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Famous Answering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...nd for myself, 
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! 
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! 
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! 
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 

3
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, 
Gorgeous p...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...out in heaven, 
Crowned. And Leodogran awoke, and sent 
Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere, 
Back to the court of Arthur answering yea. 

Then Arthur charged his warrior whom he loved 
And honoured most, Sir Lancelot, to ride forth 
And bring the Queen;--and watched him from the gates: 
And Lancelot past away among the flowers, 
(For then was latter April) and returned 
Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere. 
To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint, 
Chief of the church ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ansparent ice,
Off him pasturage, sweet and natural as savanna, upland, prairie, 
Through him flights, whirls, screams, answering those of the fish-hawk, mocking-bird,
 night-heron, and eagle; 
His spirit surrounding his country’s spirit, unclosed to good and evil, 
Surrounding the essences of real things, old times and present times, 
Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, 
T...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...n’s son, he will surely there
find his friends. A far-off land
each man should visit who vaunts him brave.”
Him then answering, Hrothgar spake: --
“These words of thine the wisest God
sent to thy soul! No sager counsel
from so young in years e’er yet have I heard.
Thou art strong of main and in mind art wary,
art wise in words! I ween indeed
if ever it hap that Hrethel’s heir
by spear be seized, by sword-grim battle,
by illness or iron, thine elder and lord,
peopl...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...path to some tranquillity.
It gave bright gladness to his lady's eye,
And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow;
Answering thus, just as the golden morrow
Beam'd upward from the vallies of the east:
"O that the flutter of this heart had ceas'd,
Or the sweet name of love had pass'd away.
Young feather'd tyrant! by a swift decay
Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:
And I do think that at my very birth
I lisp'd thy blooming titles inwardly;
For at the first, first daw...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...joyous soldier! When like yelping hound 
 Pursued by wolves, November comes to bound 
 In joy from rock to rock, like answering cheer 
 To howling January now so near— 
 "Come on!" the Donjon cries to blasts o'erhead— 
 It has seen Attila, and knows not dread. 
 Oh, dismal nights of contest in the rain 
 And mist, that furious would the battle gain, 
 'The tower braves all, though angry skies pour fast 
 The flowing torrents, river-like and vast. 
 From their eight ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...dea brewed
Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?

The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.

The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb, -
Were not these bet...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...sionless, 
Save that when struggling nearer to his last, 
Upon that page his eye was kindly cast; 
And once, as Kaled's answering accents ceased, 
Rose Lara's hand, and pointed to the East: 
Whether (as then the breaking sun from high 
Roll'd back the clouds) the morrow caught his eye, 
Or that 'twas chance, or some remember'd scene 
That raised his arm to point where such had been, 
Scarce Kaled seem'd to know, but turn'd away, 
As if his heart abhorr'd that coming day, 
And...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...gs of sand
Oft jerks the string from leaders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands s...Read more of this...
by Clare, John
...Bending to look on me: I started back, 
It started back; but pleased I soon returned, 
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks 
Of sympathy and love: There I had fixed 
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire, 
Had not a voice thus warned me; 'What thou seest, 
'What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself; 
'With thee it came and goes: but follow me, 
'And I will bring thee where no shadow stays 
'Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he 
'Whose image thou a...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...one;
But when I told them, 'He is dead,'
They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
They clapped their hands and leaped about,
Answering each other's ecstasy
With many a prank and merry shout.
But I sate silent and alone,
Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.

They laughed, for he was dead; but I 
Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
And with a heart which would deny
The secret joy it could not quell,
Low muttering o'er his loathèd name;
Till from that self-contention came
Remorse whe...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Walt Whitman! 
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! 
Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next! 
Each answering all—each sharing the earth with all. 

What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding? 
What climes? what persons and lands are here? 
Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering? 
Who are the girls? who are the married women? 
Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about each other’s necks?
What river...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...omfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I've given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.

It's ju...Read more of this...
by Berman, David
...eart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thr...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...e blushingly he bent him low:
"That he deserves so proud a place
Obedience best of all can show."

"My son," the master answering spoke,
"Thy daring act this duty broke.
The conflict that the law forbade
Thou hast with impious mind essayed."--
"Lord, judge when all to thee is known,"
The other spake, in steadfast tone,--
"For I the law's commands and will
Purposed with honor to fulfil.
I went not out with heedless thought.
Hoping the monster dread to find;
To conquer in the f...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ring of life hath bid the while
A rose unfold beyond the summer's best,
The mystery of joy made manifest
In love's self-answering and awakening smile;
Whereby the lips in wonder reconcile
Passion with peace, and show desire at rest,--
A grace of silence by the Greek unguesst,
That bloom'd to immortalize the Tuscan style 
When first the angel-song that faith hath ken'd
Fancy pourtray'd, above recorded oath
Of Israel's God, or light of poem pen'd;
The very countenance of plight...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...d backwards. 

As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock, let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in "writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the"o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity. This a...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...am,
     The eagles answered with their scream,
     Round and around the sounds were cast,
     Till echo seemed an answering blast;
     And on the Hunter tried his way,
     To join some comrades of the day,
     Yet often paused, so strange the road,
     So wondrous were the scenes it showed.
     XI.

     The western waves of ebbing day
     Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
     Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
     Was bathed in floods of living ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...may have taken, 
This man who stood on high
And faced alone the sky, 
Whatever drove or lured or guided him,— 
A vision answering a faith unshaken, 
An easy trust assumed of easy trials, 
A sick negation born of weak denials,
A crazed abhorrence of an old condition, 
A blind attendance on a brief ambition,— 
Whatever stayed him or derided him, 
His way was even as ours; 
And we, with all our wounds and all our powers,
Must each await alone at his own height 
Another darkness ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...incing mimicry! 
Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat; 
Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet 
Star-sisters answering under crescent brows; 
Abate the stride, which speaks of man, and loose 
A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek, 
Where they like swallows coming out of time 
Will wonder why they came: but hark the bell 
For dinner, let us go!' 
And in we streamed 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With bea...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things