Famous Undergrowth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Undergrowth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous undergrowth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous undergrowth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Though shining suns and silver moons burn on the bough,
And though the fruit of stars by many myriads gleam,
Yet in the undergrowth below, still in thy dream,
Lighting the monstrous maze and labyrinthine gloom
Are many gem-winged flowers with gay and delicate bloom.
And in the shade, hearken, O Dreamer of the Tree,
One wild-rose blossom of thy spirit breathed on me
With lovely and still light: a little sister flower
To those that whitely on the tall moon-branches tower.
Lord ...Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...[Book 1]
I am like,
They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows
Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth
Of delicate features, -- paler, near as grave ;
But then my mother's smile breaks up the whole,
And makes it better sometimes than itself.
So, nine full years, our days were hid with God
Among his mountains : I was just thirteen,
Still growing like the plants from unseen roots
In tongue-tied Springs, -- and suddenly awoke
To full life and life 's...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...te bands round the boles
Against the blackout still after fifty years
In the copse at Chapeltown the fences down the
Undergrowth cleared the bark exposed with scars
Like stars.
I am grounded in Chapeltown from dawn to dusk
Curfewed by my body’s husk I dream of ‘Swan Lake’
Car after car swan after swan across the stage
The mad conductor’s baton raised dying swans
Flying from the wings fading on the last chords
In the hyaline air by the crystal river where
We surre...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...lling handle,
the shudder rude,
the difference fallen.
Toward that chopping block
I carry in me woodthings—
infectious undergrowth
pretending upwards
through each stem and branch of me—
all so certain of themselves
they practice, like pains,
the craft of being.
They try to wrench away
before we reach that stump,
my woodthings and I,
they weakening
in its brightness,
in my luminous saying
"I must go, must go
to the chopping block."
They know the brutal business
of my thinki...Read more of this...
by
Emanuel, James A
...dden purpose, and the gush of birds
That spurts across the field, the wheeling swallows,
Have nested in the trees and undergrowth.
Seeking their instinct, or their pose, or both,
One moves with an uncertain violence
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense
Or the dull thunder of approximate words.
On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boy,
Until the distance throws them forth, their hum
Bulges to thunder held by calf an...Read more of this...
by
Gunn, Thom
...
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none, so thick entwined,
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that passed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt,
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet....Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ll in Thee;
Or small, or great, I know not—haply, what broad fields, what lands;
Haply, the brutish, measureless human undergrowth I know,
Transplanted there, may rise to stature, knowledge worthy Thee;
Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn’d to reaping-tools;
Haply the lifeless cross I know—Europe’s dead cross—may bud and blossom
there.
One effort more—my altar this bleak sand:
That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted,
With ray of light, steady, ineffable, v...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...n.
I shall sing you a tearful song.
In the desert the rain fell on me.
Bushfires danced their way through
The undergrowth of my verse.
Your footfall soft as felt, you
Stepped into the light and
Asked the poet for a song.
I shall sing you a lyric of pain.
The blue moon peers through the foliage
Of your eyelashes. The minstrel hawks
His tears through the streets of night.
A household god is asking for water;
An old god is pleading at your door....Read more of this...
by
Oguibe, Olu
...sexual depravity
with the no touch signs fervently displayed
stylised tulips – could be snakes though lurking
in the undergrowth good for a wriggle or two
tulips however keep their heads held high
disdainfully pretending the whole world
is beneath them - and what colours my dear
(or lack of colour or subtle colours
whichever the fashion aptly hissed by men)
stylised tulips – hardly the sobriquet
to be pinned on us of a different plumage
(children advancing to and not awa...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...t, tangled days
Must be linked, as with a flute.
It's the age that rocks the swells
With humanity's despair,
And in the undergrowth a serpent breathes
The golden measure of the age.
Still the shoots will swell
And the green buds sprout
But your spinal cord is crushed,
My fantastic, wretched age!
And in lunatic beatitude
You look back, cruel and weak,
Like a beast that once was agile,
At the tracks left by your feet.
The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly thing...Read more of this...
by
Mandelstam, Osip
...estnuts, without leaf or bird,
And, like himself, grown old in that same place.
Through the dark network of their undergrowth,
Pallid his aspect; and the earth was brown.
Starless and moonless, a rough winter's night
Was letting down her lappets o'er the mist.
This—nothing more: old Faun, dull sky, dark wood.
Poor, helpless marble, how I've pitied it!
Less often man—the harder of the two.
So, then, without a word that might offend
His ear d...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...d not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads o...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...is spear,
Was tight and wet inside with sweat of fear;
He heard behind him what the hunted hear.
The silence in the undergrowth crept near;
Its mischief tickled in his nervous ear
And he became the prey, the quivering deer.
The naked hunter feared the threat he knew:
Being hunted, caught, then slaughtered like a ewe
By beasts who padded on four legs or two.
The naked hunter in the bus or queue
Under his decent wool is frightened too
But not of what his hairy for...Read more of this...
by
Scannell, Vernon
...n the summer time,
While walking along the secluded Serpentine,
By the spreading branches of the big trees,
Or from the undergrowth ivy, if they please.
Do not forget to visit the old Tower,
Where Archbishop Sharp spent many an hour,
Viewing the beautiful scenery for miles away
Along the bonnie banks o' the silvery Tay....Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
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