Famous Assuming Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Deserted Cottage

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Who dwelt in yonder lonely Cot,
Why is it thus forsaken?
It seems, by all the world forgot,
Above its path the high grass grows,
And through its thatch the northwind blows
--Its thatch, by tempests shaken.

And yet, it tops a verdant hill
By Summer gales surrounded:
Beneath its door a shallow rill
Runs brawling to the vale below,
And near it sweetest flowrets grow
By banks of willow...Read more of this...

The Haunted House

by Thomas Hood
 Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The...Read more of this...

When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer

by Dylan Thomas
 When once the twilight locks no longer
Locked in the long worm of my finger
Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist,
The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
The milky acid on each hinge,
And swallowed dry the waters of the breast.

When the galactic sea was sucked
And all the dry seabed unlocked,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
That globe...Read more of this...

Queen Matilda

by Marriott Edgar
 Henry the first, surnamed " Beauclare," 
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide 
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title- 
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois, 
His young sister Adela's son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being...Read more of this...

To Ladies Of A Certain Age

by John Trumbull
 Ye ancient Maids, who ne'er must prove
The early joys of youth and love,
Whose names grim Fate (to whom 'twas given,
When marriages were made in heaven)
Survey'd with unrelenting scowl,
And struck them from the muster-roll;
Or set you by, in dismal sort,
For wintry bachelors to court;
Or doom'd to lead your faded lives,
Heirs to the joys of former wives;
Attend! nor fear in state...Read more of this...

Makers And Creatures

by Vernon Scannell
 It is a curious experience
And one you"re bound to know, though probably
In other realms than that of literature,
Though I speak of poems now, assuming
That you are interested, otherwise,
Of course, you wouldn"t be reading this.
It is strange to come across a poem
In an old magazine, perhaps, and fail
At first to see that it"s your own.
Sometimes you think, grateful and surprised,
"That"s...Read more of this...

Anaphora

by Elizabeth Bishop
 In memory of Marjorie Carr Stevens


Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
 instantly,...Read more of this...

The Secret

by Denise Levertov
 Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

Re-adjustment

by C S Lewis
 I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched 
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge 
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning. 
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity 
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the...Read more of this...

139. Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer

by Robert Burns
 THIS 1 wot ye all whom it concerns,
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns,
 October twenty-third,
A ne’er-to-be-forgotten day,
Sae far I sprackl’d up the brae,
 I dinner’d wi’ a Lord.


I’ve been at drucken writers’ feasts,
Nay, been *****-fou ’mang godly priests—
 Wi’ rev’rence be it spoken!—
I’ve even join’d the honour’d jorum,
When mighty Squireships of the quorum,
 Their hydra drouth did sloken.


But wi’ a...Read more of this...

A Garden In Chicago

by Karl Shapiro
 In the mid-city, under an oiled sky,
I lay in a garden of such dusky green
It seemed the dregs of the imagination.
Hedged round by elegant spears of iron fence
My face became a moon to absent suns.
A low heat beat upon my reading face;
There rose no roses in that gritty place
But blue-gray lilacs hung their tassels out.
Hard zinnias and ugly marigolds
And...Read more of this...

Septembers Baccalaureate

by Emily Dickinson
 September's Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of Crickets -- Crows -- and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze

That hints without assuming --
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher....Read more of this...

In Broken Images

by Robert Graves
 He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
when the...Read more of this...

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