Famous Adding Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Polar Explorer

by Joseph Brodsky
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen it...Read more of this...

The Dark Girls Rhyme

by Dorothy Parker
 Who was there had seen us
Wouldn't bid him run?
Heavy lay between us
All our sires had done.

There he was, a-springing
Of a pious race,
Setting hags a-swinging
In a market-place;

Sowing turnips over
Where the poppies lay;
Looking past the clover,
Adding up the hay;

Shouting through the Spring song,
Clumping down the sod;
Toadying, in sing-song,
To a crabbed god.

There I was, that came of
Folk of mud and name-
I that...Read more of this...

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

by Les Murray
 To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah -...Read more of this...

The Peacock

by William Butler Yeats
 What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three Rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye....Read more of this...

A Birthday Present

by Sylvia Plath
 What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one,...Read more of this...

Canal Bank Walk

by Patrick Kavanagh
 Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and...Read more of this...

Marriage And Feasts

by Victor Hugo
 ("La salle est magnifique.") 
 
 {IV. Aug. 23, 1839.} 


 The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright— 
 The feast to pampered palate gives delight— 
 The sated guests pick at the spicy food, 
 And drink profusely, for the cheer is good; 
 And at that table—where the wise are few— 
 Both sexes and all...Read more of this...

Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter

by Robert Frost
 The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

Merlin II

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
To every foot its antipode,
Each color with its counter glowed,
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;
Flavor gladly blends with flavor;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough,
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet,
In one body grooms and brides;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal...Read more of this...

Within the Circuit of This Plodding Life

by Henry David Thoreau
 Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances
I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the...Read more of this...

A Grammarians Funeral

by Robert Browning
 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave...Read more of this...

An answer to Various Bards

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in, 
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin, 
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp, 
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp; 
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom -- 
But you know...Read more of this...

Well Water

by Randall Jarrell
 What a girl called "the dailiness of life"
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel...Read more of this...

The Peacock

by William Butler Yeats
 What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three Rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye....Read more of this...

The Fox And Crane

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ONCE two persons uninvited

Came to join my dinner table;
For the nonce they lived united,

Fox and crane yclept in fable.

Civil greetings pass'd between us

Then I pluck'd some pigeons tender
For the fox of jackal-genius,

Adding grapes in full-grown splendour.

Long-neck'd flasks I put as dishes

For the crane, without delaying,
Fill'd with gold and silver fishes,

In the limpid water playing.

Had ye witness'd Reynard planted

At his...Read more of this...

The Executor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Greedy Heir long waited to fulfill, 
As his Executor, a Kinsman's Will; 
And to himself his Age repeated o'er, 
To his Infirmities still adding more; 
And nicely kept th' Account of the expected Store: 
When Death, at last, to either gave Release, 
Making One's Pains, the Other's Longings cease: 
Who to the Grave must decently convey, 
Ere he...Read more of this...

Merlin

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I
Thy trivial harp will never please 
Or fill my craving ear; 
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 
Free, peremptory, clear. 
No jingling serenader's art, 
Nor tinkle of piano strings, 
Can make the wild blood start 
In its mystic springs. 
The kingly bard 
Must smile the chords rudely and hard, 
As with hammer or with mace; 
That they...Read more of this...

Dockery And Son

by Philip Larkin
 'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell...Read more of this...

Sonnet XX

by William Shakespeare
 A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling,
Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman...Read more of this...

Sonnet 20: A womans face with Natures own hand painted

by William Shakespeare
 A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman...Read more of this...

O thou who hast been burned and burned again, and

by Omar Khayyam
O thou who hast been burned and burned again, and
now deservest life anew! thou who art worthy only of adding
fuel to the fire of Hell! how long wilt thou pray the
Divinity to pardon Omar? What relation exists between
thee and God? What audacity drives thee to ask Him to
exercise His pity?...Read more of this...

Goliath Of Gath

by Phillis Wheatley
 SAMUEL, Chap. xvii.

YE martial pow'rs, and all ye tuneful nine,
Inspire my song, and aid my high design.
The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write,
The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight:
You best remember, and you best can sing
The acts of heroes to the vocal string:
Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre,
Did then the poet and the sage...Read more of this...

Playthings

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning. 
I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig. 
I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour. 
Perhaps you glance at me and think, "What a stupid game to spoil your morning with!" 
Child,...Read more of this...

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