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Famous Undulating Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...ing in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship: 
Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves—liquid, uneven, emulous waves, 
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, 
Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface; 
Larger and smaller waves, in the spread of the ocean, yearnfully flowing; 
The wake of the Sea-Ship, after she passes—flashing and frolicsome, under the sun,
A motley processio...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...shadowy silver or enshrining light,
Borrowed from aught the visible world affords
Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;
But undulating woods, and silent well,
And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom
Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
Held commune with him, as if he and it
Were all that was; only--when his regard
Was raised by intense pensiveness--two eyes,
Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 
And seemed with their serene and azure smiles
To beckon him.<...Read more of this...

by Melville, Herman
...sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice's Hair-
Afloat in broadened bravery there;
With undulating long-drawn flow,
As rolled Brazilian billows go
Voluminously o'er the Line.
The Land reposed in peace below;
The children in their glee
Were folded to the exulting heart
Of young Maternity.

II

Later, and it streamed in fight
When tempest mingled with the fray,
And over the spear-point of the shaft
I saw the ambiguous lightning play.
...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...t radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts, like undulating billows,
Whose dangers or delights but Love can know,

That crimson mouth from which sly Cupid borrowed
The pattern for his bow, nor asked consent;
That smooth, unruffled brow which has not sorrowed-
All these are mine; should I not be content?
Yet are these treasures mine, or only lent me?
And, who shall claim them when I pass away?
Oh, jealous F...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...t 
Of my fantastic and increasing hate 
Was ever woven as it was around us?
I cannot answer; and you need not ask 
What undulating reptile he was like, 
For such a worm as I discerned in him 
Was never yet on earth or in the ocean, 
Or anywhere else than in my sense of him.
Had all I made of him been tangible, 
The Lord must have invented long ago 
Some private and unspeakable new monster 
Equipped for such a thing’s extermination; 
Whereon the monster, seeing no other mo...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ain
Go without check or intervals,
Through from the empyrean walls,
Unto the same again.

Close, close to men,
Like undulating layer of air,
Right above their heads,
The potent plain of Dæmons spreads.
Stands to each human soul its own,
For watch, and ward, and furtherance
In the snares of nature's dance;
And the lustre and the grace
Which fascinate each human heart,
Beaming from another part,
Translucent through the mortal covers,
Is the Dæmon's form and face.
To...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ght and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
And many a fountain, rivulet and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
Pierce into glades, caverns and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...Resistance checks his breath,
The high, impetuous, ceaseless breeze
Blows on him. cold as death. 
And still the undulating gloom
Mocks sight with formless motion;
Was such sensation Jonah's doom,
Gulphed in the depths of ocean ? 

Streaking the air, the nameless vision,
Fast-driven, deep-sounding, flows;
Oh ! whence its source, and what its mission ?
How will its terrors close ?
Long-sweeping, rushing, vast and void,
The Universe it swallows;
And still the dark, devou...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...of love, white-blow and
 delirious juice;
Bridegroom night of love, working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn; 
Undulating into the willing and yielding day, 
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day. 

This is the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, the man is born of woman; 
This is the bath of birth—this is the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.

Be not ashamed, women—your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of th...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...’ thoughts, 
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said;
The sky o’erarches here—we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,

We feel the long pulsation—ebb and flow of endless motion; 
The tones of unseen mystery—the vague and vast suggestions of the briny
 world—the liquid-flowing syllables, 
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, 
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim, are all here,
And this is Ocean’s...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...hen all the waves that dash o'er thee,
At the same time upheave and whelm,
And hurl thee towards a desert realm.
My undulating life was as
The fancied lights that flitting pass
Our shut eyes in deep midnight, when
Fever begins upon the brain;
But soon it passed, with little pain,
But a confusion worse than such:
I own that I should deem it much, 
Dying, to feel the same again; 
And yet I do suppose we must 
Feel far more ere we turn to dust: 
No matter; I have bared my br...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...e Envy's meagre tribe assail 
Thy gentle form, and spotless mind. 

