Famous Continues Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Explosión (Explosion)

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishSi la vida es amor, bendita sea!Quiero más vida para amar! Hoy sientoQue no valen mil años de la ideaLo que un minuto azul del sentimiento.Mi corazon moria triste y lento…Hoy abre en luz como una flor febea;La vida brota como un mar violentoDonde la mano del amor golpea!Hoy partio hacia la noche, triste, fríaRotas las alas mi melancolía;Como una...Read more of this...

From The Long Sad Party

by Mark Strand
 Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its
 white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more...Read more of this...

A School Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Let us now praise famous men"--
 Men of little showing-- 
For their work continueth, 
And their work continueth, 
Broad and deep continues,
 Greater then their knowing!

Western wind and open surge
 Took us from our mothers--
Flung us on a naked shore
(Twelve bleak houses by the shore.
Seven summers by the shore! )
 'Mid two hundred brothers.

There we met with famous men
...Read more of this...

The Legend Of The One-Eyed Man

by Anne Sexton
 Like Oedipus I am losing my sight.
LIke Judas I have done my wrong.
Their punishment is over;
the shame and disgrace of it
are all used up.
But as for me,
look into my face
and you will know that crimes dropped upon me
as from a high building
and although I cannot speak of them
or explain the degrading details
I have remembered much
about Judas -
about Judas, the...Read more of this...

Marketplace Report January 23, 1991

by Julie Hill Alger
The new war is a week old.
Bombs fall on Baghdad,
missiles on Tel Aviv.
The voice on the radio says
the armament dealers of Europe
are hopeful that a longer war
will be good for business.
They say, as fighting continues
there will be wear and tear
on matériel. Spare parts
must be manufactured,
as well as replacements
for equipment blown apart,
shattered, set afire.

Prudently, the merchants
consult their spreadsheets.
They guard against euphoria
and...Read more of this...

Qiang Village (3)

by Du Fu
 Flock chickens now disorder call Guests arrive chicken fight Drive chickens on tree Begin listen knock wicker tree Elders four five people Ask me long far travel Hand in each have carry Pour jug cloudy combine clear Bitter decline wine taste thin Millet field no person farm Soldier transform already no rest Children furthest east campaigning Ask...Read more of this...

The New Poetry Handbook

by Mark Strand
 1 If a man understands a poem,
 he shall have troubles.

2 If a man lives with a poem,
 he shall die lonely.

3 If a man lives with two poems,
 he shall be unfaithful to one.

4 If a man conceives of a poem,
 he shall have one less child.

5 If a man conceives of two poems,
 he shall have two...Read more of this...

Dream Song 121: Grief is fatiguing. He is out of it

by John Berryman
 Grief is fatiguing. He is out of it,
the whole humiliating Human round,
out of this & that.
He made a-many hearts go pit-a-pat
who now need never mind his nostril-hair
nor a critical error laid bare.

He endured fifty years. He was Randall Jarrell
and wrote a-many books & he wrote well.
Peace to the bearded corpse.
His last book was his best. His wives loved him.
He...Read more of this...

Tar

by C K Williams
 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening...Read more of this...

Train

by Bernadette Geyer
 Train. Distant Train. Praise the glorious distance of Train.

Dogs bark, reply to the mournful echo of Train's whistle. Train looks back, keeps moving. Train carries its boxcars of secrets further and further away (and even further still) from those who profess to love Train, but who do not run after him. Eyes brimmed with glassy reflections of Train.

To watch...Read more of this...

From Far Dakota's Cañons

by Walt Whitman
 FROM far Dakota’s cañons, 
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence, 
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes. 

The battle-bulletin, 
The Indian ambuscade, the craft, the fatal environment,
The cavalry companies fighting to the last in sternest heroism, 
In the midst of their little circle, with their slaughter’d horses for breastworks,...Read more of this...

The Bight

by Elizabeth Bishop
 [On my birthday]


At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one...Read more of this...

