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Best Famous Hold Back Poems

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Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Land

 When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin'' in to hay?"

And the aged Hobden answered: "I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreen.
" So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style-- Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile, And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show, We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago.
Then Julius Fabricius died as even Prefects do, And after certain centuries, Imperial Rome died too.
Then did robbers enter Britain from across the Northern main And our Lower River-field was won by Ogier the Dane.
Well could Ogier work his war-boat --well could Ogier wield his brand-- Much he knew of foaming waters--not so much of farming land.
So he called to him a Hobden of the old unaltered blood, Saying: "What about that River-piece; she doesn't look no good?" And that aged Hobden answered "'Tain't for me not interfere.
But I've known that bit o' meadow now for five and fifty year.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but I've proved it time on ' time, If you want to change her nature you have got to give her lime!" Ogier sent his wains to Lewes, twenty hours' solemn walk, And drew back great abundance of the cool, grey, healing chalk.
And old Hobden spread it broadcast, never heeding what was in't.
-- Which is why in cleaning ditches, now and then we find a flint.
Ogier died.
His sons grew English-Anglo-Saxon was their name-- Till out of blossomed Normandy another pirate came; For Duke William conquered England and divided with his men, And our Lower River-field he gave to William of Warenne.
But the Brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy autumn night And tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right.
So, said William to his Bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds: "Hob, what about that River-bit--the Brook's got up no bounds? " And that aged Hobden answered: "'Tain't my business to advise, But ye might ha' known 'twould happen from the way the valley lies.
Where ye can't hold back the water you must try and save the sile.
Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd spile!" They spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees, And planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees.
And when the spates of Autumn whirl the gravel-beds away You can see their faithful fragments, iron-hard in iron clay.
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Georgii Quinti Anno Sexto, I, who own the River-field, Am fortified with title-deeds, attested, signed and sealed, Guaranteeing me, my assigns, my executors and heirs All sorts of powers and profits which-are neither mine nor theirs, I have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires.
I can fish-but Hobden tickles--I can shoot--but Hobden wires.
I repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege, Have been used by every Hobden since a Hobden swapped a hedge.
Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew? Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew? Confiscate his evening ****** under which my conies ran, And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.
His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made; And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.
Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies, Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer, And if flagrantly a poacher--'tain't for me to interfere.
"Hob, what about that River-bit?" I turn to him again, With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
"Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but"-and here he takes com- mand.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.


Written by Duncan Campbell Scott | Create an image from this poem

The Harvest

 Sun on the mountain,
Shade in the valley,
Ripple and lightness
Leaping along the world,
Sun, like a gold sword
Plucked from the scabbard,
Striking the wheat-fields,
Splendid and lusty,
Close-standing, full-headed,
Toppling with plenty;
Shade, like a buckler
Kindly and ample,
Sweeping the wheat-fields
Darkening and tossing;
There on the world-rim
Winds break and gather
Heaping the mist
For the pyre of the sunset;
And still as a shadow,
In the dim westward,
A cloud sloop of amethyst
Moored to the world
With cables of rain.
Acres of gold wheat Stir in the sunshine, Rounding the hill-top, Crested with plenty, Filling the valley, Brimmed with abundance, Wind in the wheat-field Eddying and settling, Swaying it, sweeping it, Lifting the rich heads, Tossing them soothingly Twinkle and shimmer The lights and the shadowings, Nimble as moonlight Astir in the mere.
Laden with odors Of peace and of plenty, Soft comes the wind From the ranks of the wheat-field, Bearing a promise Of harvest and sickle-time, Opulent threshing-floors Dusty and dim With the whirl of the flail, And wagons of bread, Sown-laden and lumbering Through the gateways of cities.
When will the reapers Strike in their sickles, Bending and grasping, Shearing and spreading; When will the gleaners Searching the stubble Take the last wheat-heads Home in their arms ? Ask not the question! - Something tremendous Moves to the answer.
Hunger and poverty Heaped like the ocean Welters and mutters, Hold back the sickles! Millions of children Born to their mothers' womb, Starved at the nipple, cry,-- Ours is the harvest! Millions of women Learned in the tragical Secrets of poverty, Sweated and beaten, cry,-- Hold back the sickles! Millions of men With a vestige of manhood, Wild-eyed and gaunt-throated, Shout with a leonine Accent of anger, Leaves us the wheat-fields! When will the reapers Strike in their sickles? Ask not the question; Something tremendous Moves to the answer.
Long have they sharpened Their fiery, impetuous Sickles of carnage, Welded them aeons Ago in the mountains Of suffering and anguish; Hearts were their hammers Blood was their fire, Sorrow their anvil, (Trusty the sickle Tempered with tears;) Time they had plenty- Harvests and harvests Passed them in agony, Only a half-filled Ear for their lot; Man that has taken God for a master Made him a law, Mocked him and cursed him, Set up this hunger, Called it necessity, Put in the blameless mouth Juda's language: The poor ye have with you Always, unending.
But up from the impotent Anguish of children, Up from the labor Fruitless, unmeaning, Of millions of mothers, Hugely necessitous, Grew by a just law Stern and implacable, Art born of poverty, The making of sickles Meet for the harvest.
And now to the wheat-fields Come the weird reapers Armed with their sickles, Whipping them keenly In the fresh-air fields, Wild with the joy of them, Finding them trusty, Hilted with teen.
Swarming like ants, The Idea for captain, No banners, no bugles, Only a terrible Ground-bass of gathering Tempest and fury, Only a tossing Of arms and of garments; Sexless and featureless, (Only the children Different among them, Crawling between their feet, Borne on their shoulders;) Rolling their shaggy heads Wild with the unheard-of Drug of the sunshine; Tears that had eaten The half of their eyelids Dry on their cheeks; Blood in their stiffened hair Clouted and darkened; Down in their cavern hearts Hunger the tiger, Leaping, exulting; Sighs that had choked them Burst into triumphing; On they come, Victory! Up to the wheat-fields, Dreamed of in visions Bred by the hunger, Seen for the first time Splendid and golden; On they come fluctuant, Seething and breaking, Weltering like fire In the pit of the earthquake, Bursting in heaps With the sudden intractable Lust of the hunger: Then when they see them- The miles of the harvest White in the sunshine, Rushing and stumbling, With the mighty and clamorous Cry of a people Starved from creation, Hurl themselves onward, Deep in the wheat-fields, Weeping like children, After ages and ages, Back at the mother the earth.
Night in the valley, Gloom on the mountain, Wind in the wheat, Far to the southward The flutter of lightning, The shudder of thunder; But high at the zenith, A cluster of stars Glimmers and throbs In the gasp of the midnight, Steady and absolute, Ancient and sure
Written by Jorie Graham | Create an image from this poem

