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Famous Attentive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Kipling, Rudyard
...Horace, BK. V., Ode 3 "Regulus"-- A Diversity of Creatures
There are whose study is of smells,
 And to attentive schools rehearse
How something mixed with something else
 Makes something worse.

Some cultivate in broths impure
 The clients of our body--these,
Increasing without Venus, cure,
 Or cause, disease.

Others the heated wheel extol,
 And all its offspring, whose concern
Is how to make it farthest roll
 And fastest turn.

Me, much incuriou...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...Little maidens, when you look 
On this little story-book, 
Reading with attentive eye 
Its enticing history, 
Never think that hours of play 
Are your only HOLIDAY, 
And that in a HOUSE of joy 
Lessons serve but to annoy: 
If in any HOUSE you find 
Children of a gentle mind, 
Each the others pleasing ever-- 
Each the others vexing never-- 
Daily work and pastime daily 
In their order taking gaily-- 
Then be very sure that they 
...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...out to you every few paragraphs 
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing 
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden,
and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.

But now you are here with me,
composed in the open ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

What though my name stood rubric on the walls,
Or plaister'd posts, with claps, in capitals?
Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,
On wings of wind...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...you are not my cure,

nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger
and permit me mine

which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease

but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead

to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense....Read more of this...



by Byron, George (Lord)
...fair, 
Whose steps of lightness woke no echo there: 
He lean'd against the lofty pillar nigh 
With folded arms and long attentive eye, 
Nor mark'd a glance so sternly fix'd on his, 
Ill brook'd high Lara scrutiny like this: 
At length he caught it, 'tis a face unknown, 
But seems as searching his, and his alone; 
Prying and dark, a stranger's by his mien, 
Who still till now had gazed on him unseen; 
At length encountering meets the mutual gaze 
Of keen inquiry, and of mute a...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...t I divine,
They'll come not in your day, nor mine.


"But, oh my friends, my brethren, hear;
And turn for once th' attentive ear.
Ye see how prompt to aid our woes
The tender mercies of our foes;
Ye see with what unvaried rancour
Still for our blood their minions hanker;
Nor aught can sate their mad ambition,
From us, but death, or worse, submission.
Shall these then riot in our spoil,
Reap the glad harvest of our toil,
Rise from their country's ruins proud,
And ...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...Once played to attentive faces 
music has broken its frame 
its bodice of always-weak laces 
the entirely promiscuous art 
pours out in public spaces 
accompanying everything, the selections 
of sex and war, the rejections. 
To jeans-wearers in zipped sporrans 
it transmits an ideal body 
continuously as theirs age. Warrens 
of plastic tiles and mesh throats 
dispe...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...en to deepest Hell; O fall 
From what high state of bliss, into what woe! 
To whom our great progenitor. Thy words 
Attentive, and with more delighted ear, 
Divine instructer, I have heard, than when 
Cherubick songs by night from neighbouring hills 
Aereal musick send: Nor knew I not 
To be both will and deed created free; 
Yet that we never shall forget to love 
Our Maker, and obey him whose command 
Single is yet so just, my constant thoughts 
Assured me, and still ass...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...hoice 
Of all tastes else to please their appetite, 
Though wandering. He, with his consorted Eve, 
The story heard attentive, and was filled 
With admiration and deep muse, to hear 
Of things so high and strange; things, to their thought 
So unimaginable, as hate in Heaven, 
And war so near the peace of God in bliss, 
With such confusion: but the evil, soon 
Driven back, redounded as a flood on those 
From whom it sprung; impossible to mix 
With blessedness. Whence A...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...d entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale. 
But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed, 
To better hopes his more attentive mind 
Labouring had raised; and thus to Eve replied. 
Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems 
To argue in thee something more sublime 
And excellent, than what thy mind contemns; 
But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes 
That excellence thought in thee; and implies, 
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret 
For loss of life and pl...Read more of this...

by Cocteau, Jean
...the stanza
and the words of the group
and the letters of the word
and the least
loop of the letters

it's your foot
of attentive satin
that I place in position
pink
tightrope walker
sucked up by the void

to the left to the right
the god gives a shake
and I walk
towards the other side
 with infinite precaution...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...iselle, inhabitant, 
509 She seemed, of a country of the capuchins, 
510 So delicately blushed, so humbly eyed, 
511 Attentive to a coronal of things 
512 Secret and singular. Second, upon 
513 A second similar counterpart, a maid 
514 Most sisterly to the first, not yet awake 
515 Excepting to the motherly footstep, but 
516 Marvelling sometimes at the shaken sleep. 
517 Then third, a thing still flaxen in the light, 
518 A creeper under jaunty leaves. ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...f again
     She thought to catch the distant strain.
     With head upraised, and look intent,
     And eye and ear attentive bent,
     And locks flung back, and lips apart,
     Like monument of Grecian art,
     In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
     The guardian Naiad of the strand.
     XVIII.

     And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
     A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace,
     Of finer form or lovelier face!
     What though the sun, with ardent frown,
 ...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...sh'd ear.
Nor when the lamps expiring yield to night,
And solitude returns, would I forsake
The solemn mansion, but attentive mark
The due clock swinging slow with sweepy sway,
Measuring Time's flight with momentary sound.

Nor let me fail to cultivate my mind
With the soft thrillings of the tragic Muse,
Divine Melpomene, sweet Pity's nurse,
Queen of the stately step, and flowing pall.
Now let Monimia mourn streaming eyes
Her joys incestuous, and polluted love:
No...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...
To muse a little space did seem,
Then, like the echo of a dream,
Harked back upon her threadbare theme. 

Still an attentive ear he lent
But could not fathom what she meant:
She was not deep, nor eloquent. 

He marked the ripple on the sand:
The even swaying of her hand
Was all that he could understand. 

He saw in dreams a drawing-room,
Where thirteen wretches sat in gloom,
Waiting - he thought he knew for whom: 

He saw them drooping here and there,
Each feebly...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...>[Pg 375]After, when fear, and the extremest plaintWere ceased, th' attentive eyes of all were bentOn that fair face, and by despair becameSecure; she who was spent, not like a flameBy force extinguish'd, but as lights decay,And undiscerned waste themselves away:Thus went the soul in peace; so lam...Read more of this...

by Johnson, Samuel
...d a cause;
61 How wouldst thou shake at Britain's modish tribe,
62 Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe?
63 Attentive truth and nature to decry,
64 And pierce each scene with philosophic eye.
65 To thee were solemn toys or empty show,
66 The robes of pleasure and the veils of woe:
67 All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain,
68 Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain.

69 Such was the scorn that fill'd the sage's mind,
70 Renew'd at ev'ry g...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...in to call
In their most-learned Original:
And where I Language want,my Signs
The Bird upon the Bough divines;
And more attentive there doth sit
Then if She were with Lime-twigs knit.
No Leaf does tremble in the Wind
Which I returning cannot find.

Out of these scatter'd Sibyls Leaves
Strange Prophecies my Phancy weaves:
And in one History consumes,
Like Mexique Paintings, all the Plumes.
What Rome, Greece, Palestine, ere said
I in this light Mosaick read.
Thr...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...indows.
She sat down, like ceramic idol
In a long-ago-chosen pose.

To be happy -- is well-accustomed,
But attentive -- is harder just might.
Or the dark shadow has been overpowered
After many a jasmine March night?

Tiring din of the conversations,
Yellow chandelier's lifeless light
And the glimmer of crafty gadgets
Underneath the arm raised and light.

My companion looks at her with hope
And to her flashes a smile..
O my happy and wea...Read more of this...

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