Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Treading Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...

But when ¨C 
nevertheless! ¨C 
the street coughed up the crush on the square, 
pushing away the portico that was treading on its throat, 
it looked as if: 
in choirs of an archangel¡¯s chorale, 
god, who has been plundered, was advancing in 
wrath! 

But the street, squatting down, bawled: 
¡°Let¡¯s go and guzzle!¡± 

Krupps and Krupplets1 paint 
a bristling of menacing brows on the city, 
but in the mouth 
corpselets of dead words putrefy; 
and only two t...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished - 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and t...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...urrected tree,
A tree that had been down and raised again—
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
As if for fear of treading upon me.
I saw the strange position of his hands—
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from men to men.
“You here?” I said. “Where aren’t you nowadays
And what’s the news you carry—if you know?
And tell me where you’re off for—Montreal?
Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander out o...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...et threading, 
And starting oft, as through the glade 
The gust its hollow moanings made; 
Till on the smoother pathway treading, 
More free her timid bosom beat, 
The maid pursued her silent guide; 
And though her terror urged retreat, 
How could she quit her Selim's side? 
How teach her tender lips to chide? 

VII. 

They reach'd at length a grotto, hewn 
By nature, but enlarged by art, 
Where oft her lute she wont to tune, 
And oft her Koran conn'd apart: 
And oft in y...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...zons—in my vest—
And I sneered—softly—"small"!

280

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treadingtreading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum—
Kept beating—beating—till I thought
My Mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space—began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...re,
The breathless Latmian wonder'd o'er and o'er;
Until, impatient in embarrassment,
He forthright pass'd, and lightly treading went
To that same feather'd lyrist, who straightway,
Smiling, thus whisper'd: "Though from upper day
Thou art a wanderer, and thy presence here
Might seem unholy, be of happy cheer!
For 'tis the nicest touch of human honour,
When some ethereal and high-favouring donor
Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense;
As now 'tis done to thee, Endymion. ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remain'd a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...r>

While the tremulous leafy haze on the woodland is spreading,
And the bloom on the meadow betrays where May has been treading;
While the birds on the branches above, and the brooks flowing under,
Are singing together of love in a world full of wonder,
(Lo, in the marvel of Springtime, dreams are changed into truth!)
Quicken my heart, and restore the beautiful hopes of youth.

By the faith that the flowers show when they bloom unbidden,
By the calm of the river's flow t...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...rom the unremittent beat
Made by cruel padded feet
Walking through my body's street.
Up and down they go, and back,
Treading out a jungle track.
So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night--
I can never rest at all
When the rain begins to fall;
Like a soul gone mad with pain
I must match its weird refrain;
Ever must I twist and squirm,
Writhing like a baited worm,
While its primal measures drip
Through my body, crying, "Strip!
Doff this new exuberance.Read more of this...

by Johnson, James Weldon
...to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our ...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...speedy stream
which violently bears all before it,
at one time silent as the air
and now as powerful as the wind."
"Treading chasms 
on the uncertain footing of a spear,"
forgetting that there is in woman
a quality of mind
which is an instinctive manifestation
is unsafe,
he goes on speaking
in a formal, customary strain
of "past states," the present state,
seals, promises, 
the evil one suffered,
the good one enjoys,
hell, heaven,
everything convenient
to promote one's jo...Read more of this...

by Jackson, Helen Hunt
...room for thee to bide 
A quiet comrade by their side; 
I see the creeping peoples go 
Mysterious journeys to and fro, 
Treading to right and left of thee, 
Doing thee homage wonderingly. 
I see the wild bees as they fare, 
Thy cups of honey drink, but spare. 
I mark thee bathe and bathe again 
In sweet unclaendared spring rain. 
I watch how all May has of sun 
Makes haste to have thy ripeness done, 
While all her nights let dews escape 
To set and cool thy perfec...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...oft. That fury stayed-- 
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, 
Nor good dry land--nigh foundered, on he fares, 
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, 
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. 
As when a gryphon through the wilderness 
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 
Had from his wakeful custody purloined 
The guarded gold; so eagerly the Fiend 
O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or ...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ces high and clear; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the stragglins train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestli...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...w waits in the hovel; 
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work—where the stud to the
 mare—where the cock is treading the hen; 
Where the heifers browse—where geese nip their food with short jerks; 
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie; 
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near;
Where the humming-bird shimmers—where the neck of the long-lived swan is
 curving and winding; 
Where the laug...Read more of this...

by Cook, Eliza
...and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet--
Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in darkness and dust.
Your eyes may be flashing in pleasure and pride,
'Neath the crown of a Queen or the wreath of a bride ;
Your lips may be fresh and your cheeks may be fair--
Let a few years pass over, and I shall be there.

Cities of splendour, where ...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...he Creator banished from his sight
Frail man to dark mortality's abode,
And granted him a late return to light,
Only by treading reason's arduous road,--
When each immortal turned his face away,
She, the compassionate, alone
Took up her dwelling in that house of clay,
With the deserted, banished one.
With drooping wing she hovers here
Around her darling, near the senses' land,
And on his prison-walls so drear
Elysium paints with fond deceptive hand.

While soft humani...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...et threading, 
And starting oft, as through the glade 
The gust its hollow moanings made; 
Till on the smoother pathway treading, 
More free her timid bosom beat, 
The maid pursued her silent guide; 
And though her terror urged retreat, 
How could she quit her Selim's side? 
How teach her tender lips to chide? 

VII. 

They reach'd at length a grotto, hewn 
By nature, but enlarged by art, 
Where oft her lute she wont to tune, 
And oft her Koran conn'd apart: 
And oft in y...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...e icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valle...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...burial. 
It was all dark, but at the turning 
The Lion had a window burning. 
So in we went and up the stairs, 
Treading as still as cats and hares. 
The way the stairs creaked made you wonder 
If dead men's bones were hidden under. 
At head of stairs upon the landing 
A woman with a lamp was standing; 
she greet each gent at head of stairs, 
With "Step in, gents, and take your chairs. 
The punch'll come when kettle bubble, 
But don't make noise or there'l...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Treading poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs