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Famous Weight Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Pope, Alexander
...lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou'd like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
Hear how Timotheus' vary'd Lays surprize,
And bid Alternate Passions fall and rise!
While, at each Change, the Son of Lybian Jove
Now burns with Glory, and then melts with Love;
Now his fierc...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...less at Avon’s eyes 
Than at the dictionary, like one asking 
Already why we make so much of words 
That have so little weight in the true balance.
“Your name is Resignation for an hour,” 
He said; “and I’m a little sorry for you. 
So be resigned. I shall not praise your work, 
Or strive in any way to make you happy. 
My purpose only is to make you know
How clearly I have known that you have known 
There was a reason waited on your coming, 
And, if it’s in me ...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...tle nest of grasses for his spouse,
And now and then a twittering wren would light
On a thin twig which hardly bare the weight of such delight.

I was the Attic shepherd's trysting place,
Beneath my shadow Amaryllis lay,
And round my trunk would laughing Daphnis chase
The timorous girl, till tired out with play
She felt his hot breath stir her tangled hair,
And turned, and looked, and fled no more from such delightful
snare.

Then come away unto my ambuscade
Where clu...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d was his aspect!
Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, and his footstep
Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his bosom.
But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and embraced him,
Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not.
Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful procession.

There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of embarking.
Busily plied the freighted boats; and in ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...e is a noise
Among immortals when a God gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load
His tongue with the filll weight of utterless thought,
With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:
Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines;
Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world,
No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,
Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom
Grew up like organ, that begins anew
Its strain, when other harmonies, stopt short,
Leave the dinn'd...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...ard to night, but not of moon and cloud, 
 Not night with all its stars, as night we know, 
 But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe 
 The darkness closed us. 
 Sighs, and wailings loud, 
 Outcries perpetual of recruited pain, 
 Sounds of strange tongues, and angers that remain 
 Vengeless for ever, the thick and clamorous crowd 
 Of discords pressed, that needs I wept to hear, 
 First hearing. There, with reach of hands anear, 
 And voices passion-hoarse, or shrille...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...Th' English from shore the iron deaf invoke 
For its last aid: `Hold chain, or we are broke.' 
But with her sailing weight, the Holland keel, 
Snapping the brittle links, does thorough reel, 
And to the rest the opened passage show; 
Monck from the bank the dismal sight does view. 
Our feathered gallants, which came down that day 
To be spectators safe of the new play, 
Leave him alone when first they hear the gun 
(Cornb'ry the fleetest) and to London run. 
Our s...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...ft,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul;
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep powe...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...counsel in his face yet shone, 
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood 
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look 
Drew audience and attention still as night 
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake:-- 
 "Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven, 
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called 
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote 
Inclines--here to continue, and build up...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power— 
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...because her tale was at an end  She wept;—because she had no more to say  Of that perpetual weight which on her spirit lay....Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...love's full smile, and can enstate
The pleasure of my kingly heart at ease,
My thought swims like a ship, that with the weight
Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas
Becalm'd, and cannot stir her golden freight. 

6
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and ...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...oaring water-fall she hears,  And cannot find her idiot boy.   Your pony's worth his weight in gold,  Then calm your terrors, Betty Foy!  She's coming from among the trees,  And now all full in view she sees  Him whom she loves, her idiot boy.   And Betty sees the pony too:  Why stand you thus Good Betty Foy?  It is no goblin, 'tis no gho...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...hair was y-kempt behind his back,
As any raven's feather it shone for black.
A wreath of gold *arm-great*, of huge weight, *thick as a man's arm*
Upon his head sate, full of stones bright,
Of fine rubies and clear diamants.
About his car there wente white alauns*, *greyhounds 
Twenty and more, as great as any steer,
To hunt the lion or the wilde bear,
And follow'd him, with muzzle fast y-bound,
Collars of gold, and torettes* filed round. *rings
An hundred lor...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...
     You, Herbert and Luffness, alight
     And bind the wounds of yonder knight;
     Let the gray palfrey bear his weight,
     We destined for a fairer freight,
     And bring him on to Stirling straight;
     I will before at better speed,
     To seek fresh horse and fitting weed.
     The sun rides high;—I must be boune
     To see the archer-game at noon;
     But lightly Bayard clears the lea.—
     De Vaux and Herries, follow me.
     XVIII.

     'Stan...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...enderings 
And terrors that began
When Death let fall a feather from his wings 
And humbled the first man? 
Because the weight of our humility, 
Wherefrom we gain 
A little wisdom and much pain,
Falls here too sore and there too tedious, 
Are we in anguish or complacency, 
Not looking far enough ahead 
To see by what mad couriers we are led 
Along the roads of the ridiculous,
To pity ourselves and laugh at faith 
And while we curse life bear it? 
And if we see the soul’s dead...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ock, but of wisdom: no
clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high. if he soars with his own wings. 

A dead body. revenges not injuries.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise
Folly is the cloke of knavery.

Shame is Prides cloke. 


PLATE 8

Prisons are buil...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...le sea
Is but a Notion - unto me." 

And darkly fell her answer dread
Upon his unresisting head,
Like half a hundredweight of lead. 

"The Good and Great must ever shun
That reckless and abandoned one
Who stoops to perpetrate a pun. 

"The man that smokes - that reads the TIMES -
That goes to Christmas Pantomimes -
Is capable of ANY crimes!" 

He felt it was his turn to speak,
And, with a shamed and crimson cheek,
Moaned "This is harder than Bezique!" 

But when s...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...nowledge doth not thus abate,
Follow it even to the night, but I
Am weary" . . . Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
"First who art thou?" . . . "Before thy memory
"I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
"Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau--no...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...poems, 
The domestic joys, the daily housework or business, the building of houses—these are
 not
 phantasms—they have weight, form, location; 
Farms, profits, crops, markets, wages, government, are none of them phantasms, 
The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,
The earth is not an echo—man and his life, and all the things of his life, are
 well-consider’d. 

You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely around yourself; 
Yourself! Your...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things