Famous Unfold Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Book of Urizen: Preludium

by William Blake
 Of the primeval Priests assum'd power,
When Eternals spurn'd back his religion;
And gave him a place in the north,
Obscure, shadowy, void, solitary.

Eternals I hear your call gladly,
Dictate swift winged words, & fear not
To unfold your dark visions of torment....Read more of this...

Life

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A dewy flower, bathed in crimson light,
May touch the soul—a pure and beauteous sight;
A golden river flashing 'neath the sun,
May reach the spot where life's dark waters run;
Yet, when the sun is gone, the splendor dies,
With drooping head the tender flower lies.
And such is life; a golden mist of light,
A tangled web that glitters in the sun;
When shadows come, the...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

The Bombay Train Song

by John Matthew
 He hangs on dangling handholds
As the train sways and careens
Endless nondescript buildings unfold
Their secrets as the tired warrior returns.

The day is over the night falls
Thickly through the barricaded windows
The man’s sleepy head lolls
On his shoulder in a dream disturbed.

The days are a hard white collar brawl
The sleepless night stretches ahead
There’s no space for a fly to crawl
The morning paper...Read more of this...

Mycerinus

by Matthew Arnold
 'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

'I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime--that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of...Read more of this...

A Calendar of Sonnets: May

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 O Month when they who love must love and wed! 
Were one to go to worlds where May is naught, 
And seek to tell the memories he had brought 
From earth of thee, what were most fitly said? 
I know not if the rosy showers shed 
From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought 
In fields, or if the...Read more of this...

The Poet Pleads With The Elemental Powers

by William Butler Yeats
 The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows
Have pulled the Immortal Rose;
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,
The Polar Dragon slept,
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:
When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into...Read more of this...

Breaghy

by George William Russell
 WHEN twilight flutters the mountains over,
The faery lights from the earth unfold:
And over the caves enchanted hover
The giant heroes and gods of old.
The bird of æther its flaming pinions
Waves over earth the whole night long:
The stars drop down in their blue dominions
To hymn together their choral song.
The child of earth in his heart grows burning,
Mad for the night and...Read more of this...

An English Wood

by Robert Graves
 This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink...Read more of this...

The Daylight is Dying

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The daylight is dying 
Away in the west, 
The wild birds are flying 
In silence to rest; 
In leafage and frondage 
Where shadows are deep, 
They pass to its bondage— 
The kingdom of sleep. 
And watched in their sleeping 
By stars in the height, 
They rest in your keeping, 
Oh, wonderful night. 
When night doth her glories 
Of starshine...Read more of this...

Children of the Moon

by W. E. B. Du Bois
I am dead;
Yet somehow, somewhere,
In Time's weird contradiction, I
May tell of that dread deed, wherewith
I brought to Children of the Moon
Freedom and vast salvation.
I was a woman born,
And trod the streaming street,
That ebbs and flows from Harlem's hills,
Through caves and cañons limned in light,
Down to the twisting sea.
That night of nights,
I stood alone and at the End,
Until the sudden highway...Read more of this...

Jenny Carrister The Heroine of Lucknow-Mine

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A heroic story I will unfold,
Concerning Jenny Carrister, a heroine bold,
Who lived in Australia, at a gold mine called Lucknow,
And Jenny was beloved by the the miners, somehow. 

Jenny was the only daughter of the old lady who owned the mine-
And Jenny would come of an evening, like a gleam of sunshine,
And by the presence of her bright face...Read more of this...

Light Hearted Author

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 The birches are mad with green points 
the wood's edge is burning with their green, 
burning, seething—No, no, no. 
The birches are opening their leaves one 
by one. Their delicate leaves unfold cold 
and separate, one by one. Slender tassels 
hang swaying from the delicate branch tips— 
Oh, I cannot say it. There is no word. 
Black is split...Read more of this...

To A Clergyman On The Death Of His Lady

by Phillis Wheatley
 WHERE contemplation finds her sacred spring,
Where heav'nly music makes the arches ring,
Where virtue reigns unsully'd and divine,
Where wisdom thron'd, and all the graces shine,
There sits thy spouse amidst the radiant throng,
While praise eternal warbles from her tongue;
There choirs angelic shout her welcome round,
With perfect bliss, and peerless glory crown'd.
While thy dear mate, to flesh no more confin'd,
Exults a blest,...Read more of this...

Flight

by Robert William Service
 On silver sand where ripples curled
I counted sea-gulls seven;
Shy, secret screened from all the world,
And innocent as heaven.
They did not of my nearness know,
For dawn was barely bright,
And they were still, like spots of snow
In that pale, pearly light.

Then one went forth unto the sea
That rippled up in gold,
And there were rubies flashing free
From out its wing-unfold;
It ducked and...Read more of this...

New Years Chimes

by Francis Thompson
 What is the song the stars sing?
(And a million songs are as song of one)
This is the song the stars sing:
(Sweeter song's none)

One to set, and many to sing,
(And a million songs are as song of one)
One to stand, and many to cling,
The many things, and the one Thing,
The one that runs not, the many that run.


The ever new...Read more of this...

Day Dream

by A S J Tessimond
 One day people will touch and talk perhaps 
easily, 
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as 
sunlight, 
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, 
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, 
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, 
And work will be simple and swift 
as a seagull flying, 
And play will...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

Epistle To My Brother George

by John Keats
 Full many a dreary hour have I past,
My brain bewildered, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretched supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should...Read more of this...

A Tale of the Sea

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A pathetic tale of the sea I will unfold,
Enough to make one's blood run cold;
Concerning four fishermen cast adrift in a dory.
As I've been told I'll relate the story.
T'was on the 8th April on the afternoon of that day
That the village of Louisburg was thrown into a wild state or dismay, 

And the villagers flew to the beach in...Read more of this...

Introspection

by Kathleen Raine
 If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.

If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the loves unloved,
For the...Read more of this...

Canzone XV

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XV. In quella parte dov' Amor mi sprona. HE FINDS HER IMAGE EVERYWHERE.  When Love, fond Love, commands the strain,The coyest muse must sure obey;Love bids my wounded breast complain,And whispers the melodious lay:Yet when such griefs restrain the muse's wing,How shall she dare to soar, or how attempt...Read more of this...

Standardization

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age, 
The journalist with his marketable woes 
Fills up once more the inevitable page 
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose; 

Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop 
With horror at the house not made with hands 
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup 
Another pure theosophist demands 

Rebirth in other, less industrial stars...Read more of this...

From Milton: And did those feet

by William Blake
 And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear:O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I...Read more of this...

Blakes Victory

by Andrew Marvell
 On the Victory Obtained by Blake over the Spaniards in the Bay of Santa Cruz, in the Island of Tenerife, 1657

Now does Spain's fleet her spacious wings unfold, 
Leaves the New World and hastens for the old: 
But though the wind was fair, they slowly swum 
Freighted with acted guilt, and guilt to come: 
For this rich load, of...Read more of this...

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