Famous Deep Down Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Gods Grandeur

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears...Read more of this...

A Fountain a Bottle a Donkeys Ears and Some Books

by Robert Frost
 Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the...Read more of this...

The Coastwise Lights

by Rudyard Kipling
 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when...Read more of this...

Called Into Play

by A R Ammons
 Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should...Read more of this...

Lost

by Robert William Service
 "Black is the sky, but the land is white--
 (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
 Father, where is our boy to-night?
 Pray to God he is safe and warm."

 "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
 Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
 Over his cabin shines so clear--
 Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark...Read more of this...

The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 1: 1931-1934

by Anais Nin
 "Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of...Read more of this...

haunting the quark

by Rg Gregory
 (I)
if you can’t scientifically explain it
dawkins says it has no value – some hope
inside the mechanical framework of a guess
(as far as any fact can truly grope)
doubts roam – mere looking can’t attain it

twentieth-century science perceived that mess
the more you probed the inner – more the scope
for chaos (uncertainty) – no mind could drain it
tie it to a marriage...Read more of this...

Clancy Of The Mounted Police

by Robert William Service
 In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail--
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail"--
Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-turrets freeze,
Half round the world, if need there be, on...Read more of this...

Nearly A Valediction

by Marilyn Hacker
 You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange...Read more of this...

Smoke and Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the...Read more of this...

Snap-Dragon

by D. H. Lawrence
 She bade me follow to her garden where 
The mellow sunlight stood as in a cup 
Between the old grey walls; I did not dare 
To raise my face, I did not dare look up 
Lest her bright eyes like sparrows should fly in 
My windows of discovery and shrill 'Sin!' 

So with a downcast mien and laughing voice...Read more of this...

A Leave-Taking

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. 
Let us go hence together without fear; 
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over, 
And over all old things and all things dear. 
She loves not you nor me as all we love her. 
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, 
 She would not hear. 

Let...Read more of this...

Australia Today 1916

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 They came from the lower levels 
Deep down in the Brilliant mine; 
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels, 
Whirling the leaves of pine. 
On the western plains, where the Darling flows, 
And the dust storms wheel and shift, 
The teamster loosened his yokes and bows, 
And turned his team adrift. 

On the western stations, far and wide, 
There's...Read more of this...

Leave-Taking

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not...Read more of this...

My Comforter

by Emily Brontë
 Well hast thou spoken, and yet, not taught
A feeling strange or new;
Thou hast but roused a latent thought,
A cloud-closed beam of sunshine, brought 
To gleam in open view. 

Deep down, concealed within my soul,
That light lies hid from men;
Yet, glows unquenched - though shadows roll,
Its gentle ray cannot control,
About the sullen den. 

Was I not vexed, in these gloomy...Read more of this...

The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV

by William Blake
 a

1. Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones

2. And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging

3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre 
Round the furious limbs of Los

4. And Los formed nets & gins 
And threw the nets round about

5. He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change 
With rivets of iron & brass;

6. And...Read more of this...

Tourists

by Robert William Service
 In a strange town in a far land
 They met amid a throng;
They stared, they could not understand
 How life was sudden song.
As brown eyes looked in eyes of grey
 Just for a moment's space,
Twin spirits met with sweet dismay
 In that strange place.

And then the mob that swept them near
 Reft them away again;
Two hearts in all the...Read more of this...

Discipline

by D. H. Lawrence
 It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane, 
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves; 
The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains 
The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves. 

It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too...Read more of this...

To A Stuffed Shirt

by Robert William Service
 On the tide you ride head high,
Like a whale 'mid little fishes;
I should envy you as I
Help my wife to wash the dishes.
Yet frock-coat and stove-pipe hat
Cannot hide your folds of fat.

You are reckoned a success,
And the public praise you win;
There's your picture in the Press,
Pouchy eyes and triple chin.
Wealth,--of it you fairly stink;
Health,--what does your Doctor think?

Dignity is...Read more of this...

Oh! let the passing hand knock

by Emile Verhaeren
Oh! let the passing hand knock with its futile fingers on the door; our hour is so unique, and the rest—what matters the rest with its futile fingers?
Let dismal, tiresome joy keep to the road and pass on with its rattles in its hand.
Let laughter swell and clatter and die away; let the crowd pass with its thousands of voices.
The...Read more of this...

Phallus

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 This was the gods' god, 
The leashed divinity, 
Divine divining rod 
And Me within the me. 

By mindlight tower and tree 
Its shadow on the ground 
Throw, and in darkness she 
Whose weapon is her wound 

Fends off the knife, the sword, 
The Tiger and the Snake; 
It stalks the virgin's bed 
And bites her wide awake. 

Her Bab-el-Mandeb...Read more of this...

Bianca Among The Nightingales

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up,...Read more of this...

Saltbush Bills Second Flight

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The news came down on the Castlereagh, and went to the world at large, 
That twenty thousand travelling sheep, with Saltbush Bill in charge, 
Were drifting down from a dried-out run to ravage the Castlereagh; 
And the squatters swore when they heard the news, and wished they were well away: 
For the name and the fame of Saltbush Bill...Read more of this...

The Merchantmen

by Rudyard Kipling
 King Solomon drew merchantmen,
 Because of his desire
 For peacocks, apes, and ivory,
 From Tarshish unto Tyre,
 With cedars out of Lebanon
 Which Hiram rafted down;
 But we be only sailormen
 That use in London town.

Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again --
 Where the paw shall head us or the full Trade suits --
Plain-sail --...Read more of this...

A Red Flower

by Claude McKay
 Your lips are like a southern lily red, 
Wet with the soft rain-kisses of the night, 
In which the brown bee buries deep its head, 
When still the dawn's a silver sea of light. 

Your lips betray the secret of your soul, 
The dark delicious essence that is you, 
A mystery of life, the flaming goal 
I seek through...Read more of this...

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