Best Famous Set Aside Poems

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

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• All Famous Set Aside Poems

Written by José Martí | A Sincere Man Am I A sincere man am I From the land where palm trees grow, And I want before I die My soul's verses to bestow. I'm a traveler to all parts, And a newcomer to none: I am art among the arts, With the mountains I am one. I know how to name and class All the strange flowers that grow; I know every blade of grass, Fatal lie and sublime woe. I have seen through dead of night Upon my head softly fall, Rays formed of the purest light From beauty celestial. I have seen wings that were surging From beautiful women's shoulders, And seen butterflies emerging From the refuse heap that moulders. I have known a man to live With a dagger at his side, And never once the name give Of she by whose hand he died. Twice, for an instant, did I My soul's reflection espy: Twice: when my poor father died And when she bade me good-bye. I trembled once, when I flung The vineyard gate, and to my dread, The wicked hornet had stung My little girl on the forehead. I rejoiced once and felt lucky The day that my jailer came To read the death warrant to me That bore his tears and my name. I hear a sigh across the earth, I hear a sigh over the deep: It is no sign reaching my hearth, But my son waking from sleep. If they say I have obtained The pick of the jeweller's trove, A good friend is what I've gained And I have put aside love. I have seen across the skies A wounded eagle still flying; I know the cubby where lies The snake of its venom dying. I know that the world is weak And must soon fall to the ground, Then the gentle brook will speak Above the quiet profound. While trembling with joy and dread, I have touched with hand so bold A once-bright star that fell dead From heaven at my threshold. On my brave heart is engraved The sorrow hidden from all eyes: The son of a land enslaved, Lives for it, suffers and dies. All is beautiful and right, All is as music and reason; And all, like diamonds, is light That was coal before its season. I know when fools are laid to rest Honor and tears will abound, And that of all fruits, the best Is left to rot in holy ground. Without a word, the pompous muse I've set aside, and understood: From a withered branch, I choose To hang my doctoral hood.

Written by Thomas Hardy | A Christmas Ghost Story South of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years? Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied, But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."

Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | The Ghosts Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out, Sees the downward plunge, and follows; And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark with pinions. So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise Round their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish. Now, o'er all the dreary North-land, Mighty Peboan, the Winter, Breathing on the lakes and rivers, Into stone had changed their waters. From his hair he shook the snow-flakes, Till the plains were strewn with whiteness, One uninterrupted level, As if, stooping, the Creator With his hand had smoothed them over. Through the forest, wide and wailing, Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes; In the village worked the women, Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin; And the young men played together On the ice the noisy ball-play, On the plain the dance of snow-shoes. One dark evening, after sundown, In her wigwam Laughing Water Sat with old Nokomis, waiting For the steps of Hiawatha Homeward from the hunt returning. On their faces gleamed the firelight, Painting them with streaks of crimson, In the eyes of old Nokomis Glimmered like the watery moonlight, In the eyes of Laughing Water Glistened like the sun in water; And behind them crouched their shadows In the corners of the wigwam, And the smoke In wreaths above them Climbed and crowded through the smoke-flue. Then the curtain of the doorway From without was slowly lifted; Brighter glowed the fire a moment, And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath, As two women entered softly, Passed the doorway uninvited, Without word of salutation, Without sign of recognition, Sat down in the farthest corner, Crouching low among the shadows. From their aspect and their garments, Strangers seemed they in the village; Very pale and haggard were they, As they sat there sad and silent, Trembling, cowering with the shadows. Was it the wind above the smoke-flue, Muttering down into the wigwam? Was it the owl, the Koko-koho, Hooting from the dismal forest? Sure a voice said in the silence: "These are corpses clad in garments, These are ghosts that come to haunt you, From the kingdom of Ponemah, From the land of the Hereafter!" Homeward now came Hiawatha From his hunting in the forest, With the snow upon his tresses, And the red deer on his shoulders. At the feet of Laughing Water Down he threw his lifeless burden; Nobler, handsomer she thought him, Than when first he came to woo her, First threw down the deer before her, As a token of his wishes, As a promise of the future. Then he turned and saw the strangers, Cowering, crouching with the shadows; Said within himself, "Who are they? What strange guests has Minnehaha?" But he questioned not the strangers, Only spake to bid them welcome To his lodge, his food, his fireside. When the evening meal was ready, And the deer had been divided, Both the pallid guests, the strangers, Springing from among the shadows, Seized upon the choicest portions, Seized the white fat of the roebuck, Set apart for Laughing Water, For the wife of Hiawatha; Without asking, without thanking, Eagerly devoured the morsels, Flitted back among the shadows In the corner of the wigwam. Not a word spake Hiawatha, Not a motion made Nokomis, Not a gesture Laughing Water; Not a change came o'er their features; Only Minnehaha softly Whispered, saying, "They are famished; Let them do what best delights them; Let them eat, for they are famished." Many a daylight dawned and darkened, Many a night shook off the daylight As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes From the midnight of its branches; Day by day the guests unmoving Sat there silent in the wigwam; But by night, in storm or starlight, Forth they went into the forest, Bringing fire-wood to the wigwam, Bringing pine-cones for the burning, Always sad and always silent. And whenever Hiawatha Came from fishing or from hunting, When the evening meal was ready, And the food had been divided, Gliding from their darksome corner, Came the pallid guests, the strangers, Seized upon the choicest portions Set aside for Laughing Water, And without rebuke or question Flitted back among the shadows. Never once had Hiawatha By a word or look reproved them; Never once had old Nokomis Made a gesture of impatience; Never once had Laughing Water Shown resentment at the outrage. All had they endured in silence, That the rights of guest and stranger, That the virtue of free-giving, By a look might not be lessened, By a word might not be broken. Once at midnight Hiawatha, Ever wakeful, ever watchful, In the wigwam, dimly lighted By the brands that still were burning, By the glimmering, flickering firelight Heard a sighing, oft repeated, From his couch rose Hiawatha, From his shaggy hides of bison, Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain, Saw the pallid guests, the shadows, Sitting upright on their couches, Weeping in the silent midnight. And he said: "O guests! why is it That your hearts are so afflicted, That you sob so in the midnight? Has perchance the old Nokomis, Has my wife, my Minnehaha, Wronged or grieved you by unkindness, Failed in hospitable duties?" Then the shadows ceased from weeping, Ceased from sobbing and lamenting, And they said, with gentle voices: "We are ghosts of the departed, Souls of those who once were with you. From the realms of Chibiabos Hither have we come to try you, Hither have we come to warn you. "Cries of grief and lamentation Reach us in the Blessed Islands; Cries of anguish from the living, Calling back their friends departed, Sadden us with useless sorrow. Therefore have we come to try you; No one knows us, no one heeds us. We are but a burden to you, And we see that the departed Have no place among the living. "Think of this, O Hiawatha! Speak of it to all the people, That henceforward and forever They no more with lamentations Sadden the souls of the departed In the Islands of the Blessed. "Do not lay such heavy burdens In the graves of those you bury, Not such weight of furs and wampum, Not such weight of pots and kettles, For the spirits faint beneath them. Only give them food to carry, Only give them fire to light them. "Four days is the spirit's journey To the land of ghosts and shadows, Four its lonely night encampments; Four times must their fires be lighted. Therefore, when the dead are buried, Let a fire, as night approaches, Four times on the grave be kindled, That the soul upon its journey May not lack the cheerful firelight, May not grope about in darkness. "Farewell, noble Hiawatha! We have put you to the trial, To the proof have put your patience, By the insult of our presence, By the outrage of our actions. We have found you great and noble. Fail not in the greater trial, Faint not In the harder struggle." When they ceased, a sudden darkness Fell and filled the silent wigwam. Hiawatha heard a rustle As of garments trailing by him, Heard the curtain of the doorway Lifted by a hand he saw not, Felt the cold breath of the night air, For a moment saw the starlight; But he saw the ghosts no longer, Saw no more the wandering spirits From the kingdom of Ponemah, From the land of the Hereafter.

