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Famous Absorb Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...d temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily;) 
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene, fain to absorb it all; 
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead; 
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood;
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard outside also
 fill’d; 
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweati...Read more of this...



by Levy, Amy
...ngel faces 'thwart the grating seen)
Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach
To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb
The faces' full perfection, Heaven's gate,
Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to,
And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold,
Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men:
"He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive
For higher fruits than what our tillage yields;
Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride!"
Why play with figures? trifle prettily
W...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emp...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...proud victory of the Union, in that secession war? 
Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? 
Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air—to appear again in my strength, gait,
 face? 
Have real employments contributed to it? original makers—not mere amanuenses? 
Does it meet modern discoveries, calibers, facts face to face?
What does it mean to me? to American persons, progresses, cities? Chicago, Kanada,
 Arkansas?
 the planter, Yankee, Georgian, native, i...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...were so far off
From God's celestial crystals ; all things blurred
And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates
Absorb the light here ? -- not a hill or stone
With heart to strike a radiant colour up
Or active outline on the indifferent air.
I think I see my father's sister stand
Upon the hall-step of her country-house
To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,
Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight
As if for taming accidental thoughts
From possible ...Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...plies
while overhead a plane corrodes
all feel of sanctuary and solace

i cut the edges off the sound
and let the storm absorb my skin
my drift unravelling as a skein
through paths no brain's designed
i want the consciousness you're in

too much a strain - my mind can't click
to earthen voices (whispers signs)
my eyes alert to this life's scenes
my ears are ticked to autumn's clock
my shoes crunch upon chestnut spines


(ii)
not a bird singing or flying
i seize upon such abse...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...und crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds

so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose signature 
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, b...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...around to soar, to sing the idea of all; 
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, 
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs—to Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas, to sing
 theirs, 
To Tennessee and Kentucky—to the Carolinas and Georgia, to sing theirs, 
To Texas, and so along up toward California, to roam accepted everywhere; ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...tal apprenticehood
the child of very simplicity, and in the grace
and beauteous attitude of infantine wonder,
is apt to absorb Ideas in primal purity,
and by the assimilation of thatt immortal food
may build immortal life; but ever with the growth
of understanding, as the sensible images
are more and more corrupt, troubled by questioning thought,
or with vainglory alloy'd, 'tis like enought the boy
in prospect of his manhood wil hav cast to th' winds
his Baptism with his Baby...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...I thought that nature was enough
Till Human nature came
But that the other did absorb
As Parallax a Flame --

Of Human nature just aware
There added the Divine
Brief struggle for capacity
The power to contain

Is always as the contents
But give a Giant room
And you will lodge a Giant
And not a smaller man...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...As yon great Sun in his supreme condition 
Absorbs small worlds and makes them all his own, 
So does my love absorb each vain ambition 
Each outside purpose which my life has known. 
Stars cannot shine so near that vast orb's splendor, 
They are content to feed his flames of fire; 
And so my heart is satisfied to render 
Its strength, its all, to meet thy strong desire.

As in a forest when d...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...e, 
Her animating beam. 

SWEET ELOQUENCE! thy mild controul, 
Awakes to REASON's dawn, the IDIOT soul; 
When mists absorb the MENTAL sight, 
'Tis thine, to dart CREATIVE LIGHT; 
'Tis thine, to chase the filmy clouds away, 
And o'er the mind's deep bloom, spread a refulgent ray. 
Nor is thy wond'rous art confin'd, 
Within the bounds of MENTAL space, 
For thou canst boast exterior grace, 
Bright emblem of the fertile mind; 
Yes; I have seen thee, with persuasion meek, ...Read more of this...

by Brown, Thomas Edward
...
That are His own, not merely balanced strife. 

Nay, the great passions are His veriest thought, 
Which whoso can absorb, 
Nor, querulous halting, violate their orb, 
In him the mind of God is fullest wrought. 

Thrice happy such an one! Far other he 
Who dallies on the edge 
Of the great vortex, clinging to a sedge 
Of patent good, a timorous Manichee; 

Who takes the impact of a long-breathed force, 
And fritters it away 
In eddies of disgust, that else might stay...Read more of this...

by Davidson, John
...to hold me
so he couldn't see me.
I remember
staring straight ahead
into the world my father saw;
I was learning
to absorb its emptiness,
the heavy snow
not falling, whirling around us....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...of my soul. 
No more when in retirement blest, 
Shalt thou obtrude upon my rest; 
And tho' encircled with delight, 
Absorb my sense, obscure my sight, 
Give to my eye the vacant glance, 
The mien that marks the mental trance; 
The fault'ring tone­the sudden start, 
The trembling hand, the bursting heart; 
The devious step, that strolls along 
Unmindful of the gazing throng; 
The feign'd indiff'rence prone to chide; 
That blazons­what it seeks to hide. 

Nor do I dread...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...coats and feeling downright sinful,
Despairfully he wandered in to Shinnigan's shebeen;
And straightway he proceeded to absorb a might skinful
Of the deadliest variety of Shinnigan's potheen.
And when he started homeward it was in the early morning,
But Shamus followed faithfully, a yard behind his back;
Then Casey slipped and stumbled, and without the slightest warning
like a lump of lead he tumbled - right across the railroad track.

And there he lay, serenely, and ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for t...Read more of this...

by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...a world like ours, 
Flung from the orb that whirled our own 
A molten pebble from its zone? 
How must thy burning sands absorb 
The fire-waves of the blazing orb, 
Thy chain so short, thy path so near, 
Thy flame-defying creatures hear 
The maelstroms of the photosphere! 
And is thy bosom decked with flowers 
That steal their bloom from scalding showers? 
And hast thou cities, domes, and towers, 
And life, and love that makes it dear, 
And death that fills thy tribes with fea...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling....Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...
Matter intense vibrates with fierce turmoil
In vaults where wonders new, 'mid stress and toil,
Are forged, that can absorb space, time and night.


—A palace—of an architecture grown
Effete, and weary 'neath its hundred years.
Whence voices vast invoke, instinct with fears,
The thunder in its flights toward the Unknown.


On the silent, even road—his eyes
Still fixed towards the waning light
That skirts the houses and walls as it dies—
The rope-maker, visionar...Read more of this...

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