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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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...

Prospect NSW (For Anita Cobby)

by Dale Harcombe
 The hushed dark hugs the streets.
  Somewhere a cat snaps the silence.
  Dogs begin to bark, like a pack
  moving in for the kill.
  Women shrink in their homes.
  Shadows slip
  through the night and
  stars dim their lights
  as cars flash past.
  When they disappear,
  silence, heavy as...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 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...

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...

In Port

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Out of the fires of the sunset come we again to our own­
We have girdled the world in our sailing under many an orient star;
Still to our battered canvas the scents of the spice gales cling,
And our hearts are swelling within us as we cross the harbor bar. 

Beyond are the dusky hills where the twilight hangs in the...Read more of this...

Ashes Of Life

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
 Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
 here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
 Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
 This or that or what you...Read more of this...

The Lesson Of The Leaves

by Anonymous
How do the leaves grow,In spring, upon their stems?Oh! the sap swells up with a drop for all,And that is life to them.What do the leaves doThrough the long summer hours,They make a home for the wandering birds,And shelter the wild flowers.How do the leaves fadeBeneath the autumn blast?Oh! they fairer grow before they die,Their brightest is their last.We, too,...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...

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...

Pan liveth

by Eugene Field
 They told me once that Pan was dead,
And so, in sooth, I thought him;
For vainly where the streamlets led
Through flowery meads I sought him--
Nor in his dewy pasture bed
Nor in the grove I caught him.
"Tell me," 'twas so my clamor ran--
"Tell me, oh, where is Pan?"

But, once, as on my pipe I played
A requiem sad and tender,
Lo, thither came...Read more of this...

Requiem

by Anna Akhmatova
 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her...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 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...

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...

Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College

by Thomas Gray
 Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way.

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,
Ah fields beloved in vain,
Where once my careless childhood...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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

bone-fable

by Rg Gregory
 one morning the bone was there
set in the centre of waste ground
against the early morning sun
the frost along its concave rim
sparkled - raised a hundredfold
the price a passing dog
would place on it
 but the dogs
who came (barking amongst themselves
about the food shining at them
across the rubbled soil) somehow
couldn't find it in their legs
to fetch the bone - its glowing
had...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...

Thoughts in a Garden

by Andrew Marvell
 HOW vainly men themselves amaze 
To win the palm, the oak, or bays, 
And their uncessant labours see 
Crown'd from some single herb or tree, 
Whose short and narrow-verged shade 
Does prudently their toils upbraid; 
While all the flowers and trees do close 
To weave the garlands of repose! 

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, 
And Innocence thy...Read more of this...

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