Famous Certainty Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Certainty poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous certainty poems. These examples illustrate what a famous certainty poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
The Robin is the One
That interrupt the Morn
With hurried -- few -- express Reports
When March is scarcely on --
The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity --
An April but begun --
The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home -- and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best...Read more of this...
by
Duncan Campbell Scott
The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of Paradise' existence
All we know
Is the uncertain certainty --
But its vicinity infer,
By its Bisecting
Messenger --...Read more of this...
by
Paul Eluard
I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was
a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I
have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had nothing to
say. The necessity of...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
There is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known,
And given to others all heart's ache,
From meagre girlhood's putting on
Burdensome beauty -- for your sole sake
Heaven...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"little soul, little flirting,
little perverse one
where are you off to now?
little wan one, firm one
little exposed one...
and never make fun of me again."
Now I must betray myself.
The feast of bondage and unity is near,
And none engaged in that great piety
When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes
Hand in hand, glance and glance, care...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]
ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,
Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,
As his father's friend, kind courtesy.
Son and daughter, they
Had been wont to say
Should...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I live with Him -- I see His face --
I go no more away
For Visitor -- or Sundown --
Death's single privacy
The Only One -- forestalling Mine --
And that -- by Right that He
Presents a Claim invisible --
No wedlock -- granted Me --
I live with Him -- I hear His Voice --
I stand alive -- Today --
To witness to the...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Dawn, darkness, evening, space and the stars; that which the night conceals or shows between its veils is mingled with the fervour of our exalted being. Those who live with love live with eternity.
It matters not that their reason approve or scoff, and, upright on its high walls, hold out to them, along the quays and harbours, its bright torches;...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
One host of men is pondering upon belief, or on the
faith; others are hovering between doubt and certainty.
But suddenly behind the veil there's one will cry: O
ignorant ones! the way that you seek is neither here
nor there!...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A precious -- mouldering pleasure -- 'tis --
To meet an Antique Book --
In just the Dress his Century wore --
A privilege -- I think --
His venerable Hand to take --
And warming in our own --
A passage back -- or two -- to make --
To Times when he -- was young --
His quaint opinions -- to inspect --
His thought to...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
Mexico!
Always soft-breath’d Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
drain’d
by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...
by
Judith Skillman
Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.
The waiting volcano inside us
gnaws, digs, trembles,
weighs its chances.
Distress coils up,
shrinks silent like a sick beast.
We are unrecognizable,
unique
in the certainty of our ferocity....Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
Cruel? I think there never was a cheating
More cruel, thro' all the weary days than this!
This is no dream, my heart kept on repeating,
But sober certainty of waking bliss.
Dreams? O, I know their faces -- goodly seeming,
Vaporous, whirled on many-coloured wings;
I have had dreams before, this is no dreaming,
But daylight gladness that the daylight brings.
What ails my love; what...Read more of this...
by
Rafael Guillen
Not fear. Maybe, out there somewhere,
the possibility of fear; the wall
that might tumble down, because it's for sure
that behind it is the sea.
Not fear. Fear has a countenance;
It's external, concrete,
like a rifle, a shot bolt,
a suffering child,
like the darkness that's hidden
in every human mouth.
Not fear. Maybe only the brand
of the offspring of fear.
It's a narrow, interminable street
with all the...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Dying need but little, Dear,
A Glass of Water's all,
A Flower's unobtrusive Face
To punctuate the Wall,
A Fan, perhaps, a Friend's Regret
And Certainty that one
No color in the Rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Luxury to apprehend
The Luxury 'twould be
To look at Thee a single time
An Epicure of Me
In whatsoever Presence makes
Till for a further Food
I scarcely recollect to starve
So first am I supplied --
The Luxury to meditate
The Luxury it was
To banguet on thy Countenance
A Sumptuousness bestows
On plainer Days, whose Table far
As Certainty can see
Is laden with a single Crumb
The Consciousness of...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
There hangs in the heavens a bull called Parwin
[Pleiades], and another bull is underneath the earth. To
the eyes of intelligence or those who live in certainty,
I show a herd of asses placed between two beeves....Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
The beautiful American word, Sure,
As I have come into a room, and touch
The lamp's button, and the light blooms with such
Certainty where the darkness loomed before,
As I care for what I do not know, and care
Knowing for little she might not have been,
And for how little she would be unseen,
The intercourse of lives miraculous and dear.
Where the light is,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I—THE LURE
No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant,
For I shall never set my name to theirs
That now bespeak the very sons and heirs
Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant.
The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant,
And futile Seems the burden that he bears;
But are we sounding his forlorn affairs
Who brand him parasite and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The distance which separates incredulity from faith is
but a breath,—that which separates doubt from certainty
is equally but a breath. Let us, then, pass this precious
space of a breath gaily, for our life also is only separated
[from death] by the space of a breath.
284...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
I
The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!
II
So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...
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