Famous Confronting Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Confronting poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous confronting poems. These examples illustrate what a famous confronting poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Atwood, Margaret
...en the shooting starts, hands clasped
in admiration,
but I am elsewhere.
Then what about me
what about the I
confronting you on that border
you are always trying to cross?
I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso
I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells,
the litter of your invasions.
I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.
I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.
Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly
Among the crowds of thi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ard to engage the red-coats;
Of that brigade I tell, and how steadily it march’d,
And how long and how well it stood, confronting death.
Who do you think that was, marching steadily, sternly confronting death?
It was the brigade of the youngest men, two thousand strong,
Rais’d in Virginia and Maryland, and many of them known personally to the General.
Jauntily forward they went with quick step toward Gowanus’ waters;
Till of a sudden, unlook’d for, by defiles ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...- better --
Dreaming -- of the Dawn --
Sweeter -- the Surmising Robins --
Never gladdened Tree --
Than a Solid Dawn -- confronting --
Leading to no Day --...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...sed!
Kings of the Rhine in strongholds were by him
Boldly attacked, and tyrant barons grim.
He freed the towns—confronting in his lair
Hugo the Eagle; boldly did he dare
To break the collar of Saverne, the ring
Of Colmar, and the iron torture thing
Of Schlestadt, and the chain that Haguenau bore.
Such Eviradnus was a wrong before,
Good but most terrible. In the dread scale
Which princes weighted with their horrid tale
Of craft and violence, an...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...o some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e me up;
Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich’d of soul—you give me forever faces;
(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries;
I see my own soul trampling down what it ask’d for.)
2
Keep your splendid, silent sun;
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards;
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and stree...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ather from my Hat!
Who knows -- but at the sight of that
My Sovereign will relent?
As trinket -- worn by faded Child --
Confronting eyes long -- comforted --
Blisters the Adamant!...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...It is half winter, half spring,
and Barbara and I are standing
confronting the ocean.
Its mouth is open very wide,
and it has dug up its green,
throwing it, throwing it at the shore.
You say it is angry.
I say it is like a kicked Madonna.
Its womb collapses, drunk with its fever.
We breathe in its fury.
I, the inlander,
am here with you for just a small space.
I am almost afraid,
so long gon...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ear not to continue past.
His power to us, however else it be,
Is not to hinder." Then, that bulk inflate
Confronting, - "Peace, thou greed! thy lusting rage
Consume thee inward! Not thy word we wait
The path to open. It is willed on high, -
There, where the Angel of the Sword ye know
Took ruin upon the proud adultery
Of him thou callest as thy prince."
Thereat
As sails, wind-rounded, when the mast gives way,
Sink tangled to the deck, de...Read more of this...
by
Kunitz, Stanley
...As if I were composed of dust and air,
The shape confronting me upon the stair
(Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain
On its disjunctive breast--I saw it plain--)
Moved through my middle flesh. I turned around,
Shaken and it was marching without sound
Beyond the door; and when my hand was taken
From my mouth to beat the standing heart, I cried
My distant name, thinking myself had died.
One moment ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...re;
I hurried here, I scurried there,
I took each likely lane, I swar,
As I surmised it:
The suddenly I saw once more,
Confronting me, the exit door,
And I was dashing through before
I realized it.
And there I spied a passing bus.
Thinks I: "It's mean to leave her thus,
But after all her fret and fuss
I can't abide her.
So I sped back to London town
And grubbed alone for half-a-crown,
On steak and kidney pie washed down
With sparkling cider.
But since I ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Brain has Corridors -- surpassing
Material Place --
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting --
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase --
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter --
In lonesome Place --
Ourself behind ourself, concealed --
Should startle most --
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.
The Body -- borrows a Revolver --
He bolts the Door --
O'erlooking a superior spectre --...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.
2
Once, Paumanok,
When the snows had melted—when the lilac-scent was in the air, and the Fifth-month grass
was
growing,
Up this sea-shore, in some briers,
Two guests from Alabama—two...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Assembly
Is culpabler than shame.
But how shall finished Creatures
A function fresh obtain?
Old Nicodemus' Phantom
Confronting us again!...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...br> Crispin
68 Became an introspective voyager.
69 Here was the veritable ding an sich, at last,
70 Crispin confronting it, a vocable thing,
71 But with a speech belched out of hoary darks
72 Noway resembling his, a visible thing,
73 And excepting negligible Triton, free
74 From the unavoidable shadow of himself
75 That lay elsewhere around him. Severance
76 Was clear. The last distortion of romance
77 Forsook the insatiable egotist. The ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
What see you in the dying year?
And so from face to face I flit,
The countless eyes that stare and stare;
Some are with approbation lit,
And some are shadowed with despair.
Some show a smile and some a frown;
Some joy and hope, some pain and woe:
Enough! Oh, ring the curtain down!
Old weary ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...There is a Shame of Nobleness --
Confronting Sudden Pelf --
A finer Shame of Ecstasy --
Convicted of Itself --
A best Disgrace -- a Brave Man feels --
Acknowledged -- of the Brave --
One More -- "Ye Blessed" -- to be told --
But that's -- Behind the Grave --...Read more of this...
by
Levertov, Denise
...A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can....Read more of this...
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