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Famous Wherefrom Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...d; his neighbor 'gan to pray;
And so they clung and dropped and prayed, alway.

But I did mark one lately-opened bloom,
Wherefrom arose a visible perfume
That wrapped me in a cloud of dainty gloom.

And rose -- an odor by a spirit haunted --
And drew me upward with a speed enchanted,
Swift floating, by wild sea or sky undaunted,

Straight through the cloud of death, where men are free.
I gained a height, and stayed and bent my knee.
Then glowed my cloud, and broke and unveile...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney



...weeps them willy nilly like blown dust 
With glory or lust. 


It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come 
None knows wherefrom, 
The viewless draughty tide 
And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide, 
And then subside, 


Along these ghostly corridors and halls 
Like faint footfalls; 
The hangings stir in the air; 
And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?" 
It answers, "Where?" 


The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, 
Its plangor and surge; 
The awful bit...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss
...maul me? for good talk,
and gripe of retail loss? I dare say not.
I don't thínk there's that place

save sullen here, wherefrom she flies tonight
retrieving her whole body, which I need.
I recall a 'coon treed,
flashlights, & barks, and I was in that tree,
and something can (has) been said for sobriety
but very little.

The guns. Ah, darling, it was late for me,
midnight, at seven. How in famished youth
could I forsee Henry's sweet seed
unspent across so flying barren groun...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John
...ving ideas (when in the struggle of thought
harden'd by language they became symbols of faith)
Reason builded her maze, wherefrom none should escape,
wandering intent to map and learn her tortuous clews,
chanting their clerkly creed to the high-echoing stones
of their hand-fashion'd temple: but the Wind of heav'n
bloweth where it listeth, and Christ yet walketh the earth,
and talketh still as with those two disciples once 
on the road to Emmaus-where they walk and are sad;
wh...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...hem both against earth's face,
Where, finding sulphur, a quadruple wrath
Unhinges the poor world;---not in that strife,
Wherefrom I take strange lore, and read it deep,
Can I find reason why ye should be thus:
No, nowhere can unriddle, though I search,
And pore on Nature's universal scroll
Even to swooning, why ye, Divinities,
The first-born of all shap'd and palpable Gods,
Should cower beneath what, in comparison,
Is untremendous might. Yet ye are here,
O'erwhelm'd, and spur...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...appearance lies,

Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing

Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.

Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.

All is either the irrational world we see

Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot

Its use for our thought's use. Whence taketh me

A qualm-like ache of life, a body-deep

Soul-hate of what we seek and what we weep....Read more of this...
by Pessoa, Fernando
....

This for a moment only, presently
He rode on giddy still, until he reach'd
A place of apple-trees, by the thorn-tree
Wherefrom St. Joseph in the days past preached.

Dazed there he laid his head upon a tomb,
Not knowing it was Arthur's, at which sight
One of her maidens told her, "He is come,"
And she went forth to meet him; yet a blight

Had settled on her, all her robes were black,
With a long white veil only; she went slow,
As one walks to be slain, her eyes did lack
Ha...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...good.

Certainly they were mad from of old; but I think one new thing,
That the magic whereby they work their magic -- wherefrom their fortunes spring --
May be that they show all peoples their magic and ask no price in return.
Wherefore, since ye are bond to that magic, O Hubshee, make haste and learn!

Certainly also is Kitchener mad. But one sure thing I know --
If he who broke you be minded to teach you, to his Madrissa go!
Go, and carry your shoes in your hand and bow y...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, 
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom 
Ye learn your song: 
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, 
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air 
Bloom the year long! 

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams: 
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, 
A throe of the heart, 
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, 
No dying cade...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...rt, 
an eternal pasture folded in all thought 
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light 
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am 
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved 
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words 
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing 
east against the source of the sun 
in an...Read more of this...
by Duncan, Robert
...he thrifty roots,
Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,
And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,
Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.
Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see
That the branches of a tree
Spread no wider than its roots.
And how shall the soul of a man
Be larger than the life he has lived?...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee
...killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend:
`Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree
And broods as gray as any dove,
And calls, `When wilt thou come, O Love?'
And pleads across the waste to thee.

Good Moment, that giv'st him me,
Wast ever in love? May...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ot I apart 
Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day. 
Here is my very cross by strangers borne, 
Here is my bosom-sin wherefrom I pray 
Hourly deliverance--this my rose, my thorn. 
This woman my soul's need can understand, 
Stretching o'er silent gulfs her sister hand."...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...eep with time; 
 Nor massy towers, that fascinate mine eyes; 
 No, 'tis that spot—the mind's tranquillity— 
 Chamber wherefrom the song mounts cheerily, 
 Placed like a joyful nest well nigh the skies. 
 
 Yea! glorious is the Church, I ween, but Meekness dwelleth here; 
 Less do I love the lofty oak than mossy nest it bear; 
 More dear is meadow breath than stormy wind: 
 And when my mind for meditation's meant, 
 The seaweed is preferred to the shore's extent,— 
...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...at 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 end in death, 
Are we to...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...for me,
So royal-rich and wide."* * * * *

Four courts I made, East, West and South and North,
In each a squared lawn, wherefrom
The golden gorge of dragons spouted forth
A flood of fountain-foam.

And round the cool green courts there ran a row
Of cloisters, branch'd like mighty woods,
Echoing all night to that sonorous flow
Of spouted fountain-floods.

And round the roofs a gilded gallery
That lent broad verge to distant lands,
Far as the wild swan wings, to where the sky
...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...he has bartered clean away.
We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own."
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low: --
"I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.
Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I g...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry