Best Famous Probing Poems

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

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• All Famous Probing Poems

Written by Edna St. Vincent Millay | Renascence All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And—sure enough!—I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity Came down and settled over me; Forced back my scream into my chest, Bent back my arm upon my breast, And, pressing of the Undefined The definition on my mind, Held up before my eyes a glass Through which my shrinking sight did pass Until it seemed I must behold Immensity made manifold; Whispered to me a word whose sound Deafened the air for worlds around, And brought unmuffled to my ears The gossiping of friendly spheres, The creaking of the tented sky, The ticking of Eternity. I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, And present, and forevermore. The Universe, cleft to the core, Lay open to my probing sense That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence But could not,—nay! But needs must suck At the great wound, and could not pluck My lips away till I had drawn All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn! For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire,— Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each,—then mourned for all! A man was starving in Capri; He moved his eyes and looked at me; I felt his gaze, I heard his moan, And knew his hunger as my own. I saw at sea a great fog bank Between two ships that struck and sank; A thousand screams the heavens smote; And every scream tore through my throat. No hurt I did not feel, no death That was not mine; mine each last breath That, crying, met an answering cry From the compassion that was I. All suffering mine, and mine its rod; Mine, pity like the pity of God. Ah, awful weight! Infinity Pressed down upon the finite Me! My anguished spirit, like a bird, Beating against my lips I heard; Yet lay the weight so close about There was no room for it without. And so beneath the weight lay I And suffered death, but could not die. Long had I lain thus, craving death, When quietly the earth beneath Gave way, and inch by inch, so great At last had grown the crushing weight, Into the earth I sank till I Full six feet under ground did lie, And sank no more,—there is no weight Can follow here, however great. From off my breast I felt it roll, And as it went my tortured soul Burst forth and fled in such a gust That all about me swirled the dust. Deep in the earth I rested now; Cool is its hand upon the brow And soft its breast beneath the head Of one who is so gladly dead. And all at once, and over all The pitying rain began to fall; I lay and heard each pattering hoof Upon my lowly, thatched roof, And seemed to love the sound far more Than ever I had done before. For rain it hath a friendly sound To one who's six feet underground; And scarce the friendly voice or face: A grave is such a quiet place. The rain, I said, is kind to come And speak to me in my new home. I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, That I shall never more behold! Sleeping your myriad magics through, Close-sepulchred away from you! O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain, down-poured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me! I ceased; and through the breathless hush That answered me, the far-off rush Of herald wings came whispering Like music down the vibrant string Of my ascending prayer, and—crash! Before the wild wind's whistling lash The startled storm-clouds reared on high And plunged in terror down the sky, And the big rain in one black wave Fell from the sky and struck my grave. I know not how such things can be; I only know there came to me A fragrance such as never clings To aught save happy living things; A sound as of some joyous elf Singing sweet songs to please himself, And, through and over everything, A sense of glad awakening. The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear, Whispering to me I could hear; I felt the rain's cool finger-tips Brushed tenderly across my lips, Laid gently on my sealed sight, And all at once the heavy night Fell from my eyes and I could see,— A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver rain, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as I looked a quickening gust Of wind blew up to me and thrust Into my face a miracle Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,— I know not how such things can be!— I breathed my soul back into me. Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky, Till at my throat a strangling sob Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb Sent instant tears into my eyes; O God, I cried, no dark disguise Can e'er hereafter hide from me Thy radiant identity! Thou canst not move across the grass But my quick eyes will see Thee pass, Nor speak, however silently, But my hushed voice will answer Thee. I know the path that tells Thy way Through the cool eve of every day; God, I can push the grass apart And lay my finger on Thy heart! The world stands out on either side No wider than the heart is wide; Above the world is stretched the sky,— No higher than the soul is high. The heart can push the sea and land Farther away on either hand; The soul can split the sky in two, And let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat—the sky Will cave in on him by and by.

Written by Philip Levine | Passing Out The doctor fingers my bruise. "Magnificent," he says, "black at the edges and purple cored." Seated, he spies for clues, gingerly probing the slack flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull for air, losing the battle. Faced by his aged diploma, the heavy head of the X- ray, and the iron saddle, I grow lonely. He finds my secrets common and my sex neither objectionable nor lovely, though he is on the hunt for significance. The shelved cutlery twinkles behind glass, and I am on the way out, "an instance of the succumbed through extreme fantasy." He is alarmed at last, and would raise me, but I am floorward in a dream of lowered trousers, unarmed and weakly fighting to shut the window of my drawers. There are others in the room, voices of women above white oxfords; and the old floor, the friendly linoleum, departs. I whisper, "my love," and am safe, tabled, sniffing spirits of ammonia in the land of my fellows. "Open house!" my openings sing: pores, nose, anus let go their charges, a shameless flow into the outer world; and the ceiling, equipped with intelligence, surveys my produce. The doctor is thrilled by my display, for he is half the slave of necessity; I, enormous in my need, justify his sciences. "We have alternatives," he says, "Removal..." (And my blood whitens as on their dull trays the tubes dance. I must study the dark bellows of the gas machine, the painless maker.) "...and learning to live with it." Oh, but I am learning fast to live with any pain, ache, growth to keep myself intact; and in imagination I hug my bruise like an old Pooh Bear, already attuned to its moods. "Oh, my dark one, tell of the coming of cold and of Kings, ancient and ruined."

