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Famous Measureless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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...ender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass, 
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages, 
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra, 
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging,
 silvery
 fringes, 
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows, 
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and product...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...ver unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, 
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; 
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold; 
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...y loud and hollow gulfs,
Thy searchless fountain and invisible course,
Have each their type in me; and the wide sky
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 
Contains thy waters, as the universe
Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched
Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste
I' the passing wind!'

Beside the grassy shore
Of the small stream he went; he did impress
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caugh...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...r> Being taken there
by car, from a town so newly born that grass
still accounted all distance, an explanation
drawn in measureless yellows, a tone
stubbling the whole world, ten minutes away.

Consider now how the single pussy willow
edging a cattle pond in winter becomes
a wind-shivered monument to what this mean
a placid loneliness asking nothing, nothing?...
Not knowing then the proper name for things
green chubs of milo, the husbandry of soy,
bovine patie...Read more of this...
by Belieu, Erin



...ystic meaning—these young lives, 
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal ships! 
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas, 
On the Soul’s voyage. 

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? 
Only a Public School? 

Ah more—infinitely more; 
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and
 mortar—these dead floors, windows, rails—you call the church? 
Why this is not the church at all—the Churc...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...most desire,
That to myself I may at least be true;
And on that day my heart and limbs so tire,
With utmost strain and measureless desire,
That, at the worst, I may but fall asleep
When in the sunlight round that sword shall sweep. "

He went therewith, nor anywhere would bide,
But unto Argos restlessly did wend;
And there, as one who lays all hope aside,
Because the leech has said his life must end,
Silent farewell he bade to foe and friend, 
And took his way unto the r...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...ogether, 
Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather, 
Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued. 

Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook 
quoin, 
Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there, 
Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there - 
Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join. 

Even then! while unweeting that vision coul...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...hat stretch before me,
By the height of the cloud that sails, with rest in motion,
Over the plains and the vales to the measureless ocean,
(Oh, how the sight of the things that are great enlarges the eyes!)
Lead me out of the narrow life, to the peace of the hills
and the skies.

While the tremulous leafy haze on the woodland is spreading,
And the bloom on the meadow betrays where May has been treading;
While the birds on the branches above, and the brooks flowing under,
...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...stical than that which binds the stars planetary,

Strike from their several tones one octave chord
Whose cadence being measureless would fly
Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord
Return refreshed with its new empery
And more exultant power, - this indeed
Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed.

Ah! it was easy when the world was young
To keep one's life free and inviolate,
From our sad lips another song is rung,
By our own hands our h...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...er according as they had heard and seen. Then she bade them go with all speed and invite the stranger to come for a measureless hire. As hinds or heifers in spring time, when sated with pasture, bound about a meadow, so they, holding up the folds of their lovely garments, darted down the hollow path, and their hair like a crocus flower streamed about their shoulders. And they found the good goddess near the wayside where they had left her before, and led her to th...Read more of this...
by Homer,
...In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
D...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...
Prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of Souls; 
Itself only finally satisfies the Soul; 
The Soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own.

8
Now I give you an inkling; 
Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, space, reality, 
That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own. 

What is prudence, is indivisible, 
Declines to separate one part of life from every part,
Divides not the r...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...rld’s musicians, 
The solemn hymns and masses, rousing adoration, 
All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals, 
The measureless sweet vocalists of ages, 
And for their solvent setting, Earth’s own diapason,
Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves; 
A new composite orchestra—binder of years and climes—ten-fold renewer, 
As of the far-back days the poets tell—the Paradiso, 
The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done, 
The journey done, the Journe...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ver—they press close
 without
 lust—his lips press her neck,
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son
 holds
 the
 father in his arms with measureless love, 
The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter, 
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm’d by friend, 
The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar—the wrong’d
 is
 made
 right, 
The call of the sl...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...re mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies; 
Welcome the rich borders of rivers, table-lands, openings; 
Welcome the measureless grazing-lands—welcome the teeming soil of orchards, flax, honey,
 hemp;

Welcome just as much the other more hard-faced lands;
Lands rich as lands of gold, or wheat and fruit lands; 
Lands of mines, lands of the manly and rugged ores; 
Lands of coal, copper, lead, tin, zinc; 
LANDS OF IRON! lands of the make of the axe! 

3
The log at the wood-pi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...Maternal? 
And lives and works—what are they all at last except the roads to Faith and Death?) 

While we rehearse our measureless wealth, it is for thee, dear Mother!
We own it all and several to-day indissoluble in Thee; 
—Think not our chant, our show, merely for products gross, or lucre—it is for Thee, the
 Soul, electric, spiritual! 
Our farms, inventions, crops, we own in Thee! Cities and States in Thee! 
Our freedom all in Thee! our very lives in Thee!...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...the Muse, 
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, 
Sing me the Universal. 

In this broad Earth of ours, 
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart, 
Nestles the seed Perfection. 

By every life a share, or more or less, 
None born but it is born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed is waiting. 

2
Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking, 
Successive, absolute fiats issuing. 

Yet ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...d! 
For human flesh there breeds as furiously 
As the green things and the cattle; and it is all, 
All this enormity of measureless folk, 
Penn'd in a land so close to the devil's reign 
The very apes have faith in him. -- No, no; 
Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God 
Too easily. God would not have me waste 
My zeal for Him in this wild enterprise, 
Of going alone to swarming India; -- one man, 
One mortal voice, to charm those myriad ears 
Away from the fiendis...Read more of this...
by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...most excellent sun, so calm and haughty; 
The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes;
The gentle, soft-born, measureless light; 
The miracle, spreading, bathing all—the fulfill’d noon; 
The coming eve, delicious—the welcome night, and the stars, 
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 

13
Sing on! sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses—pour your chant from the bushes; 
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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