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Famous Unbound Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...hape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to wind...Read more of this...



by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...mp the lady bowed,
And slowly rolled her eyes around;
Then drawing in her breath aloud,
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe, and inner vest,
Dropped to her feet, and full in view,
Behold! her bosom and half her side-
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs:
Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
Deep from within she seems half-way
To lift some ...Read more of this...

by Stojanovic, Dejan
...There is a moonlight note
In the Moonlight Sonata; 
There is a thunder note
In an angry sky.

Sound unbound by nature
Becomes bounded by art.
There is no competition of sounds
Between a nightingale and a violin.

Nature rewards and punishes
By offering unpredictable ways; 
Art is apotheosis; 
Often, the complaint of beauty.

Nature is an outcry, 
Unpolished truth; 
The art—a euphemism— 
Tamed wilderness. ...Read more of this...

by Dickey, James
...d, let me die but not die
Out.

Copyright © 1966 by James Dickey
Online Source - http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/dickey/wolverine.htm...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...ights without a want and a grief, 

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. 

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? 

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes. 

And what is it but fragments of your own self you...Read more of this...



by Campbell, Thomas
...as the fox beneath the nobler hound,
So died their warriors by our battle brand;
And from the tree we, with her child, unbound
A lonely mother of the Christian land:--
Her lord--the captain of the British band--
Amidst the slaughter of his soldiers lay.
Scarce knew the widow our delivering hand;
Upon her child she sobb'd and soon'd away,
Or shriek'd unto the God to whom the Christians pray.

Our virgins fed her with their kindly bowls
Of fever-balm and sweet sagamite...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...gle's feathery mane
 For wrath became stiffen'd---the sound
 Of breeding thunder
 Went drowsily under,
 Muttering to be unbound.
O why didst thou pity, and beg for a worm?
 Why touch thy soft lute
 Till the thunder was mute,
Why was I not crush'd---such a pitiful germ?
 O Delphic Apollo!

The Pleiades were up,
 Watching the silent air;
The seeds and roots in Earth
 Were swelling for summer fare;
 The Ocean, its neighbour,
 Was at his old labour,
 When, who---who did dare
...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...on's spouse,
"And take the leaves of laurel from your brows."
Niobe spoke. The Theban maids obey'd,
Their brows unbound, and left the rights unpaid.

The angry goddess heard, then silence broke
On Cynthus' summit, and indignant spoke;
"Phoebus! behold, thy mother in disgrace,
"Who to no goddess yields the prior place
"Except to Juno's self, who reigns above,
"The spouse and sister of the thund'ring Jove.
"Niobe, sprung from Tantalus, inspires
"Each Theban boso...Read more of this...

by Cowper, William
...here we call our life is such,
So little to be lov'd, and thou so much,
That I should ill requite thee to constrain
Thy unbound spirit into bonds again.

Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast
(The storms all weather'd and the ocean cross'd)
Shoots into port at some well-haven'd isle,
Where spices breathe and brighter seasons smile,
There sits quiescent on the floods that show
Her beauteous form reflected clear below,
While airs impregnated with incense play
Around h...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...carcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,— 
Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs choired!...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...hilosophers in vain so long have sought, 
In vain, though by their powerful art they bind 
Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound 
In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, 
Drained through a limbeck to his native form. 
What wonder then if fields and regions here 
Breathe forth Elixir pure, and rivers run 
Potable gold, when with one virtuous touch 
The arch-chemick sun, so far from us remote, 
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed, 
Here in the dark so many precious t...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...save he be 
Fool to the midmost marrow of his bones, 
He will return no more.' And those, her three, 
Laughed, and unbound, and thrust him from the gate. 

And after this, a week beyond, again 
She called them, saying, `There he watches yet, 
There like a dog before his master's door! 
Kicked, he returns: do ye not hate him, ye? 
Ye know yourselves: how can ye bide at peace, 
Affronted with his fulsome innocence? 
Are ye but creatures of the board and bed, 
No men to...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...meaning beat 
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ne by line,
And weapons and a skin of wine,
And an old harp unstrung.

By the yawning tree in the twilight
The King unbound his sword,
Severed the harp of all his goods,
And there in the cool and soundless woods
Sounded a single chord.

Then laughed; and watched the finches flash,
The sullen flies in swarm,
And went unarmed over the hills,
With the harp upon his arm,


Until he came to the White Horse Vale
And saw across the plains,
In the twilight high and far and fe...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...> 



Part Two - The Ascending


I have passed a mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the 
Firmament of complete and unbound freedom; 
I am far, far away, my companions, and the clouds are 
Hiding the hills from my eyes. 
The valleys are becoming flooded with an ocean of silence, and the 
Hands of oblivion are engulfing the roads and the houses; 
The prairies and fields are disappearing behind a white specter 
That looks like the spring cloud, yellow as the candlelight...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...rom which she heard you,
Your steady footsteps on the stair.
And here the glass in which she saw your shadow
As she unbound her hair.

Here is the room—with ghostly walls dissolving—
The twilight room in which she called you 'lover';
And the floorless room in which she called you 'friend.'
So many times, in doubt, she ran between them!—
Through windy corridors of darkening end.

Here she could stand with one dim light above her
And hear far music, like a sea i...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...secret pleasure each fond parent smil'd,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child;
The glitt'ring terrors from his brows unbound,
And plac'd the beaming helmet on the ground.
Then kiss'd the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferr'd a father's pray'r:

"O thou! whose glory fills th' ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless pow'rs! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foe...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...
     The King's stout huntsman saw the sport
     By strange intruder broken short,
     Came up, and with his leash unbound
     In anger struck the noble hound.
     The Douglas had endured, that morn,
     The King's cold look, the nobles' scorn,
     And last, and worst to spirit proud,
     Had borne the pity of the crowd;
     But Lufra had been fondly bred,
     To share his board, to watch his bed,
     And oft would Ellen Lufra's neck
     In maiden glee ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...black Wings, and slowly mounts to Day.

Sunk in Thalestris' Arms the Nymph he found,
Her Eyes dejected and her Hair unbound. 
Full o'er their Heads the swelling Bag he rent,
And all the Furies issued at the Vent.
Belinda burns with more than mortal Ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising Fire.
O wretched Maid! she spread her hands, and cry'd,
(While Hampton's Ecchos, wretched Maid reply'd)
Was it for this you took such constant Care
The Bodkin, Comb, and Es...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...be 
Men like you! 

*** 
When the planes disappear, the white, white doves 
Fly off and wash the cheeks of heaven 
With unbound wings taking radiance back again, taking possession 
Of the ether and of play. Higher, higher still, the white, white doves 
Fly off. Ah, if only the sky 
Were real [a man passing between two bombs said to me]. 

*** 
Cypresses behind the soldiers, minarets protecting 
The sky from collapse. Behind the hedge of steel 
Soldiers piss—un...Read more of this...

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