Famous Compensating Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Maturity

by Philip Larkin
 A stationary sense... as, I suppose,
I shall have, till my single body grows
 Inaccurate, tired;
Then I shall start to feel the backward pull
Take over, sickening and masterful -
 Some say, desired.

And this must be the prime of life... I blink,
As if at pain; for it is pain, to think
 This pantomime
Of compensating act and counter-act
Defeat and counterfeit, makes up,...Read more of this...

Best Society

by Philip Larkin
 When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank...Read more of this...

The Task: Book IV The Winter Evening (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Hark! 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumb'ring at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his...Read more of this...

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