Written by Barry Tebb | Entanglements Why is it that in dreams I have visited - As teacher or pupil - almost every college and school In our once so green and pleasant land? Hardly a subject from art to anthropology I have not In dream seminar or floating spinning classroom Studied or tried my prentice hand at, or learned At the sandalled feet of some guru; as this minute I returned from an easeled art room with the title Of my weekly essay, ‘Discuss the links between the work Of any symbolist poet and Monet.’ O, how slowly I drifted back to consciousness Probing delightedly the dizzying whitenesses of Mallarm? Strolling along an avenue of linden trees Under a Provencal sky of azure Wet with the scent of jasmine and lavender. Yet in reality, things could hardly have been more different: Watching our children grow from their first tottering steps, Helping to tend them in sickness, learning the basics Of the healer’s art, taking an old man to a ward, Listening, listening to how many troubled lives And to my own, perhaps; seeking to tease a meaning Or find a thread in the jumbled maze of sorrows Souls in their turbulence and grief have wandered through. I even wrote a novel, ‘A Gone World’ I called it, And helped another with the birth-pangs of her own. Trying my hand at translation I puzzled the subtle Metaphors of Reverdy, wandering his midnight landscapes Of windmills and cross-roads where faith meets fate And neither will succumb. I sat in a packed lecture hall while a Lacanian Misread early Freud through a crooked lens And for a year turned every seminar to war To make him see his vision’s fatal flaw. I poured over cabinets of case histories, Tried living here and there and met an amah, Teaching her Auden and Empson. Her tears mingled With my own at our last hurried meeting In a crowded tea room, teaching her Klein. I sat through many a summer watching the children play, Feeling a hermit’s contentment in his cave, Contemplating Plato and envisioning that cave Of his where shadows move against the wall; And turn to see or fail to see The need to turn at all.

Written by Robert Frost | The Egg and the Machine He gave the solid rail a hateful kick. From far away there came an answering tick And then another tick. He knew the code: His hate had roused an engine up the road. He wished when he had had the track alone He had attacked it with a club or stone And bent some rail wide open like switch So as to wreck the engine in the ditch. Too late though, now, he had himself to thank. Its click was rising to a nearer clank. Here it came breasting like a horse in skirts. (He stood well back for fear of scalding squirts.) Then for a moment all there was was size Confusion and a roar that drowned the cries He raised against the gods in the machine. Then once again the sandbank lay serene. The traveler's eye picked up a turtle train, between the dotted feet a streak of tail, And followed it to where he made out vague But certain signs of buried turtle's egg; And probing with one finger not too rough, He found suspicious sand, and sure enough, The pocket of a little turtle mine. If there was one egg in it there were nine, Torpedo-like, with shell of gritty leather All packed in sand to wait the trump together. 'You'd better not disturb any more,' He told the distance, 'I am armed for war. The next machine that has the power to pass Will get this plasm in it goggle glass.'

Written by Rg Gregory | convolvulus-age up the ladder and round the bend age spirals like a convolvulus its bells break into the light catching breath with their beauty but how in the sightless earth its roots work to a wise agenda for all the seasonal pleasures sun and open air afford us we grow below more tightly (knowing squeezed into essence) till each pinch of inner space networks our darkest truths the convolvulus keeps climbing probing wise tendrils into gaps the sun still clings to - and finds fresher vantage points to spell its bright peals out - age stays young turns its patterns into poems flowers are to ring out loud what roots keep tight about and up the ladder round the bend dances stately or bizarre measure the joy of living how lightly we twine or twist they trumpet to the stars and we are stretched ourselves between the fixed earth and the sky's impossible dimensions such a step we have to make to keep in tune with both age brings the calm to do it our plant has been spaced out into its true proportions nothing has to boast to let its grace show - content to be up the ladder and round the bend

Written by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson | Story by Lalla-ji, the Priest He loved the Plant with a keen delight, A passionate fervour, strange to see, Tended it ardently, day and night, Yet never a flower lit up the tree. The leaves were succulent, thick, and green, And, sessile, out of the snakelike stem Rose spine-like fingers, alert and keen, To catch at aught that molested them. But though they nurtured it day and night, With love and labour, the child and he Were never granted the longed-for sight Of a flower crowning the twisted tree. Until one evening a wayworn Priest Stopped for the night in the Temple shade And shared the fare of their simple feast Under the vines and the jasmin laid. He, later, wandering round the flowers Paused awhile by the blossomless tree. The man said, "May it be fault of ours, That never its buds my eyes may see? "Aslip it came from the further East Many a sunlit summer ago." "It grows in our Jungles," said the Priest, "Men see it rarely; but this I know, "The Jungle people worship it; say They bury a child around its roots— Bury it living:—the only way To crimson glory of flowers and fruits." He spoke in whispers; his furtive glance Probing the depths of the garden shade. The man came closer, with eyes askance, The child beside them shivered, afraid. A cold wind drifted about the three, Jarring the spines with a hungry sound, The spines that grew on the snakelike tree And guarded its roots beneath the ground. ..... After the fall of the summer rain The plant was glorious, redly gay, Blood-red with blossom. Never again Men saw the child in the Temple play.