Written by Marianne Moore | The Pangolin Another armored animal--scale lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they form the uninterrupted central tail-row! This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard, the night miniature artist engineer is, yes, Leonardo da Vinci's replica-- impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear. Armor seems extra. But for him, the closing ear-ridge-- or bare ear lacking even this small eminence and similarly safe contracting nose and eye apertures impenetrably closable, are not; a true ant-eater, not cockroach eater, who endures exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night, returning before sunrise, stepping in the moonlight, on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the claws for digging. Serpentined about the tree, he draws away from danger unpugnaciously, with no sound but a harmless hiss; keeping the fragile grace of the Thomas- of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron vine, or rolls himself into a ball that has power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in-feet. Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest of rocks closed with earth from inside, which can thus darken. Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast each with a splendor which man in all his vileness cannot set aside; each with an excellence! "Fearfull yet to be feared," the armored ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but engulfs what he can, the flattened sword- edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg- and body-plates quivering violently when it retaliates and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill on the hat-brim of Gargallo's hollow iron head of a matador, he will drop and will then walk away unhurt, although if unintruded on, he cautiously works down the tree, helped by his tail. The giant-pangolin- tail, graceful tool, as a prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like an elephant's trunkwith special skin, is not lost on this ant- and stone-swallowing uninjurable artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between dusk and day they have not unchain-like machine-like form and frictionless creep of a thing made graceful by adversities, con- versities. To explain grace requires a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever, why would those who graced the spires with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious low stone seats--a monk and monk and monk--between the thus ingenious roof supports, have slaved to confuse grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a debt, the cure for sins, a graceful use of what are yet approved stone mullions branching out across the perpendiculars? A sailboat was the first machine. Pangolins, made for moving quietly also, are models of exactness, on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade, with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon, man slaving to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth having, needing to choose wisely how to use his strength; a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs, like the ant; spidering a length of web from bluffs above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked like the pangolin; capsizing in disheartenment. Bedizened or stark naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing- masters to this world, griffons a dark "Like does not like like that is abnoxious"; and writes error with four r's. Among animals, one has sense of humor. Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Unignorant, modest and unemotional, and all emotion, he has everlasting vigor, power to grow, though there are few creatures who can make one breathe faster and make one erecter. Not afraid of anything is he, and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle at every step. Consistent with the formula--warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few hairs-- that is a mammal; there he sits on his own habitat, serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly done, says to the alternating blaze, "Again the sun! anew each day; and new and new and new, that comes into and steadies my soul."

