Famous Variable Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Clear with Light Variable Winds

...The fountain bent and straightened itself
In the night wind,
Blowing like a flower.
It gleamed and glittered,
A tall white lily,
Under the eye of the golden moon.
From a stone seat,
Beneath a blossoming lime,
The man watched it.
And the spray pattered
On the dim grass at his feet.
The fountain tossed its water,
Up and up, like silver marbles.
Is that an ar...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy


Enoch Arden

...cking, her full-busted figure-head
Stared o'er the ripple feathering from her bows:
Then follow'd calms, and then winds variable,
Then baffling, a long course of them; and last
Storm, such as drove her under moonless heavens
Till hard upon the cry of `breakers' came
The crash of ruin, and the loss of all
But Enoch and two others. Half the night,
Buoy'd upon floating tackle and broken spars,
These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn
Rich, but loneliest in a lonely sea.

No w...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Howl

...herefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

January 2

...The old war is over the new one has begun
between drivers and pedestrians on a Friday
in New York light is the variable and structure
the content according to Rodrigo Moynihan's
self-portraits at the Robert Miller Gallery where
the painter is serially pictured holding a canvas,
painting his mirror image, shirtless in summer,
with a nude, etc., it's two o'clock and I'm walking
at top speed from the huddled tourists yearning to be
a mass to Les Halles on Park and 28th ...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...at all. 
He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite, 
My motions in him; longer than they move, 
His heart I know, how variable and vain, 
Self-left. Lest therefore his now bolder hand 
Reach also of the tree of life, and eat, 
And live for ever, dream at least to live 
For ever, to remove him I decree, 
And send him from the garden forth to till 
The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil. 
Michael, this my behest have thou in charge; 
Take to thee from among the Cherubim ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Prothalamion

...n 10 
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames, 
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems, 
Was painted all with variable flowers, 
And all the meads adorn'd with dainty gems 
Fit to deck maidens' bowers, 15 
And crown their paramours 
Against the bridal day, which is not long: 
Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song. 

There in a meadow by the river's side 
A flock of nymphs I chanc¨¨d to espy, 20 
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby, 
With goodl...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

Ruins of Rome by Bellay

...ss spoil of soldiers blood-desiring, 
The which so oft thee, Rome, their conquest made; 
Ne stroke on stroke of fortune variable, 
Ne rust of age hating continuance, 
Nor wrath of Gods, nor spite of men unstable, 
Nor thou oppos'd against thine own puissance; 
Nor th' horrible uproar of winds high blowing, 
Nor swelling streams of that God snaky-paced, 
Which hath so often with his overflowing 
Thee drenched, have thy pride so much abased; 
But that this nothing, which they h...Read more of this...
by Spenser, Edmund

The Comedian As The Letter C

...een brag, 
562 Concluding fadedly, if as a man 
563 Prone to distemper he abates in taste, 
564 Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure, 
565 Glozing his life with after-shining flicks, 
566 Illuminating, from a fancy gorged 
567 By apparition, plain and common things, 
568 Sequestering the fluster from the year, 
569 Making gulped potions from obstreperous drops, 
570 And so distorting, proving what he proves 
571 Is nothing, what can all this matter since 
572 The...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace

Venus and Adonis

...sighs sought still to dry;
But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

Variable passions throng her constant woe,
As striving who should best become her grief;
All entertain'd, each passion labours so,
That every present sorrow seemeth chief,
But none is best: then join they all together,
Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.

By this, far off she hears some huntsman hollo;
A nurse's song ne'er pleased her babe so well:...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Weather

...slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."...Read more of this...
by Bierce, Ambrose

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