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Best Famous Dosed Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Dosed poems. This is a select list of the best famous Dosed poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Dosed poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of dosed poems.

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Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Exorcists

 And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.

For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.

I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding into the cove. We swam
while the others beached and burst
for their boarded huts, their hale cries
shouting back to us and the hollow slam
of the dory against the float.
Black arms of thunder strapped
upon us, squalled out, we breathed in rain
and stroked past the boat.
We thrashed for shore as if we were trapped
in green and that suddenly inadequate stain

of lightning belling around
our skin. Bodies in air
we raced for the empty lobsterman-shack.
It was yellow inside, the sound
of the underwing of the sun. I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-a-brac

of summer loves, I know
you not.


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Among Children

 I walk among the rows of bowed heads--
the children are sleeping through fourth grade
so as to be ready for what is ahead,
the monumental boredom of junior high
and the rush forward tearing their wings
loose and turning their eyes forever inward.
These are the children of Flint, their fathers
work at the spark plug factory or truck
bottled water in 5 gallon sea-blue jugs
to the widows of the suburbs. You can see
already how their backs have thickened,
how their small hands, soiled by pig iron,
leap and stutter even in dreams. I would like
to sit down among them and read slowly
from The Book of Job until the windows
pale and the teacher rises out of a milky sea
of industrial scum, her gowns streaming
with light, her foolish words transformed
into song, I would like to arm each one
with a quiver of arrows so that they might
rush like wind there where no battle rages
shouting among the trumpets, Hal Ha!
How dear the gift of laughter in the face
of the 8 hour day, the cold winter mornings
without coffee and oranges, the long lines
of mothers in old coats waiting silently
where the gates have closed. Ten years ago
I went among these same children, just born,
in the bright ward of the Sacred Heart and leaned
down to hear their breaths delivered that day,
burning with joy. There was such wonder
in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
dosed against autumn, in their damp heads
blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
turned against me or the light, not one
said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
not one complained or drifted alone,
unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.
Eleven years from now they will become
the men and women of Flint or Paradise,
the majors of a minor town, and I
will be gone into smoke or memory,
so I bow to them here and whisper
all I know, all I will never know.
Written by Ted Hughes | Create an image from this poem

Old Age Gets Up

 Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt sticks

An eye powdered over, half melted and solid again
Ponders
Ideas that collapse
At the first touch of attention

The light at the window, so square and so same
So full-strong as ever, the window frame
A scaffold in space, for eyes to lean on

Supporting the body, shaped to its old work
Making small movements in gray air
Numbed from the blurred accident
Of having lived, the fatal, real injury
Under the amnesia

Something tries to save itself-searches
For defenses-but words evade
Like flies with their own notions

Old age slowly gets dressed
Heavily dosed with death's night
Sits on the bed's edge

Pulls its pieces together
Loosely tucks in its shirt
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

La Nuit Blanche

 A much-discerning Public hold
 The Singer generally sings
 And prints and sells his past for gold.

 Whatever I may here disclaim,
 The very clever folk I sing to
 Will most indubitably cling to
 Their pet delusion, just the same.


I had seen, as the dawn was breaking
 And I staggered to my rest,
Tari Devi softly shaking
 From the Cart Road to the crest.
I had seen the spurs of Jakko
 Heave and quiver, swell and sink.
Was it Earthquake or tobacco,
 Day of Doom, or Night of Drink?

In the full, fresh fragrant morning
 I observed a camel crawl,
Laws of gravitation scorning,
 On the ceiling and the wall;
Then I watched a fender walking,
 And I heard grey leeches sing,
And a red-hot monkey talking
 Did not seem the proper thing.

Then a Creature, skinned and crimson,
 Ran about the floor and cried,
And they said that I had the "jims" on,
 And they dosed me with bromide,
And they locked me in my bedroom --
 Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse --
Though I said: "To give my head room
 You had best unroof the house."

But my words were all unheeded,
 Though I told the grave M.D.
That the treatment really needed
 Was a dip in open sea
That was lapping just below me,
 Smooth as silver, white as snow,
And it took three men to throw me
 When I found I could not go.

Half the night I watched the Heavens
 Fizz like '81 champagne --
Fly to sixes and to sevens,
 Wheel and thunder back again;
And when all was peace and order
 Save one planet nailed askew,
Much I wept because my warder
 Would not let me sit it true.

After frenzied hours of wating,
 When the Earth and Skies were dumb,
Pealed an awful voice dictating
 An interminable sum,
Changing to a tangle story --
 "What she said you said I said" --
Till the Moon arose in glory,
 And I found her . . . in my head;

Then a Face came, blind and weeping,
 And It couldn't wipe its eyes,
And It muttered I was keeping
 Back the moonlight from the skies;
So I patted it for pity,
 But it whistled shrill with wrath,
And a huge black Devil City
 Poured its peoples on my path.

So I fled with steps uncertain
 On a thousand-year long race,
But the bellying of the curtain
 Kept me always in one place;
While the tumult rose and maddened
 To the roar of Earth on fire,
Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened
 To a whisper tense as wire.

In tolerable stillness
 Rose one little, little star,
And it chuckled at my illness,
 And it mocked me from afar;
And its breathren came and eyed me,
 Called the Universe to aid,
Till I lay, with naught to hide me,
 'Neath' the Scorn of All Things Made.

Dun and saffron, robed and splendid,
 Broke the solemn, pitying Day,
And I knew my pains were ended,
 And I turned and tried to pray;
But my speech was shattered wholly,
 And I wept as children weep.
Till the dawn-wind, softly, slowly,
 Brought to burning eyelids sleep.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things