Famous Cautious Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Nightingales Nest

by John Clare
 Up this green woodland-ride let's softly rove,
And list the nightingale— she dwells just here.
Hush ! let the wood-gate softly clap, for fear
The noise might drive her from her home of love ;
For here I've heard her many a merry year—
At morn, at eve, nay, all the live-long day,
As though she lived on song. This very spot,
Just where that old-man's-beard...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

The Cautious Lovers

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Silvia, let's from the Crowd retire; 
For, What to you and me 
(Who but each other do desire) 
Is all that here we see? 

Apart we'll live, tho' not alone; 
For, who alone can call 
Those, who in Desarts live with One, 
If in that One they've All? 

The World a vast Meander is, 
Where Hearts confus'dly stray; 
Where...Read more of this...

Stretcher Case

by Siegfried Sassoon
 He woke; the clank and racket of the train 
Kept time with angry throbbings in his brain. 
Then for a while he lapsed and drowsed again. 

At last he lifted his bewildered eyes 
And blinked, and rolled them sidelong; hills and skies,
Heavily wooded, hot with August haze, 
And, slipping backward, golden for his gaze, 
Acres of harvest. 

Feebly now...Read more of this...

A Spiritual Woman

by D. H. Lawrence
 Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; 
 They have taught you to see 
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, 
A cunning algebra in the faces of men, 
 And God like geometry 
Completing his circles, and working cleverly. 

I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; 
 If I...Read more of this...

Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem

by Annie Dillard
 New York: You take a train that rips through versts.
It feels as if the trains were running over your ears.

For many hours the train flies along the banks
of the Hudson about two feet from the water. At the stops,
passengers run out, buy up bunches of celery,
and run back in, chewing the stalks as they go.

Bridges leap over the train...Read more of this...

I stepped from Plank to Plank

by Emily Dickinson
 I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch --
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience....Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

The Drunkards in the Street

by Vachel Lindsay
 The Drunkards in the street are calling one another, 
Heeding not the night-wind, great of heart and gay, — 
Publicans and wantons — 
Calling, laughing, calling, 
While the Spirit bloweth Space and Time away. 

Why should I feel the sobbing, the secrecy, the glory, 
This comforter, this fitful wind divine? 
I the cautious Pharisee, the scribe, the whited sepulchre...Read more of this...

The Ladys Dressing Room

by Jonathan Swift
 Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the...Read more of this...

Dutch Interiors

by Jane Kenyon
 Christ has been done to death
in the cold reaches of northern Europe
a thousand thousand times. 
Suddenly bread
and cheese appear on a plate
beside a gleaming pewter beaker of beer.

Now tell me that the Holy Ghost
does not reside in the play of light
on cutlery!

A Woman makes lace,
with a moist-eyed spaniel lying
at her small shapely feet. 
Even the maid with the chamber...Read more of this...

118. A Bard's Epitaph

by Robert Burns
 IS there a whim-inspirèd fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
 Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
 And drap a tear.


Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
 O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
 Here, heave a...Read more of this...

A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest

by Emily Dickinson
 A Wounded Deer -- leaps highest --
I've heard the Hunter tell --
'Tis but the Ecstasy of death --
And then the Brake is still!

The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!

Mirth is the Mail of Anguish
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And "you're hurt" exclaim!...Read more of this...

The Odyssey Of Erbert Iggins

by Robert William Service
 Me and Ed and a stretcher
 Out on the nootral ground.
(If there's one dead corpse, I'll betcher
 There's a 'undred smellin' around.)
Me and Eddie O'Brian,
 Both of the R. A. M. C.
"It'as a 'ell of a night
For a soul to take flight,"
 As Eddie remarks to me.
Me and Ed crawlin' 'omeward,
 Thinkin' our job is done,
When sudden and clear,
Wot...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Dean

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of DeanWho dined on one pea, and one bean;For he said, "More than that, would make me too fat,"That cautious old person of Dean....Read more of this...

Going to him! Happy letter!

by Emily Dickinson
"Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him--
Tell him the page I didn't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.

Tell him just how the fingers hurried
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow-
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

"Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You...Read more of this...

Blanche Sweet

by Vachel Lindsay
 MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(After seeing the reel called "Oil and Water.")


Beauty has a throne-room
In our humorous town,
Spoiling its hob-goblins,
Laughing shadows down.
Rank musicians torture
Ragtime ballads vile,
But we walk serenely
Down the odorous aisle.
We forgive the squalor
And the boom and squeal
For the Great Queen flashes
From the moving reel.

Just a prim blonde stranger
In her early day,
Hiding brilliant weapons,
Too averse to play,
Then she burst upon us
Dancing...Read more of this...

At Half past Three a single Bird

by Emily Dickinson
 At Half past Three, a single Bird
Unto a silent Sky
Propounded but a single term
Of cautious melody.

At Half past Four, Experiment
Had subjugated test
And lo, Her silver Principle
Supplanted all the rest.

At Half past Seven, Element
Nor Implement, be seen --
And Place was where the Presence was
Circumference between....Read more of this...

The Life of Love XVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Spring


Come, my beloved; let us walk amidst the knolls, 
For the snow is water, and Life is alive from its 
Slumber and is roaming the hills and valleys. 
Let us follow the footprints of Spring into the 
Distant fields, and mount the hilltops to draw 
Inspiration high above the cool green plains. 


Dawn of Spring has unfolded her winter-kept...Read more of this...

I cautious scanned my little life

by Emily Dickinson
 I cautious, scanned my little life --
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till Heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a Barn --
The former, blew away.
I went one winter morning
And lo - my priceless Hay

Was not upon the "Scaffold" --
Was not upon the "Beam" --
And from a thriving Farmer --
A Cynic, I became.

Whether a...Read more of this...

As Toilsome I Wander'd

by Walt Whitman
 AS toilsome I wander’d Virginia’s woods, 
To the music of rustling leaves, kick’d by my feet, (for ’twas autumn,) 
I mark’d at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier, 
Mortally wounded he, and buried on the retreat, (easily all could I understand;) 
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose—yet this sign...Read more of this...

Late Summer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 (ALCAICS)


Confused, he found her lavishing feminine 
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; 
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors 
Be as they were, without end, her playthings? 

And why were dead years hungrily telling her 
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? 
If now she knew, there might be kindness 
Clamoring yet where a...Read more of this...

Saints

by Louise Gluck
 In our family, there were two saints,
my aunt and my grandmother.
But their lives were different.

My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end.
She was like a person walking in calm water;
for some reason
the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her.
When my aunt took the same path,
the waves broke over her, they attacked her,
which is how the Fates respond
to a true...Read more of this...

Some too fragile for winter winds

by Emily Dickinson
 Some, too fragile for winter winds
The thoughtful grave encloses --
Tenderly tucking them in from frost
Before their feet are cold.

Never the treasures in her nest
The cautious grave exposes,
Building where schoolboy dare not look,
And sportsman is not bold.

This covert have all the children
Early aged, and often cold,
Sparrow, unnoticed by the Father --
Lambs for whom time had not a fold....Read more of this...

Give little Anguish

by Emily Dickinson
 Give little Anguish --
Lives will fret --
Give Avalanches --
And they'll slant --
Straighten -- look cautious for their Breath --
But make no syllable -- like Death --
Who only shows the Marble Disc --
Sublimer sort -- than Speech --...Read more of this...

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