Famous Answer Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Answer poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous answer poems. These examples illustrate what a famous answer poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
If all the year was summer-time,
And all the aim of life
Was just to lilt on like a rhyme –
Then I would be your wife.
If all the days were August days,
And crowned with golden weather,
How happy then through green-clad ways
We two could stray together!
If all the nights were moonlit nights,
And we had naught to do
But just to sit and plan...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Since no one has ever been able to answer thee from
one day to the next, hasten to glad thy heart filled with
sadness. Drink, O adorable Moon! drink from thy silver
cup, for long shalt thou turn in the firmament without
finding us here again.
281...Read more of this...
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...
by
Edwin Markham
BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
With the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee
As those, when thou shalt call me by my name—
Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same,
Perplexed and ruffled by life's strategy?
When called before, I told how hastily
I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game,
To run and answer with the smile that came
At play last moment, and went...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Prior
Dear Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty face;
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled!
Prithee quit this caprice, and (as old Falstaff says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.
How canst thou presume thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were designed to inspire love and joy:
More...Read more of this...
by
Peter Huchel
Between two nights
the brief day.
The farm is there.
And in the thicket, a snare
the hunter set for us.
Noon’s desert.
It still warms the stone.
Chirping in the wind,
buzz of a guitar
down the hillside.
The slow match
of withered foliage
glows against the wall.
Salt-white air.
Fall’s arrowheads,
the crane’s migration.
In bright tree limbs
the tolling hour has faded.
Upon their clockwork
spiders lay
the veils of dead brides....Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Like, and dislike ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Stroke ye, to strike ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Love will be-fool ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Heat ye, to cool ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS....Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
The poet asks, and Phillis can't refuse
To show th' obedience of the Infant muse.
She knows the Quail of most inviting taste
Fed Israel's army in the dreary waste;
And what's on Britain's royal standard borne,
But the tall, graceful, rampant Unicorn?
The Emerald with a vivid verdure glows
Among the gems which regal crowns compose;
Boston's a town, polite and debonair,
To which the beaux...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
For the answer is:
Silence.
In the republic
Of the winking stars and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer
is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether
it is Sunday or any other day of
the week,
Knowing silence will...Read more of this...
by
Peter Huchel
THE WARMTH of life is quenched with bitter frost;
Upon the lonely road a child limps by
Skirting the frozen pools: our way is lost:
Our hearts sink utterly.
But from the snow-patched moorland chill and drear,
Lifting our eyes beyond the spirëd height,
With white-fire lips apart the dawn breathes clear
Its soundless hymn of light.
Out of the vast the voice of one...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Stone
This tedious letter to you,
what is one Life to another?
We walk around inside our bags,
sucking it in, spewing it out.
Then the insects, swarms heavier
than all the animals of the world.
Then the flycatchers on the clothesline,
like seiners leaning from Flemish boats
when the seas were roiled with herring.
This long letter in my mind,
calligraphy, feathery asparagus. ...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
You ask me for a sonnet. Ah, my Dear,
Can clocks tick back to yesterday at noon?
Can cracked and fallen leaves recall last June
And leap up on the boughs, now stiff and sere?
For your sake, I would go and seek the year,
Faded beyond the purple ranks of dune,
Blown sands of drifted hours, which the moon
Streaks with a ghostly finger, and...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare;
Stark as your sons shall be -- stern as your fathers were.
Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether,
But we do not fall...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Answer July --
Where is the Bee --
Where is the Blush --
Where is the Hay?
Ah, said July --
Where is the Seed --
Where is the Bud --
Where is the May --
Answer Thee -- Me --
Nay -- said the May --
Show me the Snow --
Show me the Bells --
Show me the Jay!
Quibbled the Jay --
Where be the Maize --
Where be the Haze...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
"Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell."
Blue! 'Tis the life of heaven,—the domain
Of Cynthia,—the wide palace of the sun,—
The tent of Hesperus, and all his train,—
The bosomer of clouds, gold, gray, and dun.
Blue! 'Tis the life of waters:—Ocean
And all its vassal streams, pools numberless,
May rage, and foam, and fret, but never can
Subside, if...Read more of this...
by
Anne Killigrew
LOng my dull Muse in heavy slumbers lay,
Indulging Sloth, and to soft Ease gave way,
Her Fill of Rest resolving to enjoy,
Or fancying little worthy her employ.
When Noble Cleanors obliging Strains
Her, the neglected Lyre to tune, constrains.
Confus'd at first, she rais'd her drowsie Head,
Ponder'd a while, then pleas'd, forsook her Bed.
Survey'd each Line...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Why do you rush through the fields in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves and such?...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that--
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.
putting the blade on the table, he
flicked it...Read more of this...
by
Peter Huchel
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Bill has left his house of clay,
Slammed the door and gone away:
How he laughed but yesterday!
I had two new jokes to tell,
Salty, but he loved them well:
Now I see his empty shell.
Poker-faced he looks at me;
Peeved to miss them jokes - how h
Would have belly-laughed with glee!
He gives me the pip, I swear;
Seems just like he isn't there:
Flown the...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well --
What voices heardst thou when thy petals...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
Earth raised up her head.
From the darkness dread & drear,
Her light fled:
Stony dread!
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.
Prison'd on watery shore
Starry Jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar
Weeping o'er
I hear the father of the ancient men
Selfish father of men
Cruel jealous selfish fear
Can delight
Chain'd in night
The virgins of youth and morning bear.
Does spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms...Read more of this...
by
George Herbert
If as the winds and waters here below
Do fly and flow,
My sighs and tears as busy were above;
Sure they would move
And much affect thee, as tempestuous times
Amaze poor mortals, and object their crimes.
Stars have their storms, ev'n in a high degree,
As well as we.
A throbbing conscience spurred by remorse
Hath a strange force:
It...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Answer poems.