The Guardian Angel Of The Private Life

 All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots, pale but effective, and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events, built-up its tiniest cathedral.
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(Or is it the sum of what takes place? ) If I lean down, to whisper, to them, down into their gravitational field, there where they head busily on into the woods, laying the gifts out one by one, onto the path, hoping to be on the air, hoping to please the children -- (and some gifts overwrapped and some not wrapped at all) -- if I stir the wintered ground-leaves up from the paths, nimbly, into a sheet of sun, into an escape-route-width of sun, mildly gelatinous where wet, though mostly crisp, fluffing them up a bit, and up, as if to choke the singularity of sun with this jubilation of manyness, all through and round these passers-by -- just leaves, nothing that can vaporize into a thought, no, a burning bush's worth of spidery, up-ratcheting, tender-cling leaves, oh if -- the list gripped hard by the left hand of one, the busyness buried so deep into the puffed-up greenish mind of one, the hurried mind hovering over its rankings, the heart -- there at the core of the drafting leaves -- wet and warm at the zero of the bright mock-stairwaying-up of the posthumous leaves -- the heart, formulating its alleyways of discovery, fussing about the integrity of the whole, the heart trying to make time and place seem small, sliding its slim tears into the deep wallet of each new event on the list then checking it off -- oh the satisfaction -- each check a small kiss, an echo of the previous one, off off it goes the dry high-ceilinged obligation, checked-off by the fingertips, by the small gust called done that swipes the unfinishable's gold hem aside, revealing what might have been, peeling away what should .
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There are flowerpots at their feet.
There is fortune-telling in the air they breathe.
It filters-in with its flashlight-beam, its holy-water-tinted air, down into the open eyes, the lampblack open mouth.
Oh listen to these words I'm spitting out for you.
My distance from you makes them louder.
Are we all waiting for the phone to ring? Who should it be? What fountain is expected to thrash forth mysteries of morning joy? What quail-like giant tail of promises, pleiades, psalters, plane-trees, what parapets petalling-forth the invisible into the world of things, turning the list into its spatial-form at last, into its archival many-headed, many-legged colony .
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Oh look at you.
What is it you hold back? What piece of time is it the list won't cover? You down there, in the theater of operations -- you, throat of the world -- so diacritical -- (are we all waiting for the phone to ring?) -- (what will you say? are you home? are you expected soon?) -- oh wanderer back from break, all your attention focused -- as if the thinking were an oar, this ship the last of some original fleet, the captains gone but some of us who saw the plan drawn-out still here -- who saw the thinking clot-up in the bodies of the greater men, who saw them sit in silence while the voices in the other room lit-up with passion, itchings, dreams of landings, while the solitary ones, heads in their hands, so still, the idea barely forming at the base of that stillness, the idea like a homesickness starting just to fold and pleat and knot-itself out of the manyness -- the plan -- before it's thought, before it's a done deal or the name-you're-known-by -- the men of x, the outcomes of y -- before -- the mind still gripped hard by the hands that would hold the skull even stiller if they could, that nothing distract, that nothing but the possible be let to filter through, the possible and then the finely filamented hope, the filigree, without the distractions of wonder -- oh tiny golden spore just filtering-in to touch the good idea, which taking-form begins to twist, coursing for bottom-footing, palpating for edge-hold, limit, now finally about to rise, about to go into the other room -- and yet not having done so yet, not yet -- the intake -- before the credo, before the plan -- right at the homesickness -- before this list you hold in your exhausted hand.
Oh put it down.
Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | Create an image from this poem

