Famous Anybody Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

So bashful when I spied her!

by Emily Dickinson
 So bashful when I spied her!
So pretty -- so ashamed!
So hidden in her leaflets
Lest anybody find --

So breathless till I passed here --
So helpless when I turned
And bore her struggling, blushing,
Her simple haunts beyond!

For whom I robbed the Dingle --
For whom I betrayed the Dell --
Many, will doubtless ask me,
But I shall never tell!...Read more of this...

A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest

by Emily Dickinson
 A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest --
I've heard the Hunter tell --
'Tis but the Ecstasy of death --
And then the Brake is still!

The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!

Mirth is the Mail of Anguish
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "you're hurt" exclaim!...Read more of this...

Next Day

by Randall Jarrell
 Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to...Read more of this...

Ready to Kill

by Carl Sandburg
 TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to...Read more of this...

Flowers -- Well -- if anybody

by Emily Dickinson
 Flowers -- Well -- if anybody
Can the ecstasy define --
Half a transport -- half a trouble --
With which flowers humble men:
Anybody find the fountain
From which floods so contra flow --
I will give him all the Daisies
Which upon the hillside blow.

Too much pathos in their faces
For a simple breast like mine --
Butterflies from St. Domingo
Cruising round the purple line --
Have...Read more of this...

Pauls Wife

by Robert Frost
 To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
Others because he'd come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been Jilted;
Others because he'd had one once, a good one,
Who'd...Read more of this...

Bill Awkins

by Rudyard Kipling
 "'As anybody seen Bill 'Awkins?"
 "Now 'ow in the devil would I know?"
"'E's taken my girl out walkin',
 An' I've got to tell 'im so --
 Gawd -- bless 'im!
 I've got to tell 'im so."

"D'yer know what 'e's like, Bill 'Awkins?"
 "Now what in the devil would I care?"
"'E's the livin', breathin' image of an organ-grinder's monkey,
 With...Read more of this...

Stuff

by Ntozake Shange
somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff ?not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street? but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff

like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin? this is mine/this aint yr stuff/?now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self

somebody almost walked...Read more of this...

Cause And Effect

by Charles Bukowski
 the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them...Read more of this...

Coffee

by Richard Brautigan
 Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...

White

by Charles Simic
 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard...Read more of this...

Shoes

by Charles Bukowski
 when you're young
a pair of 
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and 
just as 
well....Read more of this...

The Explorer

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
 So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
 Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable...Read more of this...

from crossing the line

by Rg Gregory
 (1) a great man

there was a great man
so great he couldn't be criticised in the light
who died
and for a whole week people turned up their collars over their ears
and wept with great gossiping

houses wore their roofs at a mournful angle
and television announcers carried their eyes around in long drooping bags
there was a hush upon the voice of the land
as...Read more of this...

Baile And Aillinn

by William Butler Yeats
 ARGUMENT. Baile and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the
Master of Love, wishing them to he happy in his own land
among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so
that their hearts were broken and they died.

 I hardly hear the curlew cry,
 Nor thegrey rush when the wind is high,
 Before my thoughts begin to run
...Read more of this...

People at Night

by Denise Levertov
 A night that cuts between you and you
and you and you and you
and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing
through a crowd. We won't
look for each other, either-
wander off, each alone, not looking
in the slow crowd. Among sideshows
under movie signs,
pictures made of a million lights,
giants that move and again move
again, above a cloud of thick smells,
franks, roasted nutmeats-

Or...Read more of this...

Will Consider Situation

by Ogden Nash
 There here are words of radical advice for a young man looking for a job;
Young man, be a snob.
Yes, if you are in search of arguments against starting at the bottom,
Why I've gottem.
Let the personnel managers differ;
It,s obvious that you will get on faster at the top than at the bottom because
there are more people at the bottom than...Read more of this...

Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else Except Richer

by Ogden Nash
 This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage...Read more of this...

Los Angeles 1954

by David St John
 It was in the old days,
When she used to hang out at a place
Called Club Zombie,
A black cabaret that the police liked
To raid now and then. As she
Stepped through the door, the light
Would hit her platinum hair,
And believe me, heads would turn. Maestro
Loved it; he'd have her by
The arm as he led us through the packed crowd
To a private...Read more of this...

On a Vulgar Error

by C S Lewis
 No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not 
Invariably think the newer way Prosaic
mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot 
Upon the church? Did anybody say How 
modern and how ugly? They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot 
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay, 
Were these at first a horror?...Read more of this...

The New Ergonomics

by Edward Taylor
 The new ergonomics were delivered 
just before lunchtime 
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars 
let me just say that 
lunch was most satisfying. 
Jack and Roberta went with 
the corned beef for a change. 
Jack believes in alien abduction 
and Roberta does not, 
although she has had 
several lost weekends lately 
and one or two unexplained scars 
on...Read more of this...

The Sinking Fund Cried

by Thomas Moore
 ["Now what, we ask, is become of this Sinking Fund - these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund itself?" - The Times] 

Take your bell, take your bell,
Good Crier, and tell
To the Bulls and...Read more of this...

The Genius Of The Crowd

by Charles Bukowski
 there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not...Read more of this...

The Listeners

by Walter de la Mare
 "Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned...Read more of this...

The Murmur of a Bee

by Emily Dickinson
 The Murmur of a Bee
A Witchcraft -- yieldeth me --
If any ask me why --
'Twere easier to die --
Than tell --

The Red upon the Hill
Taketh away my will --
If anybody sneer --
Take care -- for God is here --
That's all.

The Breaking of the Day
Addeth to my Degree --
If any ask me how --
Artist -- who drew me so --
Must...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Anybody poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace