Famous Apparent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Apparent Death

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 WEEP, maiden, weep here o'er the tomb of Love;

He died of nothing--by mere chance was slain.
But is he really dead?--oh, that I cannot prove:

A nothing, a mere chance, oft gives him life again.

1767-9....Read more of this...

Restless Leg Syndrome

by Edward Taylor
 After the burial 
we returned to our units 
and assumed our poses. 
Our posture was the new posture 
and not the old sick posture. 
When we left our stations 
it was just to prove we could, 
not a serious departure 
or a search for yet another beginning. 
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say,...Read more of this...

Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --

by Emily Dickinson
 Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action --
Maintain --

The Sun -- upon a Morning meets them --
The Wind --
No nearer Neighbor -- have they --
But God --

The Acre gives them -- Place --
They -- Him -- Attention of Passer by --
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply --
Or Boy --

What Deed is Theirs unto...Read more of this...

Withered Grave

by Fenny Sterenborg
 Forever yours

my dearly beloved one



Carved in stone, many years ago.

Underneath those loving words, a resting body

far too young, left by it’s soul.

A few lonely flowers come back every year,

but it’s apparent, no living soul is tending here.



From the date, by now, forever must also be gone.

But where did she go, this yours forever,

that dearly beloved one.

Why wasn’t she buried...Read more of this...

A Wicker Basket

by Robert Creeley
 Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--

So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they...Read more of this...

High from the earth I heard a bird

by Emily Dickinson
 High from the earth I heard a bird,
He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
Nature had left behind.
A joyous going fellow
I gathered from his talk
Which both of benediction
And badinage partook.
Without apparent burden
I subsequently learned
He was the faithful father
Of a dependent brood.
And this untoward transport
His...Read more of this...

In the night

by Stephen Crane
 In the night
Grey heavy clouds muffled the valleys,
And the peaks looked toward God alone.
"O Master that movest the wind with a finger,
Humble, idle, futile peaks are we.
Grant that we may run swiftly across the world
To huddle in worship at Thy feet."

In the morning
A noise of men at work came the clear blue miles,
And the little black cities were apparent.
"O...Read more of this...

Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter

by Thomas Hardy
 These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry 
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome; 
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome 
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. 

And cracking frieze and rotten metope 
Express, as though they were an open tome 
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; 
"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!" 

And yet within these ruins' very shade 
The singing...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet VIII: If Faithful Souls Be Alike Glorified

by John Donne
 If faithful souls be alike glorified
As angels, then my fathers soul doth see,
And adds this even to full felicity,
That valiantly I hells wide mouth o'erstride:
But if our minds to these souls be descried
By circumstances, and by signs that be
Apparent in us, not immediately,
How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?
They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,
And vile...Read more of this...

Prof. vere de blaw

by Eugene Field
 Achievin' sech distinction with his moddel tabble dote
Ez to make his Red Hoss Mountain restauraw a place uv note,
Our old friend Casey innovated somewhat round the place,
In hopes he would ameliorate the sufferin's uv the race;
'Nd uv the many features Casey managed to import
The most important wuz a Steenway gran' pianny-fort,
An' bein' there wuz nobody could play upon the...Read more of this...

If that apparent part of life's delight

by Fernando Pessoa
If that apparent part of life's delight

Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen

By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,

Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.

Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,

Appearance even as appearance lies,

Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing

Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.

Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.

All is...Read more of this...

The Term

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length

And apparent bulk
Of a man was
Rolling with the 

Wind slowly over
And over in 
The street as

A car drove down
Upon it and 
Crushed it to

The ground. Unlike
A man it rose
Again rolling

With the wind over
And over to be as 
It was before....Read more of this...

The Funeral of the German Emperor

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Germany, your noble Emperor William now is dead.
Who oft great armies to battle hath led;
He was a man beloved by his subjects all,
Because he never tried them to enthral. 

The people of Germany have cause now to mourn,
The loss of their hero, who to them will ne'er return;
But his soul I hope to Heaven has fled...Read more of this...

The Having To Love Something Else

by Russell Edson
 There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his
father for his mother's hand in marriage, and was told he could
not marry his mother's hand because it was attached to all
the rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that
he'd have to love something else . . .

 And so he went into the world...Read more of this...

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

by Hilaire Belloc
 To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the...Read more of this...

Spring

by John Gould Fletcher
 To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under...Read more of this...

At the Fishhouses

by Elizabeth Bishop
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to...Read more of this...

Pantoum Of The Great Depression

by Donald Justice
 Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.

Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.

We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all...Read more of this...

To You

by Walt Whitman
 WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, 
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; 
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
 crimes, dissipate away from you, 
Your true Soul and Body appear before me, 
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce,...Read more of this...

Rondeau at the Train Stop

by Erin Belieu
 It bothers me: the genital smell of the bay
drifting toward me on the T stop, the train
circling the city like a dingy, year-round
Christmas display. The Puritans were right! Sin
is everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-bound

in the population. it bothers me
because it's summer now and sticky - no rain
to cool things down; heat like a wound
that will not close. Too hot, these...Read more of this...

Syringa

by John Ashbery
 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...

Behold As Goblins Dark Of Mien

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 BEHOLD, as goblins dark of mien
And portly tyrants dyed with crime
Change, in the transformation scene,
At Christmas, in the pantomime,

Instanter, at the prompter's cough,
The fairy bonnets them, and they
Throw their abhorred carbuncles off
And blossom like the flowers in May.

- So mankind, to angelic eyes,
So, through the scenes of life below,
In life's ironical disguise,
A travesty of man, ye go:

But fear not:...Read more of this...

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry

by Stephen Dunn
 Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as...Read more of this...

To drink wine and seek beautiful faces is wiser than

by Omar Khayyam
To drink wine and seek beautiful faces is wiser than
to practise hypocrisy and apparent devotion. It is evident
that if there exist a Hell for lovers and drinkers,
no one would wish for Paradise....Read more of this...

In The Slight Ripple The Mind Perceives The Heart

by Delmore Schwartz
 In the slight ripple, the fishes dart
Like fingers, centrifugal, like wishes
Wanton. And pleasures rise
 as the eyes fall 
Through the lucid water. The small pebble, 
The clear clay bottom, the white shell
Are apparent, though superficial. 
Who would ask more of the August afternoon? 
Who would dig mines and follow shadows? 
"I would," answers bored Heart, "Lounger, rise"
(Underlip trembling, face...Read more of this...

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