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure and are awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help? Not angels, not humans; and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after, gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers? Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.
Yes, the springtime were in need of you.
Often a star waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked below an open window, a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust.
But could you manage it? Were you not always distraught by expectation, as if all this were announcing the arrival of a beloved? (Where would you find a place to hide her, with all your great strange thoughts coming and going and often staying for the night.
) When longing overcomes you, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is far from immortal enough.
Those whom you almost envy, the abandoned and desolate ones, whom you found so much more loving than those gratified.
Begin ever new again the praise you cannot attain; remember: the hero lives on and survives; even his downfall was for him only a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But nature, exhausted, takes lovers back into itself, as if such creative forces could never be achieved a second time.
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently: that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel from that far intenser example of loving: "Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest sufferings finally become more fruitful for us? Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension, and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices.
Listen my heart, as only saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them clear off the ground.
Yet they went on, impossibly, kneeling, completely unawares: so intense was their listening.
Not that you could endure the voice of God -far from it! But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
They sweep toward you now from those who died young.
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples, did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa? What do they want of me? to quietly remove the appearance of suffered injustice that, at times, hinders a little their spirits from freely proceeding onward.
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer, to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire; not to observe roses and other things that promised so much in terms of a human future, no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to even discard one's own name as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange, not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes.
Strange to notice all that was related, fluttering so loosely in space.
And being dead is hard work and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.
-Yes, but the liviing make the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction.
Angels (they say) are often unable to distinguish between moving among the living or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it, through both realms forever, and their voices are lost in its thunderous roar.
In the end the early departed have no longer need of us.
One is gently weaned from things of this world as a child outgrows the need of its mother's breast.
But we who have need of those great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of spiritual growth, could we exist without them? Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning in the midst of the mourning for Linos? the daring first sounds of song piercing the barren numbness, and how in that stunned space an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever, and the emptiness felt for the first time those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture and comfort and help us.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

 There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.
Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues, Or strange beasts that beset you, Of birds that croak at you the Triple will? Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns Below the Boreal Crown, Prison to all true kings that ever reigned? Water to water, ark again to ark, From woman back to woman: So each new victim treads unfalteringly The never altered circuit of his fate, Bringing twelve peers as witness Both to his starry rise and starry fall.
Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty, All fish below the thighs? She in her left hand bears a leafy quince; When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling, How many the King hold back? Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched, Whose coils contain the ocean, Into whose chops with naked sword he springs, Then in black water, tangled by the reeds, Battles three days and nights, To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore? Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly, The owl hoots from the elder, Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup: Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses: There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed.