Their spells prevail! no more those eyes 
Shoot undulating fires; 
On thy wan cheek, the young rose dies, 
Thy lip's deep tint expires; 
Dark Melancholy chills thy mind; 
Thy silent tear reveals thy woe; 
TIME strews with thorns thy mazy way, 
Where'er thy giddy footsteps stray, 
Thy thoughtless heart is doom'd to find 
An unrelenting foe. 

'Tis thus, the infant Forest flow'r 
Bespangled o'er with gl...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...escend,
Whitening the spangled heath, and limpid sapphire stream. 

And oft, amidst the shades of night
I court thy undulating light;
When Fairies dance around the verdant ring,
Or frisk beside the bubbling spring,
When the thoughtless SHEPHERD'S song
Echoes thro' the silent air,
As he pens his fleecy care,
Or plods with saunt'ring gait, the dewy meads along. 

CHASTE ORB! as thro' the vaulted sky
Feath'ry clouds transparent sail; 
When thy languid, weeping eye,
Sheds...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...r,
His pointed eye-lashes between, 
Would gather in the light serene
Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft
Beneath lay undulating there.
His breath was like inconstant flame
As eagerly it went and came;
And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
Till, like an image in the lake
Which rains disturb, my tears would break
The shadow of that slumber deep.
Then he would bid me not to weep, 
And say, with flattery false yet sweet,
That death and he could never meet,
If I would never...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...n the wind, speckle the green and blue!
See! thy steamers coming and going, steaming in or out of port! 
See! dusky and undulating, their long pennants of smoke! 

Behold, in Oregon, far in the north and west, 
Or in Maine, far in the north and east, thy cheerful axemen, 
Wielding all day their axes!

Behold, on the lakes, thy pilots at their wheels—thy oarsmen! 
Behold how the ash writhes under those muscular arms! 

There by the furnace, and there by the anvil, 
Behold thy ...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...and in dearth, 
Should be revived by you, and stir and start 
As by warm April now, reviving Earth? 
I am the field of undulating grass 
And you the gentle perfumed breath of Spring, 
And all my lyric being, when you pass, 
Is bowed and filled with sudden murmuring. 
I asked you nothing and expected less, 
But, with that deep, impassioned tenderness 
Of one approaching what he most adores, 
I only wished to lose a little space 
All thought of my own life, and in its plac...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...e gently heaving tides,
When the fair Moon, in summer night serene,
Irradiates with long trembling lines of light
Their undulating surface; that great Power,
Who, governing the Planets, also knows
If but a Sea-Mew falls, whose nest is hid
In these incumbent cliffs; He surely means
To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids
Acknowledge and revere his awful hand,
Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man,
Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy,
And makes himself the evil he ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e loved better; and his bird,
His fine ger-falcon best beloved of all,
Sat hooded on his wrist and gently swayed
To the undulating amble of the horse.
Guest-knights and huntsmen and a noisy train
Of loyal-stomached flatterers and their squires
Clattered in retinue, and aped his pace,
And timed their talk by his, and worked their eyes
By intimation of his glance, with great
And drilled precision.
Then said the fool:
"'Twas a brave flight, my lord, that last one! brave....Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...beams projecting far,
And the laden storehouse are,
And the granaries bowed beneath
The blessed golden grain;
There, in undulating motion,
Wave the cornfields like an ocean.
Proud the boast the proud lips breathe:--
"My house is built upon a rock,
And sees unmoved the stormy shock
Of waves that fret below!"
What chain so strong, what girth so great,
To bind the giant form of fate?--
Swift are the steps of woe.

Now the casting may begin;
See the breach indented there:...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...ac turn'd;No more the nightly constellations burn'd;Green earth and undulating ocean roll'dAway, by some resistless power controll'd;[Pg 401]Immensity conceived, and brought to birthA grander firmament, and more luxuriant earth.What wonder seized my soul when firs...Read more of this...

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