Race

by Vasko Popa
 Some bite from the others 
A leg an arm or whatever 

Take it between their teeth 
Run out as fast as they can 
Cover it up with earth 

The others scatter everywhere 
Sniff look sniff look 
Dig up the whole earth 

If they are lucky and find an arm 
Or leg or whatever 
It's their turn to bite 

The...Read more of this...

The Disputants

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Upon the table in their bowl 
in violent disarray 
of yellow sprays, green spikes 
of leaves, red pointed petals 
and curled heads of blue 
and white among the litter 
of the forks and crumbs and plates 
the flowers remain composed. 
Coolly their colloquy continues 
above the coffee and loud talk 
grown frail as vaudeville....Read more of this...

For Lew Welch In A Snowfall

by Gary Snyder
 Snowfall in March:
I sit in the white glow reading a thesis
About you. Your poems, your life.

The author's my student,
He even quotes me.

Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland
Twenty since you disappeared.

All those years and their moments—
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,
Poems tried out on friends,
Will be one more archive,
One more shaky text.

But life continues in the kitchen
Where...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...

On The Death Of The Right Honourable The Lord Viscount Bayning

by William Strode
 Though after Death, Thanks lessen into Praise,
And Worthies be not crown'd with gold, but bayes;
Shall we not thank? To praise Thee all agree;
We Debtors must out doe it, heartily.
Deserved Nobility of True Descent,
Though not so old in Thee grew Ancient:
We number not the Tree of Branched Birth,
But genealogie of Vertue, spreading forth
To many Births in value. Piety,
True Valour, Bounty,...Read more of this...

Love And Marilyn Monroe

by Delmore Schwartz
 (after Spillane)


Let us be aware of the true dark gods
Acknowledgeing the cache of the crotch
The primitive pure and pwerful pink and grey
 private sensitivites
Wincing, marvelous in their sweetness, whence rises
 the future.

Therefore let us praise Miss Marilyn Monroe.
She has a noble attitude marked by pride and candor
She takes a noble pride in the female nature and torso
She articualtes her...Read more of this...

Song at Sunset

by Walt Whitman
 SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, 
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; 
Corroborating forever the triumph of things. 

Illustrious every one! 
Illustrious what...Read more of this...

Afterlife Light

by Dejan Stojanovic
That star in the night sky 
Is not there anymore
But we see it and will see it
For millions of years yet to come.
Did the star die? 
Did it live? 
In life, we call this phenomenon
A ghost, a hallucination.
(Is life a ghost too?) 
What if the star never lived? 
Or maybe its death dies
While the star continues to live, 
Cheating death
With...Read more of this...

Yet Do I Marvel

by Countee Cullen
 I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind...Read more of this...

Romance Moderne

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Tracks of rain and light linger in
the spongy greens of a nature whose 
flickering mountain—bulging nearer, 
ebbing back into the sun 
hollowing itself away to hold a lake,— 
or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, 
churning itself white, drawing 
green in over it,—plunging glassy funnels 
fall— 
And—the other world— 
the windshield a blunt barrier: 
Talk...Read more of this...

Roast Leviathan

by Louis Untermeyer
"Old Jews!" Well, David, aren't we?
What news is that to make you see so red,
To swear and almost tear your beard in half?
Jeered at? Well, let them laugh.
You can laugh longer when you're dead.
What? Are you still too blind to see?
Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right,
The little goyim, with their angry stones.
You should be buried in the desert...Read more of this...

His Desire

by Robert Herrick
 Give me a man that is not dull,
When all the world with rifts is full;
But unamazed dares clearly sing,
Whenas the roof's a-tottering;
And though it falls, continues still
Tickling the Cittern with his quill....Read more of this...

Sir Curts Wedding-journey

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 WITH a bridegroom's joyous bearing,

Mounts Sir Curt his noble beast,
To his mistress' home repairing,

There to hold his wedding feast;
When a threatening foe advances

From a desert, rocky spot;
For the fray they couch their lances,

Not delaying, speaking not.

Long the doubtful fight continues,

Victory then for Curt declares;
Conqueror, though with wearied sinews,

Forward on his road he fares.
When he sees, though strange it may...Read more of this...

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