Written by Amy Lowell | Create an image from this poem

The Forsaken

 Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary.
Hear me! I am very weary.
I have come from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache for such far roaming.
I cannot walk as light as I used, and my thoughts grow confused.
I am heavier than I was.
Mary Mother, you know the cause! Beautiful Holy Lady, take my shame away from me! Let this fear be only seeming, let it be that I am dreaming.
For months I have hoped it was so, now I am afraid I know.
Lady, why should this be shame, just because I haven't got his name.
He loved me, yes, Lady, he did, and he couldn't keep it hid.
We meant to marry.
Why did he die? That day when they told me he had gone down in the avalanche, and could not be found until the snow melted in Spring, I did nothing.
I could not cry.
Why should he die? Why should he die and his child live? His little child alive in me, for my comfort.
No, Good God, for my misery! I cannot face the shame, to be a mother, and not married, and the poor child to be reviled for having no father.
Merciful Mother, Holy Virgin, take away this sin I did.
Let the baby not be.
Only take the stigma off of me! I have told no one but you, Holy Mary.
My mother would call me "whore", and spit upon me; the priest would have me repent, and have the rest of my life spent in a convent.
I am no whore, no bad woman, he loved me, and we were to be married.
I carried him always in my heart, what did it matter if I gave him the least part of me too? You were a virgin, Holy Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a woman must give all.
There is some call to give and hold back nothing.
I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the sign.
What am I saying? He is dead, my beautiful, strong man! I shall never feel him caress me again.
This is the only baby I shall have.
Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby! My little, helpless baby! He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a runner and as good a shot.
Not that he shall be no scholar neither.
He shall go to school in winter, and learn to read and write, and my father will teach him to carve, so that he can make the little horses, and cows, and chamois, out of white wood.
Oh, No! No! No! How can I think such things, I am not good.
My father will have nothing to do with my boy, I shall be an outcast thing.
Oh, Mother of our Lord God, be merciful, take away my shame! Let my body be as it was before he came.
No little baby for me to keep underneath my heart for those long months.
To live for and to get comfort from.
I cannot go home and tell my mother.
She is so hard and righteous.
She never loved my father, and we were born for duty, not for love.
I cannot face it.
Holy Mother, take my baby away! Take away my little baby! I don't want it, I can't bear it! And I shall have nothing, nothing! Just be known as a good girl.
Have other men want to marry me, whom I could not touch, after having known my man.
Known the length and breadth of his beautiful white body, and the depth of his love, on the high Summer Alp, with the moon above, and the pine-needles all shiny in the light of it.
He is gone, my man, I shall never hear him or feel him again, but I could not touch another.
I would rather lie under the snow with my own man in my arms! So I shall live on and on.
Just a good woman.
With nothing to warm my heart where he lay, and where he left his baby for me to care for.
I shall not be quite human, I think.
Merely a stone-dead creature.
They will respect me.
What do I care for respect! You didn't care for people's tongues when you were carrying our Lord Jesus.
God had my man give me my baby, when He knew that He was going to take him away.
His lips will comfort me, his hands will soothe me.
All day I will work at my lace-making, and all night I will keep him warm by my side and pray the blessed Angels to cover him with their wings.
Dear Mother, what is it that sings? I hear voices singing, and lovely silver trumpets through it all.
They seem just on the other side of the wall.
Let me keep my baby, Holy Mother.
He is only a poor lace-maker's baby, with a stain upon him, but give me strength to bring him up to be a man.
Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

 The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air.
I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way of following me with his eyes, as if to say Soon you'll have your hands full! And yes, I will; this child will be mine not his, the failures, if I fail will all be mine.
We're not good, Clara, at learning to prevent these things, and once we have a child it is ours.
But lately I feel beyond Otto or anyone.
I know now the kind of work I have to do.
It takes such energy! I have the feeling I'm moving somewhere, patiently, impatiently, in my loneliness.
I'm looking everywhere in nature for new forms, old forms in new places, the planes of an antique mouth, let's say, among the leaves.
I know and do not know what I am searching for.
Remember those months in the studio together, you up to your strong forearms in wet clay, I trying to make something of the strange impressions assailing me--the Japanese flowers and birds on silk, the drunks sheltering in the Louvre, that river-light, those faces.
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Did we know exactly why we were there? Paris unnerved you, you found it too much, yet you went on with your work.
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and later we met there again, both married then, and I thought you and Rilke both seemed unnerved.
I felt a kind of joylessness between you.
Of course he and I have had our difficulties.
Maybe I was jealous of him, to begin with, taking you from me, maybe I married Otto to fill up my loneliness for you.
Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows, he believes in women.
But he feeds on us, like all of them.
His whole life, his art is protected by women.
Which of us could say that? Which of us, Clara, hasn't had to take that leap out beyond our being women to save our work? or is it to save ourselves? Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
Do you know: I was dreaming I had died giving birth to the child.
I couldn't paint or speak or even move.
My child--I think--survived me.
But what was funny in the dream was, Rainer had written my requiem-- a long, beautiful poem, and calling me his friend.
I was your friend but in the dream you didn't say a word.
In the dream his poem was like a letter to someone who has no right to be there but must be treated gently, like a guest who comes on the wrong day.
Clara, why don't I dream of you? That photo of the two of us--I have it still, you and I looking hard into each other and my painting behind us.
How we used to work side by side! And how I've worked since then trying to create according to our plan that we'd bring, against all odds, our full power to every subject.
Hold back nothing because we were women.
Clara, our strength still lies in the things we used to talk about: how life and death take one another's hands, the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures come alive in the light.
Sometimes I feel it is myself that kicks inside me, myself I must give suck to, love.
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I wish we could have done this for each other all our lives, but we can't.
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They say a pregnant woman dreams her own death.
But life and death take one another's hands.
Clara, I feel so full of work, the life I see ahead, and love for you, who of all people however badly I say this will hear all I say and cannot say.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things