Famous Apart Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Do Not Die

by W S Merwin
In each world they may put us
Farther apart
Do not die
As this world is made I might
Live forever...Read more of this...

Chemin De Fer

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Alone on the railroad track
 I walked with pounding heart.
The ties were too close together
 or maybe too far apart.

The scenery was impoverished:
 scrub-pine and oak; beyond
its mingled gray-green foliage
 I saw the little pond

where the dirty old hermit lives,
 lie like an old tear
holding onto its injuries
 lucidly year after year.

The hermit shot off his shot-gun
 and the...Read more of this...

The Flaming Circle

by Louis Untermeyer
Though for fifteen years you have chaffed me across the table,
Slept in my arms and fingered my plunging heart,
I scarcely know you; we have not known each other.
For all the fierce and casual contacts, something keeps us apart.
Are you struggling, perhaps, in a world that I see only dimly,
Except as it sweeps toward the star on which I stand alone?
Are...Read more of this...

U R Ripping Us Apart!

by Tupac Shakur
Before u came the triangle never broke
we were bonded and melded as one
but as the 2 pushed u away
the one got weak and embraced u
and now u are ripping us apart..

The worst feeling of helplessness
the greatest pain has rested in my heart
the vision of heaven fades
and the nightmare of loneliness has started..

My hero has been defeated by u
and now what...Read more of this...

Dawn

by Yosa Buson
 STILL as the holy of holies breathes the vast,
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
 Burns on the shadowy rim.


Moment that holds all moments; white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
 The hues of many hours.


Thrown downward from that high...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Death

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for...Read more of this...

Jada

by Tupac Shakur
u r the omega of my heart
the foundation of my conception of love
when i think of what a black woman should be
its u that i first think of

u will never fully understand
how deeply my heart feels 4 u
i worry that we'll grow apart
and i'll end up losing u


u bring me 2 climax without sex
and u do it all with regal...Read more of this...

Letter To Michael Horovitz

by Barry Tebb
 It is time after thirty years

We had our Poetry Renaissance

Rise, Children of Albion, rise!

It is time after nightmares of sleep

When we walked the streets of inner cities

Our poems among the burnt-out houses

And cars, whispering compassion

To the addicts shaking and the homeless

Waking and those who have come apart

In the nowhere of today

Begging in stations

Sleeping in boxes.

It is time to find

Our...Read more of this...

The Searched Soul

by Dorothy Parker
 When I consider, pro and con, 
What things my love is built upon -- 
A curly mouth; a sinewed wrist; 
A questioning brow; a pretty twist 
Of words as old and tried as sin; 
A pointed ear; a cloven chin; 
Long, tapered limbs; and slanted eyes 
Not cold nor kind nor darkly wise -- 
When so I ponder, here...Read more of this...

The Raft

by Vachel Lindsay
 The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What...Read more of this...

Distance

by Dorothy Parker
 Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart....Read more of this...

Faust In Old Age

by Delmore Schwartz
 "Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,

For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.

Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.

The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.

For I have walked within and seen each sea,
The fish that flies, the...Read more of this...

Long Years apart -- can make no

by Emily Dickinson
 Long Years apart -- can make no
Breach a second cannot fill --
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell --

The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand --...Read more of this...

Crow Blacker than ever

by Ted Hughes
When God, disgusted with man, 
Turned towards heaven. 
And man, disgusted with God, 
Turned towards Eve, 
Things looked like falling apart. 

But Crow . . Crow 
Crow nailed them together, 
Nailing Heaven and earth together - 

So man cried, but with God's voice. 
And God bled, but with man's blood. 

Then heaven and earth creaked at the joint 
Which became...Read more of this...

Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art

by John Keats
 Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
 Pillow'd...Read more of this...

A Song of Peach-Blossom River

by Wang Wei
 A fisherman is drifting, enjoying the spring mountains, 
And the peach-trees on both banks lead him to an ancient source. 
Watching the fresh-coloured trees, he never thinks of distance 
Till he comes to the end of the blue stream and suddenly- strange men! 
It's a cave-with a mouth so narrow that he has to crawl through; 
But then it...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Foxhunter

by William Butler Yeats
 'Lay me in a cushioned chair;
Carry me, ye four,
With cushions here and cushions there,
To see the world once more.

'To stable and to kennel go;
Bring what is there to bring;
Lead my Lollard to and fro,
Or gently in a ring.

'Put the chair upon the grass:
Bring Rody and his hounds,
That I may contented pass
From these earthly bounds.'

His eyelids droop, his head falls...Read more of this...

Desertion

by Rupert Brooke
 So light we were, so right we were, so fair faith shone,
And the way was laid so certainly, that, when I'd gone,
What dumb thing looked up at you? Was it something heard,
Or a sudden cry, that meekly and without a word
You broke the faith, and strangely, weakly, slipped apart.
You gave in -- you, the proud of heart, unbowed of...Read more of this...

That Distance Apart

by Jackie Kay
 I am only nineteen
My whole life is changing

Tonight I see her
Shuttered eyes in my dreams

I cannot pretend she's never been
My stitches pull and threaten to snap

My own body a witness
Leaking blood to sheets milk to shirts

My stretch marks
Record that birth

Though I feel like somebody is dying

I stand up in my bed
And wail like a banshee

II
On the second night
I shall...Read more of this...

They put Us far apart

by Emily Dickinson
 They put Us far apart --
As separate as Sea
And Her unsown Peninsula --
We signified "These see" --

They took away our Eyes --
They thwarted Us with Guns --
"I see Thee" each responded straight
Through Telegraphic Signs --

With Dungeons -- They devised --
But through their thickest skill --
And their opaquest Adamant --
Our Souls saw -- just as well --

They summoned Us to...Read more of this...

Compass Rose

by Jennifer Reeser
 I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though -- glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you...Read more of this...

The Past

by William Cullen Bryant
THOU unrelenting Past! 
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain  
And fetters sure and fast  
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 

Far in thy realm withdrawn 5 
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom  
And glorious ages gone 
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 

Childhood with all its mirth  
Youth Manhood Age...Read more of this...

The Tuft of Flowers

by Robert Frost
 I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the leveled scene.
I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must...Read more of this...

The Grey Eros

by George William Russell
 WE are desert leagues apart;
 Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
 Chased the shadows from my brow.


Oh, I am so old, meseems
 I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
 From the long-forgotten prime.


You have come a path of flowers.
 What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire’s towers,
...Read more of this...

The Blue-Flag In The Bog

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise...Read more of this...

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