Famous After Hours Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Moments Of Vision

by Thomas Hardy
 That mirror 
Which makes of men a transparency, 
Who holds that mirror 
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see 
Of you and me?

That mirror 
Whose magic penetrates like a dart, 
Who lifts that mirror 
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart, 
until we start?

That mirror 
Works well in these night hours of ache; 
Why in...Read more of this...

During those hours

by Emile Verhaeren
During those hours wherein we are lost so far from all that is not ourselves, what lustral blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that strain towards all love?
Clasping our hands without praying, stretching out our arms without crying aloud, but with earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not what, how we...Read more of this...

In My Solitary Hours in My Dear Husband his Absence

by Anne Bradstreet
 O Lord, Thou hear'st my daily moan 
And see'st my dropping tears. 
My troubles all are Thee before, 
My longings and my fears.

Thou hitherto hast been my God; 
Thy help my soul hath found. 
Though loss and sickness me assailed, 
Through Thee I've kept my ground.

And Thy abode Thou'st made with me; 
With Thee my soul can talk; 
In...Read more of this...

Hours of bright morning

by Emile Verhaeren
"Hours of bright morning," "Hours of afternoon," hours that stand out superbly and gently, whose dance lengthens along our warm garden-paths, saluted at passing by our golden rose-trees; summer is dying and autumn coming in.
Hours girt with blossom, will you ever return?
Yet, if destiny, that wields the stars, spares us its pains, its blows and its disasters, perhaps one day...Read more of this...

Good Hours

by Robert Frost
 I had for my winter evening walk--
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there...Read more of this...

In The Small Hours

by Wole Soyinka
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The...Read more of this...

Hours Continuing Long

by Walt Whitman
 HOURS continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted, 
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented spot, seating myself,
 leaning
 my face in my hands; 
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding swiftly the country roads,
 or
 through the city streets, or pacing miles and miles, stifling plaintive cries; 
Hours discouraged, distracted—for the...Read more of this...

Sweet hours have perished here;

by Emily Dickinson
 Sweet hours have perished here;
This is a mighty room;
Within its precincts hopes have played, --
Now shadows in the tomb....Read more of this...

Wise Men In Their Bad Hours

by Robinson Jeffers
 Wise men in their bad hours have envied 
The little people making merry like grasshoppers 
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking 
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow 
Take hold upon the future they do it 
Half asleep, with the tools of generation 
Foolishly reduplicating 
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, 
Groan against labors, wars...Read more of this...

I Have Loved Hours At Sea

by Sara Teasdale
 I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;

First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.

I have loved much and been loved deeply --
Oh when my spirit's fire burns...Read more of this...

Savantism

by Walt Whitman
 THITHER, as I look, I see each result and glory retracing itself and nestling close,
 always
 obligated; 
Thither hours, months, years—thither trades, compacts, establishments, even the most
 minute;

Thither every-day life, speech, utensils, politics, persons, estates; 
Thither we also, I with my leaves and songs, trustful, admirant, 
As a father, to his father going, takes his children along with him....Read more of this...

The Home-Coming

by Robert William Service
 My boy's come back; he's here at last;
He came home on a special train.
My longing and my ache are past,
My only son is back again.
He's home with music, flags and flowers;
With peace and joy my heart's abrim;
He got here in the morning hours
With half the town to welcome him.

To hush my grief, night after night,
How I have digged my...Read more of this...

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood
 The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of 
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Robert William Service
 My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,
 My word-battalions marching verse by verse;
Here stanza-companies are none too steady;
 There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.
And as in marshalled order I review them,
 My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,
My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them
 Immortal visions of an epic day.

It seems I'm...Read more of this...

Sonnet V: Those Hours That With Gentle Work Did Frame

by William Shakespeare
 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner...Read more of this...

Hours Continuing Long

by Walt Whitman
 HOURS continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted, 
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented spot, seating myself,
 leaning
 my face in my hands; 
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding swiftly the country roads,
 or
 through the city streets, or pacing miles and miles, stifling plaintive cries; 
Hours discouraged, distracted—for the...Read more of this...

In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust, 

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can...Read more of this...

Work

by Henry Van Dyke
 Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
When vagrant wishes beckon me astray,
"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom;
"Of all who live, I am the one by whom
"This work can best be done...Read more of this...

White Hands

by Carl Sandburg
 FOR the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium.
Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian poets before the local literary club.
Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times during her waking...Read more of this...

Yet Yet Ye Downcast Hours

by Walt Whitman
 1
YET, yet, ye downcast hours, I know ye also; 
Weights of lead, how ye clog and cling at my ankles! 
Earth to a chamber of mourning turns—I hear the o’erweening, mocking voice, 
Matter is conqueror—matter, triumphant only, continues onward. 

2
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me,
The call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarm’d, uncertain, 
The Sea I am quickly...Read more of this...

In The Small Hours

by
 Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze, 
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins 
Of marooned mariners, captives 
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on. 

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And...Read more of this...

Chant For Dark Hours

by Dorothy Parker
 Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Book shop.
(Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.)


Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Crap game.
(He said he'd come at moonrise, and here's another day!)


Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Bar-room.
(Wait about, and hang about, and that's the way it goes.)


Some men, some men
Cannot pass a
Woman.
(Heaven never send me another one of those!)


Some men,...Read more of this...

The Small Hours

by Dorothy Parker
 No more my little song comes back;
And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
And wait the unfailing gray.

Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
And sad's a song that's dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
Another dawn will come....Read more of this...

Sonnet 5: Those hours that with gentle work did frame

by William Shakespeare
 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting Time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere.
Then, were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent...Read more of this...

Thanatopsis

by William Cullen Bryant
TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms she speaks 
A various language; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty and she glides 5 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When...Read more of this...

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