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Famous Wisps Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Verhaeren, Emile
...fences that enfold
The villages, neglected, grey, and old:
Chaplets of rags and linen shreds that fall
In frayed-out wisps from upright poles and tall.
Blue pigeon-houses glued against the thatch,
And windows with a patch
Of dingy paper on each lowering pane,
Houses with straight-set gutters, side by side
Across the broad stone gambles crucified,
Mills, uniform, forlorn.
Each rising from its hillock like a horn,
Steeples afar and chapels round about,
The rain, the...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...gs and leaves of lilies, 
Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, 
Lighted by the shimmering moonlight, 
And by will-o'-the-wisps illumined, 
Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled, 
In their weary night-encampments.
All the air was white with moonlight, 
All the water black with shadow, 
And around him the Suggema, 
The mosquito, sang his war-song, 
And the fire-flies, Wah-wah-taysee, 
Waved their torches to mislead him; 
And the bull-frog, the Dahinda, 
Thrust his head into th...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...rother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...n or whatever, to see with me the changing

Seasons of heather from purple September glory

To the browns of winter and wisps of summer green

And meet with Michael Haslam, fellow poet,

Maestro of the moors and shape-shifter supreme.

I write these verses sitting in the marble hall

Of City Station’s restored art deco glory,

The rats and debris of decades swept away,

How much I need the kindness of strangers,

The welcome from my son’s nurses on the 

Ward with the hig...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...hoot them!
—Impossible to make friends,
though each will grab at once
for an orange or a piece of candy.

Twined in wisps of fog,
I see you all up there
along with Formoso, the donkey,
who brays like a pump gone dry,
then suddenly stops.
—All just standing, staring
off into fog and space.
Or coming down at night,
in silence, except for hoofs,
in dim moonlight, the horse
or Formoso stumbling after.
Between us float a few
big, soft, pale-blue,
sluggish fireflies...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...and wind
Like mouths of women
Beaten by the fists of
Men using them.
 O little roses
 And broken leaves
 And petal wisps:
You that so flung your crimson
 To the sun
Only yesterday.

 III. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry
 in the darkness....Read more of this...

by Webb, Charles
...in Burbank,
and I've just noticed at thirty thousand feet?

Am I smiling, watching the clouds' icefields
melt to smoky wisps, revealing lakes
like Chinese dragons embroidered in blue below?

Lifting my ticket, do I hold a bon voyage,
or boiling jet streams, roaring thunderstorms,
the plane bounced like a boat on cast iron seas,

then the lightning flash, the dizzy plunge,
perfectly aware (amid the shrieks and prayers)
that, live or die, I won't survive the fall?...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...ams.
It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,
A morning campfire at a mountain lake.

On the lips of the child Janet,
Wisps of haze on ten miles of corn,
Young light blue calls to young light gold of morning....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
I jump from the cross-beams, and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels, and tangle my hair full of wisps. 

10
Alone, far in the wilds and mountains, I hunt, 
Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee; 
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, 
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game;
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves, with my dog and gun by my side. 

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails—she ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...im which he had quite discarded.
It woke in the silence of frost-bright 
nights,
In little lights,
Like will-o'-the-wisps flickering, fluttering,
Here -- there --
Spurting, sputtering,
Fading and lighting,
Together, asunder --
Till Lotta sat up in bed with wonder,
And the faint grey patch of the window shone
Upon her sitting there, alone.
For Theodore slept.
The twenty-eighth was last rehearsal day,
'Twas called for noon, so early morning meant
Herr Altgelt's only...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
....

From love's close kiss to hell's abyss is one sheer flight, I trow,
And wedding ring and bridal bell are will-o'-wisps of woe,
And 'tis not wise to love too well, and this all women know.

Wherefore, the wolf-pack having gorged upon the lamb, their prey,
With siren smile and serpent guile I make the wolf-pack pay --
With velvet paws and flensing claws, a tigress roused to slay.

One who in youth sought truest truth and found a devil's lies;
A symbol of the sin ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse's tramp
And a bloodhound's distant bay.

Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;
Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;

Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair.

A poor old s...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...full-rigged ship unutterably fair, 
Her masts like trees in winter, frosty-bright. 

Foam trembled at her bows like wisps of wool; 
She trembled as she towed. I had not dreamed 
That work of man could be so beautiful, 
In its own presence and in what it seemed. 

"So, she is putting back again," I said. 
"How white with frost her yards are on the fore." 
One of the men about me answer made, 
"That is not frost, but all her sails are tore, 

"Torn into tatt...Read more of this...

by Dowson, Ernest
...With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tear and twine;
Those scentless wisps of straw, that miserably line
His strait, caged universe, whereat the dull world stares,

Pedant and pitiful. O, how his rapt gaze wars
With their stupidity! Know they what dreams divine
Lift his long, laughing reveries like enchanted wine,
And make his melancholy germane to the stars'?

O lamentable brother! if those pity thee,
Am I not fain of al...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...ing wealth of mine.

And I shall watch the wan light shine
On his sleep that is filled of me,
On his brow where the wisps of fond hair twine
So truthfully,
On his lips where the light breaths come and go
Naïve and winsomely,
On his limbs that I shall weep to know
Lie under my mastery....Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs