Famous Attendance Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

Amphion

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 MY father left a park to me, 
But it is wild and barren, 
A garden too with scarce a tree, 
And waster than a warren: 
Yet say the neighbours when they call, 
It is not bad but good land, 
And in it is the germ of all 
That grows within the woodland. 

O had I lived when song was...Read more of this...

Americanisation

by G K Chesterton
 Britannia needs no Boulevards,
No spaces wide and gay:
Her march was through the crooked streets
Along the narrow way.
Nor looks she where, New York's seduction,
The Broadway leadeth to destruction.

Britannia needs no Cafes:
If Coffee needs must be,
Its place should be the Coffee-house
Where Johnson growled for Tea;
But who can hear that human mountain
Growl for an ice-cream soda-fountain?

She needs no Russian Theatrey
Mere Father strangles...Read more of this...

Judge Selah Lively

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
And then suppose through your diligence,
And regular church attendance,
You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And through it all
They jeered at your size, and laughed at...Read more of this...

Wert Thou but ill -- that I might show thee

by Emily Dickinson
 Wert Thou but ill -- that I might show thee
How long a Day I could endure
Though thine attention stop not on me
Nor the least signal, Me assure --

Wert Thou but Stranger in ungracious country --
And Mine -- the Door
Thou paused at, for a passing bounty --
No More --

Accused -- wert Thou -- and Myself -- Tribunal --
Convicted -- Sentenced...Read more of this...

Reasons For Attendance

by Philip Larkin
 The trumpet's voice, loud and authoritative,
Draws me a moment to the lighted glass
To watch the dancers - all under twenty-five -
Solemnly on the beat of happiness.

- Or so I fancy, sensing the smoke and sweat,
The wonderful feel of girls. Why be out there ?
But then, why be in there? Sex, yes, but what
Is sex ? Surely to think the...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

At Galway Races

by William Butler Yeats
 There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind:
We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.
Sing on: somewhere at some new moon,
We'll learn that sleeping is not death,
Hearing the whole...Read more of this...

The Maldive Shark

by Herman Melville
 About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there...Read more of this...

No Crowd that has occurred

by Emily Dickinson
 No Crowd that has occurred
Exhibit -- I suppose
That General Attendance
That Resurrection -- does --

Circumference be full --
The long restricted Grave
Assert her Vital Privilege --
The Dust -- connect -- and live --

On Atoms -- features place --
All Multitudes that were
Efface in the Comparison --
As Suns -- dissolve a star --

Solemnity -- prevail --
Its Individual Doom
Possess each separate Consciousness --
August --...Read more of this...

Burning of the Exeter Theatre

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight. 

The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...

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