Famous Veering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Swimmers Dream

.... 

II 
Hard and heavy, remote but nearing, 
Sunless hangs the severe sky's weight, 
Cloud on cloud, though the wind be veering 
Heaped on high to the sundawn's gate. 
Dawn and even and noon are one, 
Veiled with vapour and void of sun; 
Nought in sight or in fancied hearing 
Now less mighty than time or fate. 

The grey sky gleams and the grey seas glimmer, 
Pale and sweet as a dream's delight, 
As a dream's where darkness and light seem dimmer, 
Touched by dawn or subdued b...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles


An Aquarium

...Streaks of green and yellow iridescence,
Silver shiftings,
Rings veering out of rings,
Silver -- gold --
Grey-green opaqueness sliding down,
With sharp white bubbles
Shooting and dancing,
Flinging quickly outward.
Nosing the bubbles,
Swallowing them,
Fish.
Blue shadows against silver-saffron water,
The light rippling over them
In steel-bright tremors.
Outspread translucent fins
Flute, fold, and relapse;
The threaded light...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Honor To Woman

...s ever-living the fire!

From the bounds of truth careering,
Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering
Down to passion's troubled deeps.
And his heart, contented never,
Greeds to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever,
On through many a distant star!
But woman with looks that can charm and enchain,
Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,
By the spell of her presence beguiled--
In the home of the mother her modest abode,
And modest ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

Improvisations: Light And Snow

...k blossoms among dark leaves, 
Standing, surprised, in the snow? 
Why do I think of spring?

The snowflakes, helplessly veering,, 
Fall silently past my window; 
They come from darkness and enter darkness. 
What is it in my heart is surprised and bewildered 
Like that camellia tree, 
Beautiful still in its glittering anguish? 
And spring so far away!

XI

As I walked through the lamplit gardens, 
On the thin white crust of snow, 
So intensely was I thinking of my misfortune, ...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

In a Breath

...he tail
of the shark lashes. One swing would kill the swimmer. . .
Soon the knife goes into the soft under-
neck of the veering fish. . . Its mouthful of teeth,
each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistens
when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled up
by the brothers of the swimmer.

Outside in the street is the murmur and singing of life
in the sun--horses, motors, women trapsing along
in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood....Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl


Journey Into The Interior

...t interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
W...Read more of this...
by Roethke, Theodore

Malmaison

...ees
the great clouds go, tiered, stately, like ships of the line
bright with canvas.
Prisoners'-base, and its swooping, veering, racing, 
giggling, bumping.
The First Consul runs plump into M. de Beauharnais and falls.
But he picks himself up smartly, and starts after M. Isabey. Too 
late,
M. Le Premier Consul, Mademoiselle Hortense is out after you. Quickly,
my dear Sir! Stir your short legs, she is swift and eager, 
and as graceful
as her mother. She is there, that other, p...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Modern Love XIV: What Soul Would Bargain

...y to kill?
Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
It seems there is another veering fit
Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure,
I looked with little prospect of a cure,
The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
Just heaven! can it be true that jealousy
Has decked the woman thus? and does her head
Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited?
Madam, you teach me many things that be.
I open an old book, and there I find
That...Read more of this...
by Meredith, George

Modern Love: XIV

...y to kill?
Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
It seems there is another veering fit
Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure,
I looked with little prospect of a cure,
The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
Just heaven! can it be true that jealousy
Has decked the woman thus? and does her head
Swim somewhat for possessions forfeited?
Madam, you teach me many things that be.
I open an old book, and there I find
That...Read more of this...
by Meredith, George

Nightmare: A Tale for an Autumn Evening

...a gusty night,
With the wind booming, and swooping,
Looping round corners,
Sliding over the cobble-stones,
Whipping and veering,
And careering over the roofs
Like a thousand clattering horses.
Mr. Spruggins had been dining in the city,
Mr. Spruggins was none too steady in his gait,
And the wind played ball with Mr. Spruggins
And laughed as it whistled past him.
It rolled him along the street,
With his little feet pit-a-patting on the flags of the sidewalk,
And his muffler and...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Oh Think Not I Am Faithful

...t thirst,
I would desert you­think not but I would!­
And seek another as I sought you first. 
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true....Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

On The New Year

...view;
But, on us gently

Shineth a true one,

And to the new one
We, too, are new.

As a fond couple

'Midst the dance veering,

First disappearing,
Then reappear,
So let affection

Guide thro' life's mazy

Pathways so hazy
Into the year!

1802....Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Pelleas And Ettarre

...ain 
This Pelleas! here he stood, and might have slain 
Me and thyself.' And he that tells the tale 
Says that her ever-veering fancy turned 
To Pelleas, as the one true knight on earth, 
And only lover; and through her love her life 
Wasted and pined, desiring him in vain. 

But he by wild and way, for half the night, 
And over hard and soft, striking the sod 
From out the soft, the spark from off the hard, 
Rode till the star above the wakening sun, 
Beside that tower where...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Poem of Joys

...raced body, 
My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions. 

7
O boating on the rivers! 
The voyage down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
 steamers, 
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
 raftsmen
 with long-reaching sweep-oars, 
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Giaour

...reak the wave
That rolls below the Athenian's grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o'er the cliff
First greets the homeward-veering skiff
High o'er the land he saved in vain;
When shall such Hero live again?

Fair clime! where every season smiles
Benignant o'er those bless?d isles,
Which, seen from far Colonna's height,
Make glad the heart that hails the sight,
And lend to lonliness delight.
There mildly dimpling, Ocean's cheek
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laug...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait

...I am contented;
You look at me, with interest unfeigned,
And listen—I am pleased; or else, alone,
I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward
From unknown depths,—my silver thoughts ascending;
Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,—
Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets,
Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,—
But all with one deep meaning: this is I,
This is the glistening secret holy I,
This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial,
This singing ghost. . ....Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Lady of the Lake

...ing scarce such breadth of brim
     As served the wild duck's brood to swim.
     Lost for a space, through thickets veering,
     But broader when again appearing,
     Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face
     Could on the dark-blue mirror trace;
     And farther as the Hunter strayed,
     Still broader sweep its channels made.
     The shaggy mounds no longer stood,
     Emerging from entangled wood,
     But, wave-encircled, seemed to float,
     Like cast...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Seasons: Winter

...piness? those Longings after Fame?
Those restless Cares? those busy, bustling Days?
Those Nights of secret Guilt? those veering Thoughts,
Flutt'ring 'twixt Good, and Ill, that shar'd thy Life?
All, now, are vanish'd! Vertue, sole, survives,
Immortal, Mankind's never-failing Friend,
His Guide to Happiness on high -- and see!
'Tis come, the Glorious Morn! the second Birth
Of Heaven, and Earth! -- awakening Nature hears
Th'Almighty Trumpet's Voice, and starts to Life,
Renew'd, u...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James

The Wreck of the Hesperus

...
That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his month,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Vulture

...work; they are not for you." But how
 beautiful
 he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
 sea-light
 over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
 and
 become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what and enskyment; what a life
 after death....Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

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