd from civil war.
Exact Racine, and Corneille's noble fire
Show'd us that France had something to admire.
Not but the tragic spirit was our own,
And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone:
But Otway f...Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...be punished, but our lack of faith,our dishonest mood of denial,the concupiscence of the oppressor. If some traces of the autocratic pose,the paternal strictness he distrusted, stillclung to his utterance and features,it was a protective coloration for one who'd lived among enemies so long:if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,to us he is no more a personnow but a whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our different li...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,
And the inarticulate snow,
Leaving at last of her least signs and traces
None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.
"She will love well," I said,
"If love be of that heart inhabiter,
The flowers of the dead;
The red anemone that with no sound
Moves in the wind, and from another wound
That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.Read more of this...

by Berry, Wendell
...ands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors. Half blind with light, he
traces with a forefinger the moss-grown
furrows of his name, hearing among the others
one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,
her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:
"Oh William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

II
Surely it will be for this: the redbud
pink, the wild plum white, yellow
trout lilies in the morning light,
the trees, the pastures turning...Read more of this...

by Brontë, Emily
...d visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distingusihed faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.

What have those lonely mountains worth r...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...sdom must his courage bend,
And cunning must with strength contend.'
Thus spake I oft, and went alone
The monster's traces to espy;
When on my mind a bright light shone,--
'I have it!' was my joyful cry."

"To thee I went, and thus I spake:
'My homeward journey I would take.'
Thou, lord, didst grant my prayer to me,--
Then safely traversed I the sea;
And, when I reached my native strand,
I caused a skilful artist's hand
To make a dragon's image, true
To his that n...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...
Maybe I shouldn't have put it in words.
Frankly, I think I'm worse for this kissing,
drunk as a piper, kicking the traces
and determined to tie her up forever.
You see the song is the life,
the life I can't live.
God, even as he passes,
hand down monogamy like slang.
I wanted to write her into the law.
But, you know, there is no law for this.

Man of many hearts, you are a fool!
The clover has grown thorns this year
and robbed the cattle of their frui...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...
     Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed,
     Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,
     Fast on his flying traces came,
     And all but won that desperate game;
     For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch,
     Vindictive toiled the bloodhounds stanch;
     Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
     Nor farther might the quarry strain
     Thus up the margin of the lake,
     Between the precipice and brake,
     O'er stock and rock their race they tak...Read more of this...

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