Famous Act On Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Act On 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 on poems. These examples illustrate what a famous act on poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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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
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXVII. Che fai, alma? che pensi? avrem mai pace? DIALOGUE OF THE POET WITH HIS HEART. P. What actions fire thee, and what musings fill?Soul! is it peace, or truce, or war eterne? H. Our lot I know not, but, as I discern,Her bright eyes favour not our cherish'd ill....Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering,
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.
2
After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence;
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.
The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues;
All that a person does,...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed...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...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THERE was a wooer blithe and gay,
A son of France was he,--
Who in his arms for many a day,
As though his bride were she,
A poor young maiden had caress'd,
And fondly kiss'd, and fondly press'd,
And then at length deserted.
When this was told the nut-brown maid,
Her senses straightway fled;
She laugh'd and wept, and vow'd and pray'd,
And presently was dead.
The hour her...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Non! je n'y puis tenir.")
{CROMWELL, Act III. sc. iv.}
Stay! I no longer can contain myself,
But cry you: Look on John, who bares his mind
To Oliver—to Cromwell, Milton speaks!
Despite a kindling eye and marvel deep
A voice is lifted up without your leave;
For I was never...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
[Concerning Edgar Allan Poe]
Who now will praise the Wizard in the street
With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet —
This Jingle-man, of strolling players born,
Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn,
This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good,
With melancholy bells upon his hood?
The hurrying great ones scorn his Raven's croak,
And well may...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Where the sea gulls sleep or indeed where they fly
Is a place of different traffic. Although I
Consider the fishing bay (where I see them dip and curve
And purely glide) a place that weakens the nerve
Of will, and closes my eyes, as they should not be
(They should burn like the street-light all night quietly,
So that whatever is present will be...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
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
Jane Taylor
Old John had an apple-tree, healthy and green,
Which bore the best codlins that ever were seen,
So juicy, so mellow, and red;
And when they were ripe, he disposed of his store,
To children or any who pass'd by his door,
To buy him a morsel of bread.
Little Dick, his next neighbour, one often might see,
With longing eye viewing this...Read more of this...
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
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XII. Una donna più bella assai che 'l sole. GLORY AND VIRTUE. A lady, lovelier, brighter than the sun,Like him superior o'er all time and space,Of rare resistless grace,Me to her train in early life had won:She, from that hour, in act, and word and thought,—For still the world...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
Lovers in the act despense
With such meum-tuum sense
As might warningly reveal
What they must not pick or steal,
And their nostrum is to say:
'I and you are both away.'
After, when they disentwine
You from me and yours from mine,
Neither can be certain who
Was that I whose mine was you.
To the act again they go
More completely not to know.
Theft is theft and...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I am the only actor.
It is difficult for one woman
to act out a whole play.
The play is my life,
my solo act.
My running after the hands
and never catching up.
(The hands are out of sight -
that is, offstage.)
All I am doing onstage is running,
running to keep up,
but never making it.
Suddenly I stop running.
(This moves the plot along a bit.)
I give speeches,...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
DONNA SOL to HERNANI.
("Nous partirons demain.")
{HERNANI, ACT I.}
To mount the hills or scaffold, we go to-morrow:
Hernani, blame me not for this my boldness.
Art thou mine evil genius or mine angel?
I know not, but I am thy slave. Now hear me:
Go where thou wilt,...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
Sidney Lanier
In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.
O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,
I know not how, I care not why, --
Thy music sets my world at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MANY good works I've done and ended,
Ye take the praise--I'm not offended;
For in the world, I've always thought
Each thing its true position hath sought.
When praised for foolish deeds am I,
I set off laughing heartily;
When blamed for doing something good,
I take it in an easy mood.
If some one stronger gives me hard blows,
That it's a jest, I feign to suppose:
But...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
Robert Browning
I.
I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be---
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave,---I claim
---Only a memory of the same,
---And this beside, if you will...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
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
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...
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