Famous Act Like Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Act Like poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous act like poems. These examples illustrate what a famous act like poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
We thirst at first -- 'tis Nature's Act --
And later -- when we die --
A little Water supplicate --
Of fingers going by --
It intimates the finer want --
Whose adequate supply
Is that Great Water in the West --
Termed Immortality --...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
and Tian the low speaking
And "we are unknown," said Kung,
"You will take up charioteering?
"Then you will become known,
"Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery?
"Or the practice of public speaking?"
And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return From Ireland
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing,
His numbers languishing.
'Tis time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unus?d armour's rust:
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
God made no act without a cause,
Nor heart without an aim,
Our inference is premature,
Our premises to blame....Read more of this...
by
Philip Freneau
A HERMIT'S house beside a stream
With forests planted round,
Whatever it to you may seem
More real happiness I deem
Than if I were a monarch crowned.
A cottage I could call my own
Remote from domes of care;
A little garden, walled with stone,
The wall with ivy overgrown,
A limpid fountain near,
Would more substantial joys afford,
More real bliss impart
Than all...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.
'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust --
Ruin is formal -- Devil's work
Consecutive and slow --
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping -- is Crash's law....Read more of this...
by
Francis Thompson
What is the song the stars sing?
(And a million songs are as song of one)
This is the song the stars sing:
(Sweeter song's none)
One to set, and many to sing,
(And a million songs are as song of one)
One to stand, and many to cling,
The many things, and the one Thing,
The one that runs not, the many that run.
The ever new...Read more of this...
by
Tony Hoagland
If you are lucky in this life,
you will get to help your enemy
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.
Into the big enamel tub
half-filled with water
which I had made just right,
I lowered the childish skeleton
she had become.
Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed
her belly and her chest,
the sorry ruin...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
When Allah mixed my clay, He knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
Without His will no act of mine was wrought;
Is it then just to punish me in hell?...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
We are in Fate and Fate's and do but lack
Outness from soul to know ourselves its dwelling,
And do but compel Fate aside or back
By Fate's own immanence in the compelling.
We are too far in us from outward truth
To know how much we are not what we are,
And live but in the heat of error's youth,
Yet young enough its acting youth...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
SO grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
These letters : yet so powerful is your sway
As if you bid me die, I must obey.
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
Proem.
1.1 Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie,
1.2 Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky
1.3 Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime,
1.4 And so has vow'd, whilst there is world or time.
1.5 So great's thy glory, and thine excellence,
1.6 The sound thereof raps every human sense
1.7 That men account it no...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Vous êtes singulier.")
{MARION DELORME, Act I., June, 1829, played 1831.}
MARION (smiling.) You're strange, and yet I love you thus.
DIDIER. You love me?
Beware, nor with light lips utter that word.
You love me!—know you what it is to love
With love that is the life-blood in one's...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Finding is the first Act
The second, loss,
Third, Expedition for
The "Golden Fleece"
Fourth, no Discovery --
Fifth, no Crew --
Finally, no Golden Fleece --
Jason -- sham -- too....Read more of this...
by
Louise Bogan
Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden, There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.
Now that I...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O heart! act as if all the good things of this world
belonged to you; imagine that this house is provided
with everything, that it is richly furnished, and live joyously
in this domain of disorder. Realize that thou restest
here for two or three days, and that thereafter thou
shalt rise and go away....Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight.
The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
When Susan's work was done, she'd sit
With one fat guttering candle lit,
And window opened wide to win
The sweet night air to enter in;
There, with a thumb to keep her place
She'd read, with stern and wrinkled face.
Her mild eyes gliding very slow
Across the letters to and fro,
While wagged the guttering candle flame...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The gleam of an heroic Act
Such strange illumination
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination....Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"
1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS
Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity--the ordered life
our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face
annihilation unless all citizens get in...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SCENE.--A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione areseated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.
Prometheus.
Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which Thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
Enter, as in the Temple of Jerusalem,
ATHALIA, MATHAN, ABNER
[Mathan]
WHY, to our Wonder, in this Place is seen,
Thus discompos'd, and alter'd, Juda's Queen?
May we demand, what Terrors seize your Breast,
Or, why your Steps are to this House addrest,
Where your unguarded Person stands expos'd
To secret Foes, within its Walls inclos'd?
Can it be thought that you...Read more of this...
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