Famous Anticipation Poems by Famous Poets

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

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All Night

by Lisel Mueller
 All night the knot in the shoelace 
waits for its liberation, 
and the match on the table packs its head 
with anticipation of light. 
The faucet sweats out a bead of water, 
which gathers strength for the free fall, 
while the lettuce in the refrigerator 
succumbs to its brown killer. 
And in the novel I put down 
before I...Read more of this...

The Guardian Angel Of The Little Utopia

by Jorie Graham
 Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear 
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...

Craving for Spring

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wish it were spring in the world.

Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets...Read more of this...

Morning

by Dejan Stojanovic
He placed a rose on the bed-stand 
While she was sleeping. 
His wake-up message on the stand— 
Her smile on his face—awaken bliss. 

Remembrance; 
Memory box opened; 
Anticipation; 
Future opened and saved. 

Back and forth 
Through memory and experience, 
She recognizes this morning 
In her awakened spirit. 

She recognizes the mist, 
The rose, the moist grass; 
She recognizes his enlightened...Read more of this...

Shadblow

by Linda Pastan
 Because the shad
are swimming
in our waters now,

breaching the skin
of the river with their
tarnished silvery fins,

heading upstream
straight for our tables
where already

knives and forks gleam
in anticipation, these trees
in the woods break

into flower--small, white
flags surrendering
to the season....Read more of this...

Anticipation

by Ellis Parker Butler
 I hold her letter as I stand,
 Nor break the seal; no need to guess
What dainty little female hand
 Penned this most delicate address.

The scented seal—I break it not,
 But stand in stormy revery;
I tremble as I wonder what
 She who penned this will say to me.

I wonder what my wife will say
 If so it be she e’er...Read more of this...

Anticipation

by Emily Brontë
 How beautiful the earth is still, 
To thee - how full of happiness!
How little fraught with real ill,
Or unreal phantoms of distress!
How spring can bring thee glory, yet,
And summer win thee to forget
December's sullen time!
Why dost thou hold the treasure fast,
Of youth's delight, when youth is past,
And thou art near thy prime? 

When those who were thy own compeers,
Equals...Read more of this...

Prelude To "the Songs Of Twilight."

by Victor Hugo
 ("De quel non te nommer?") 
 
 {PRELUDE, a, Oct. 20, 1835.} 


 How shall I note thee, line of troubled years, 
 Which mark existence in our little span? 
 One constant twilight in the heaven appears— 
 One constant twilight in the mind of man! 
 
 Creed, hope, anticipation and despair, 
 Are but a mingling,...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

The Uses Of Poetry

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,

Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat's long sway.

For, lest o'ersaddened by such woes as spring
To rural peace...Read more of this...

The Embrace

by Mark Doty
 You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out—at work maybe?—
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old...Read more of this...

Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time

by Nick Flynn
 He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
Haven't they landed yet? At last
Dugan throws it on the table and says,
This reads like a cheap detective novel
and I've got nothing to say about it. It sits,
naked...Read more of this...

These tested Our Horizon --

by Emily Dickinson
 These tested Our Horizon --
Then disappeared
As Birds before achieving
A Latitude.

Our Retrospection of Them
A fixed Delight,
But our Anticipation
A Dice -- a Doubt --...Read more of this...

Peter Anderson And Co

by Henry Lawson
 He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure --...Read more of this...

Refuted

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 ‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’

It may be, yet I have not found it so.
In those first golden dreams of future fame
I did not find such happiness as came
When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know
My words have recognition, and will go
Straight to some listening heart, my early aim, 
To win the idle glory of a name, 
Pales like...Read more of this...

Anticipation

by Amy Lowell
 I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbours
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling...Read more of this...

My Friends Light

by Andrei Voznesensky
 I'm waiting for my friend. The gate's unlocked. 
 The banisters are lit so he can walk. 

 I'm waiting for my friend. The times are dull and tough. 
 Anticipation lightens our life. 

 He's driving down the Ring Road, at full speed, 
 the way I did it when he was in need. 

 He will arrive...Read more of this...

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