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Famous Wade Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Plath, Sylvia
...his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains....Read more of this...



by Drayton, Michael
...eel so bright, 
Though but a maiden knight, 
Yet in that furious fight 
Scarce such another. 

Warwick in blood did wade, 
Oxford the foe invade, 
And cruel slaughter made 
Still as they ran up; 
Suffolk his axe did ply, 
Beaumont and Willoughby 
Bare them right doughtily, 
Ferrers and Fanhope. 

Upon Saint Crispin's Day 
Fought was this noble fray, 
Which fame did not delay 
To England to carry. 
O when shall English men 
With such acts fill a pen? 
Or England br...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ew. 
Dust and smoke and din and rattle, 
Down the street they spurred their cattle 
To the war-cry of the battle, 
"Wade in, Dandaloo!" 

So the boys might have their fight out, 
Johnson blew the bar-room light out, 
Then, in haste, withdrew. 
And in darkness and in doubting 
Raged the conflict and the shouting, 
"Give the Sydney push a clouting, 
Go it, Dandaloo!" 

Jack Macpherson seized a bucket, 
Every head he saw he struck it -- 
Struck in earnest, too; 
And a ma...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...eath and mind his eye, 
And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 
'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane 
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; 
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, 
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, 
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge 
In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban; 
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 
'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, 
Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He...Read more of this...

by Gray, Thomas
...a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the Gates of Mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequ...Read more of this...



by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ote he foundez on the erthe,
Sette the stele to the stone, and stalked bysyde.
When he wan to the watter, ther he wade nolde,
He hypped ouer on hys ax, and orpedly strydez,
Bremly brothe on a bent that brode watz aboute,
on snawe.
Sir Gawayn the knyyght con mete,
He ne lutte hym nothyng lowe;

That other sayde, "Now, sir swete,
Of steuen mon may the trowe."
"Gawayn," quoth that grene gome, "God the mot loke!
Iwysse thou art welcom, wyyghe, to my place,...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...e King;
Then suddenly each seiz'd his spear,
And clashing steel does ring.

The husbandman does leave his plough
To wade thro' fields of gore;
The merchant binds his brows in steel,
And leaves the trading shore;

The shepherd leaves his mellow pipe,
And sounds the trumpet shrill;
The workman throws his hammer down
To heave the bloody bill.

Like the tall ghost of Barraton
Who sports in stormy sky,
Gwin leads his host, as black as night
When pestilence does fly,

With ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon,
Or animal...Read more of this...

by Drayton, Michael
...e, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight
Scarce such another!

Warwick in blood did wade,
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made,
Still as they ran up.
Suffolk his axe did ply;
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bare them right doughtily;
Ferrers and Fanhope.

Upon Saint Crispin's Day
Fought was this noble fray,
Which fame did not delay
To England to carry.
O when shall English men
With such acts fill a pen,
Or England breed again...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...meet with a week of rain, 
And the waggon sinks to its axle-tree, deep down in the black-soil plain, 
When the bullocks wade in a sea of mud, and strain at the load of wool, 
And the cattle-dogs at the bullocks' heels are biting to make them pull, 
When the off-side driver flays the team, and curses tham while he flogs, 
And the air is thick with the language used, and the clamour of men and dogs -- 
The teamsters say, as they pause to rest and moisten each hairy throat, 
The...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The Sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up; 

a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one of their father's tools,
a mattock with a broken haft
the two of them can scarcely lift.
It drops and clangs. Their l...Read more of this...

by Gilbert, Jack
...ess. 
We can break through marriage into marriage. 
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond 
affection and wade mouth-deep into love. 
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. 
But going back toward childhood will not help. 
The village is not better than Pittsburgh. 
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. 
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound 
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls 
of the garbage tub is more ...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...d him lies:
He was surely a witch-man in disguise.
But he went down to the Devil.

He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day
To capture his slaves that had fled away.
But he went down to the Devil.

He beat poor Uncle Tom to death
Who prayed for Legree with his last breath.
Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew,
To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
And Simon Legree stared up beneath,
And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
And went down to the Devil.

He ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ut always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on Novemb...Read more of this...

by Moore, Marianne
...wade
through black jade.
 Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
 adjusting the ash-heaps;
 opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
 The barnacles which encrust the side
 of the wave, cannot hide
 there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
 glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
 into the crevices—
 in and out, ...Read more of this...

by Gorman, Amanda
...hen day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a s...Read more of this...

by Clare, John
...earch to day,
And hunt this fern-strewn thorn-clump round and round ;
And where this reeded wood-grass idly bows,
We'll wade right through, it is a likely nook :
In such like spots, and often on the ground,
They'll build, where rude boys never think to look—
Aye, as I live ! her secret nest is here,
Upon this white-thorn stump ! I've searched about
For hours in vain. There! put that bramble by—
Nay, trample on its branches and get near.
How subtle is the bird ! she st...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...e of his was drowned therein,
When that he wente Babylon to win:
He made that the river was so small,
That women mighte wade it *over all.* *everywhere
Lo, what said he, that so well teache can,
'Be thou no fellow to an irous man,
Nor with no wood* man walke by the way, *furious
Lest thee repent;' I will no farther say.

"Now, Thomas, leve* brother, leave thine ire, *dear
Thou shalt me find as just as is as squire;
Hold not the devil's knife aye at thine heaat;
Thine ...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...e flood, 
Rank with the smell of the drifting mud. 

He turned and twisted across and back, 
Choosing the places to wade or swim, 
Picking the safest and shortest track -- 
The blackest darkness was clear to him. 
Did he strike the crossing by sight or smell? 
The Lord that held him alone could tell! 

He dodged the timber whene'er he could, 
But timber brought us to grief at last; 
I was partly stunned by a log of wood 
That struck my head as it drifted past; 
Then l...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nd wel was him that coude best devyse
To lyken hir, or that hir laughen made.
He song; she pleyde; he tolde tale of Wade.
But at the laste, as every thing hath ende, 
She took hir leve, and nedes wolde wende.

But O, Fortune, executrice of wierdes,
O influences of thise hevenes hye!
Soth is, that, under god, ye ben our hierdes,
Though to us bestes been the causes wrye. 
This mene I now, for she gan hoomward hye,
But execut was al bisyde hir leve,
At the goddes...Read more of this...

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