Written by Barry Tebb | To Brenda Williams ‘writing Against The Grain' It was Karl Shapiro who wrote in his ‘Defence of Ignorance’ how many poets Go mad or seem to be so and the majority think we should all be in jail Or mental hospital and you have ended up in both places - fragile as bone china, Your pale skin taut, your fingers clasped tight round a cup, sitting in a pool Of midnight light, your cats stretched flat on your desk top’s scatter Under the laughing eyes of Sexton and Lowell beneath Rollie McKenna’s seamless shutter. Other nights you hunch in your rocking chair, spilling rhythms Silently as a bat weaves through midnight’s jade waves Your sibylline tongue tapping every twist or the syllable count Deftly as Whistler mixed tints for Nocturnes’ nuances or shade Or Hokusai tipped every wave crest. You pause when down the hall a cat snatches at a forbidden plant, “Schubert, Schubert”, you whisper urgently for it is night and there are neighbours. The whistle of the forgotten kettle shrills: you turn down the gas And scurry back to your poem as you would to a sick child And ease the pain of disordered lines. The face of your mother smiles like a Madonna bereft And the faces of our children are always somewhere As you focus your midnight eyes soft with tears. You create to survive, a Balzac writing against the clock A Baudelaire writing against the bailiff’s knock A Val?ry in the throes of ‘Narcisse Parle’. When a far clock chimes you sigh and set aside the page: There is no telephone to ring or call: I am distant and sick, Frail as an old stick Our spirits rise and fall like the barometer’s needle Jerk at a finger tapping on glass Flashbacks or inspiration cry out at memory loss. You peer through a magnifying glass at the typeface Your knuckles white with pain as the sonnet starts to strain Like a child coming to birth, the third you never bore. All births, all babies, all poems are the same in coming The spark of inspiration or spurt of semen, The silent months of gestation, the waiting and worrying Until the final agony of creation: for our first son’s Birth at Oakes we had only a drawer for a crib. Memories blur: all I know is that it was night And at home as you always insisted, against all advice But mine. I remember feebly holding the mask in place As the Indian woman doctor brutally stitched you without an anaesthetic And the silence like no other when even the midwives Had left: the child slept and we crept round his make-shift cradle. At Brudenell Road again it was night in the cold house With bare walls and plug-in fires: Bob, the real father Paced the front, deep in symphonic thought: Isaiah slept: I waited and watched - an undiagnosed breech The doctor’s last minute discovery - made us rush And scatter to have you admitted. I fell asleep in the silent house and woke to a chaos Of blood and towels and discarded dressings and a bemused five year old. We brought you armsful of daffodils, Easter’s remainders. “Happy Easter, are the father?” Staff beamed As we sat by the bedside, Bob, myself and John MacKendrick, Brecht and Rilke’s best translator Soon to die by his own hand. Poetry is born in the breech position Poems beget poems.

Written by Paul Muldoon | The Frog Comes to mind as another small upheaval amongst the rubble. His eye matches exactly the bubble in my spirit-level. I set aside hammer and chisel and take him on the trowel. The entire population of Ireland springs from a pair left to stand overnight in a pond in the gardens of Trinity College, two bottle of wine left there to chill after the Act of Union. There is, surely, in this story a moral. A moral for our times. What if I put him to my head and squeezed it out of him, like the juice of freshly squeezed limes, or a lemon sorbet?

Written by Francois Villon | Ballade To Our Lady WRITTEN FOR HIS MOTHER Dame du ciel, regents terrienne, Emperiere des infemaux palus.... Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,— I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call, Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell, Albeit in nought I be commendable. But all mine undeserving may not mar Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are; Without the which (as true words testify) No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far. Even in this faith I choose to live and die. Unto thy Son say thou that I am His, And to me graceless make Him gracious. Said Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss, Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theopbilus, Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus Though to the Fiend his bounden service was. Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass (Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!) The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass Even in this faith I choose to live and die. A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old, I am, and nothing learn'd in letter-lore. Within my parish-cloister I behold A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore, And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore: One bringeth fear, the other joy to me. That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be,— Thou of whom all must ask it even as I; And that which faith desires, that let it see. For in this faith I choose to live and die. O excellent Virgin Princess! thou didst bear King Jesus, the most excellent comforter, Who even of this our weakness craved a share And for our sake stooped to us from on high, Offering to death His young life sweet and fair. Such as He is, Our Lord, I Him declare, And in this faith I choose to live and die. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, trans.

Written by Christina Rossetti | Who shall deliver me? God strengthen me to bear myself; That heaviest weight of all to bear, Inalienable weight of care. All others are outside myself; I lock my door and bar them out The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all? If I could once lay down myself, And start self-purged upon the race That all must run ! Death runs apace. If I could set aside myself, And start with lightened heart upon The road by all men overgone! God harden me against myself, This coward with pathetic voice Who craves for ease and rest and joys Myself, arch-traitor to mysel ; My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, My clog whatever road I go. Yet One there is can curb myself, Can roll the strangling load from me Break off the yoke and set me free

Written by Carl Sandburg | Graceland TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips, For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance Around his last long home. (A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night. In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables Drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose silver dollars in their pockets. In a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages And when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she is reckless about God and the newspapers and the police, the talk of her home town or the name people call her.)