Famous Apparently Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sweeney

by Henry Lawson
 It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, 
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; 
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think -- 
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink. 

'Neath the public-house verandah I was resting on a bunk 
When a stranger rose before me,...Read more of this...

Apparently with no surprise

by Emily Dickinson
 Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play --
In accidental power --
The blonde Assassin passes on --
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God....Read more of this...

Telephoning In Mexican Sunlight

by Galway Kinnell
 Talking with my beloved in New York
I stood at the outdoor public telephone
in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt.
Someone had called it a man/woman
shirt. The phrase irked me. But then
I remembered that Rainer Maria
Rilke, who until he was seven wore
dresses and had long yellow hair,
wrote that the girl he almost was
"made her bed in his ear" and "slept him...Read more of this...

I understand all that annihilation and being apparently

by Omar Khayyam
I understand all that annihilation and being apparently
mean; I know the foundation of lofty thought. Ah, well!
may all this knowledge be annihilated in me if I recognize
in man a higher state than that of drunkenness!
354...Read more of this...

The Code

by Robert Frost
 There were three in the meadow by the brook 
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 
With an eye always lifted toward the west 
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly 
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, 
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. 
The town-bred farmer...Read more of this...

The Supreme Moment

by Charles Simic
 As an ant is powerless 
Against a raised boot, 
And only has an instant 
To have a bright idea or two. 
The black boot so polished, 
He can see himself 
Reflected in it, distorted, 
Perhaps made larger 
Into a huge monster ant 
Shaking his arms and legs 
Threateningly? 

The boot may be hesitating, 
Demurring, having misgivings, 
Gathering cobwebs, 
Dew?...Read more of this...

Anonymous Drawing

by Donald Justice
 A delicate young ***** stands
With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands;
So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature
beside him
Until the master shall arrive to ride him.
Already the animal's nostrils widen with rage or fear.
But if we imagine him snorting, about to rear,
This boy, who should know about such things better...Read more of this...

Tortoise Family Connections

by D. H. Lawrence
 On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.

A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

It...Read more of this...

Squatters Children

by Elizabeth Bishop
 On the unbreathing sides of hills
they play, a specklike girl and boy,
alone, but near a specklike house.
The Sun's suspended eye
blinks casually, and then they wade
gigantic waves of light and shade.
A dancing yellow spot, a pup,
attends them. Clouds are piling up; 

a storm piles up behind the house.
The children play at digging holes.
The ground is hard; they try to use
one...Read more of this...

Cairo Jag

by Keith Douglas
 Shall I get drunk or cut myself a piece of cake,
a pasty Syrian with a few words of English
or the Turk who says she is a princess--she dances
apparently by levitation? Or Marcelle, Parisienne
always preoccupied with her dull dead lover:
she has all the photographs and his letters
tied in a bundle and stamped Decede in mauve ink.
All this takes place in...Read more of this...

Biography In The First Person

by Stephen Dunn
 This is not the way I am.
Really, I am much taller in person,
the hairline I conceal reaches back
to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife
will not believe in has always been why
I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman.
I've saved his pines, the small acclamations
I used to show my friends. And the billyclub
I keep by my...Read more of this...

The Moss Of His Skin

by Anne Sexton
 "Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next
to their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses
of the tribes..."

--Harold Feldman, "Children of the Desert" Psychoanalysis
and Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958

It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not...Read more of this...

Ben Trovato

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The Deacon thought. “I know them,” he began, 
“And they are all you ever heard of them— 
Allurable to no sure theorem, 
The scorn or the humility of man. 
You say ‘Can I believe it?’—and I can;
And I’m unwilling even to condemn 
The benefaction of a stratagem 
Like hers—and I’m a Presbyterian. 

“Though blind, with but a wandering hour...Read more of this...

Large Bad Picture

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great-uncle painted a big picture.

Receding for miles on either side
into a flushed, still sky
are overhanging pale blue cliffs
hundreds of feet high,

their bases fretted by little arches,
the entrances to caves
running in along the level of a bay
masked by perfect waves.

On the middle of that quiet...Read more of this...

Mr Floods Party

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again,...Read more of this...

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