Famous Widen Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

1991-II

...The ewes crowd to the mangers;
Their bellies widen, sag;
Their udders tighten. Soon
The little voices cry
In morning cold. Soon now
The garden must be worked,
Laid off in rows, the seed
Of life to come brought down
Into the dark to rest,
Abide awhile alone,
And rise. Soon, soon again
The cropland must be plowed,
For the years promise now
Answers the years desire,
Its hunger and its hope.
This goes agai...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell


Anonymous Drawing

...f he can hold the spirited creature
beside him
Until the master shall arrive to ride him.
Already the animal's nostrils widen with rage or fear.
But if we imagine him snorting, about to rear,
This boy, who should know about such things better than we,
Only stands smiling, passive and ornamental, in a fantastic livery
Of ruffles and puffed breeches,
Watching the artist, apparently, as he sketches.
Meanwhile the petty lord who must have paid
For the artist's trip up from Perugi...Read more of this...
by Justice, Donald

Cheerfulness Taught By Reason

...lank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope 
Must widen early, is it well to droop, 
For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted 
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints ? At least it may be said
' Because the way is short, I thank thee, God. '...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Cleon

...hills shut up, 
And mock her with my leave to take the same? 
The artificer has given her one small tube 
Past power to widen or exchange--what boots 
To know she might spout oceans if she could? 
She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread: 
And so a man can use but a man's joy 
While he sees God's. Is it for Zeus to boast, 
"See, man, how happy I live, and despair-- 
That I may be still happier--for thy use!" 
If this were so, we could not thank our lord, 
As hearts beat o...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Hiawathas Fishing

...gulls! O my brothers! 
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; 
Make the rifts a little larger, 
With your claws the openings widen, 
Set me free from this dark prison, 
And henceforward and forever 
Men shall speak of your achievements, 
Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, 
Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!"
And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls
Toiled with beak and claws together, 
Made the rifts and openings wider 
In the mighty ribs of Nahma, 
And from peril and from prison, 
...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth


Human Life's Mystery

...wound 
We grope for them!—with strangled breath 
We stretch our hands abroad and try 
To reach them in our agony,— 
And widen, so, the broad life-wound 
Which soon is large enough for death....Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

I think to Live -- may be a Bliss

...those who dare to try --
Beyond my limit to conceive --
My lip -- to testify --

I think the Heart I former wore
Could widen -- till to me
The Other, like the little Bank
Appear -- unto the Sea --

I think the Days -- could every one
In Ordination stand --
And Majesty -- be easier --
Than an inferior kind --

No numb alarm -- lest Difference come --
No Goblin -- on the Bloom --
No start in Apprehension's Ear,
No Bankruptcy -- no Doom --

But Certainties of Sun --
Midsummer -...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Mushrooms

...ing the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Song of the Worm

...HE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treadi...Read more of this...
by Cook, Eliza

The Broken Balance

...ll live under glass
And beauty will go savage in the secret mountains.
There is beauty in power also.
You children must widen your minds' eyes to take mountains
Instead of faces, and millions
Instead of persons; not to hate life; and massed power
After the lone hawk's dead.

III

That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow
Fire licking the sides of the gray stones,
Has a more passionate and more pure heart
In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine;
But he is bet...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson

The Cloud

...n roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Cross-Roads

...surging to smother her. But she sees 
nothing.
The stake holds firm. The body writhes, the body squirms.
The blue spots widen, the flesh tears, but the stake wears well
in the deep, black ground. It holds the body in the still, 
black ground.

Two years! The body has been in the ground two years. It 
is worn away;
it is clay to clay. Where the heart moulders, a greenish 
dust, the stake
is thrust. Late August it is, and night; a night flauntingly 
jewelled
with stars, a night...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Drug-Shop or Endymion in Edmonstoun

...sky for fear 
A brittle crackling should clash suddenly 
Against the quiet, and a black line creep 
Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, 
Until the broken heavens streamed apart, 
Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, 
Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. 
I lay there, a black blot upon a shield 
Of quivering, watery whiteness. The hush held 
Until I staggered up and cried aloud, 
And then it seemed that something far too great 
For knowledge, and illim...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

The Hypnotist

...in a pained and insulted way 
that 'Thomas also presumed to doubt', 
And thus do I rub my opponents out. 
For folks may widen their mental range, 
But priest and parson, thay never change." 

With dragging footsteps and downcast head 
The hypnotiser went home to bed, 
And since that very successful test 
He has given the magic art a rest; 
Had he tried the ladies, and worked it right, 
What curious tales might have come to light!...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...thy
countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and
wine; O African! black African! (go. winged thought widen his
forehead.) 
The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun
into the western sea.
Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary, element roaring
fled away:
Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king: his
grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans,
among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants:
banners...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Norsemen (From Narrative and Legendary Poems )

...he waters of my native stream 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore; 
And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear,-- 
A spell is in this old gray ston...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Other

...e love you, you confess everything.
Bright hair, shoe-black, old plastic,

Is my life so intriguing?
Is it for this you widen your eye-rings?

Is it for this the air motes depart?
They rae not air motes, they are corpuscles.

Open your handbag. What is that bad smell?
It is your knitting, busily

Hooking itself to itself,
It is your sticky candies.

I have your head on my wall.
Navel cords, blue-red and lucent,

Shriek from my belly like arrows, and these I ride.
O moon-glow,...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

...'t afraid. I should have been afraid.
To this day I don't know why I wasn't.
I could hear time cease, the field quietly widen.
I could feel the spreading stillness of the place
Moving like something I'd witnessed as a child,
Like the ancient, armored leisure of some reptile
Gliding, gray-yellow, into the slightly tepid,
Unidentical gray-brown stillness of the water--
Something blank & unresponsive in its tough,
Pimpled skin--seen only a moment, then unseen
As it submerged to ...Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry

Three Women

...great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back. They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows. I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured. I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again. I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

You Andrew Marvell

...he westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under the the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish...Read more of this...
by MacLeish, Archibald

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Widen poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry

Member Area

My Admin
Profile and Settings
Edit My Poems
Edit My Quotes
Edit My Short Stories
Edit My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder

Soup Social

Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us

Member Poems

Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread

Member Poets

Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest

Famous Poems

Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Famous Poets

Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War

Poetry Resources

Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter