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Famous Discovering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Thinking hard about you 
I got on the bus 
and paid 30 cents car fare 
and asked the driver for two transfers 
before discovering 
that I was 
alone....Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard



...n of slack faith so long! 
Standing aloof—denying portions so long; 
Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; 
Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as
 inevitably
 upon
 itself as the truth does upon itself, 
Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the earth does.

(This is curious, and may not be realized immediately—But it must be realized; 
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ieves

that any moment I'll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and **** like a new housewife

discovering television,
or that I'll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig....Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...almost
speaks, but then retreats, rustles
a patch of brush. You can feel
the centuries ripple generations
of wandering, discovering, being lost
and found, eating, dying, being born.
A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
down a forest aisle is a strange, long
plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
wider than your mind, away out over everything....Read more of this...
by Wylie, Elinor
...nd the Channel Tunnel coming through?" Its welded slats,

Timber frame and listing broken windows blew our minds-

Like discovering a Tintoretto in a gallery of fakes.

Leeds takes away the steely glare of Sutton

Weighing down on me like breeze-blocks by the ton,

When all I want to do is run away and make a home

In Keighley, catch a bus to Haworth and walk and walk

Till human talk is silenced by the sun....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...,
You tell me; and a most uncommon urchin
He must have been to the few seeing ones -- 
A trifle terrifying, I dare say,
Discovering a world with his man's eyes,
Quite as another lad might see some finches,
If he looked hard and had an eye for nature.
But this one had his eyes and their foretelling,
And he had you to fare with, and what else?
He must have had a father and a mother -- 
In fact I've heard him say so -- and a dog,
As a boy should, I venture; and the dog,
Most lik...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...cape, to expiate the past
by blinding himself, and
then, when he is dying, sees that he has become a Daimon

--does he, discovering, at last, this cruel
coherence created by 
 "the order of the universe"

--does he will 
anything reversed?



 I look at my father:
as he drinks his way into garrulous, shaky
defensiveness, the debris of the past
is just debris--; whatever I reason, it is a desolation
to watch...

must I watch?
He will not change; he does not want to change;

ev...Read more of this...
by Bidart, Frank
...y, nor change
Thy body's habit, nor mind's; be not strange
To thyself only; all will spy in thy face
A blushing womanly discovering grace;
Ricbly clothed Apes are called Apes, and as soon
Eclipsed as bright we call the Moon the Moon.
Men of France, changeable chameleons,
Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions,
Love's fuellers, and the rightest company
Of Players, which upon the world's stage be,
Will quickly know thee, and no less, alas!
Th' indifferent Italian, as we pass
Hi...Read more of this...
by Donne, John
...A Brother and Sister


O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves 
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years. 
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, 
And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears. 

Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest 
In one fair fall; but, for time’s aftercast, 
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest. 

And are they thus? The fi...Read more of this...
by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...he sun, who, scarce up-risen, 
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim, 
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray, 
Discovering in wide landskip all the east 
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains, 
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began 
Their orisons, each morning duly paid 
In various style; for neither various style 
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise 
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung 
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence 
Flowed from their lips, in prose ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ross cities
I speak to you across plains 

My mouth is upon your pillow 

Both faces of the walls come meeting
My voice discovering you 

I speak to you of eternity 

O cities memories of cities
Cities wrapped in our desires
Cities come early cities come lately
Cities strong and cities secret
Plundered of their master's builders
All their thinkers all their ghosts 

Fields pattern of emerald
Bright living surviving
The harvest of the sky over our earth
Feeds my voice I dream ...Read more of this...
by Eluard, Paul
...don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell
...surprised
and (when he dared to look
at himself) obviously
very relieved

he went away and began
reading the plays
and (discovering
where he'd gone wrong)

got out of teaching...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg
...otent part
In serious affairs of state,
But now with quiet heart
You bide beside a rosy fire
And blether with a friend,
Discovering that you require
So little in the end. 

And all your days of fevered flight
For glory, gold or gear
Will seem so futile when the Night
Draws dolorously near;
And you will only ask to be
With modest comfort blest,
With sweetness of simplicity,
With rich reward of rest....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...nt of its thought untorn or covering,

Or with its stuffed garb forge an otherworld

Without itself its dead deceit discovering;

So, all being possible, an idle thought may

Less idle thoughts, self-known no truer, dismay....Read more of this...
by Pessoa, Fernando
...father. I'm not good at advice
you know that, but ride
the ceremonies
until they grow dark.

Sometimes you are so busy
discovering your friends
I ache with loss
--but that is greed.
And sometimes I've gone
into my purple world
and lost you.

One afternoon I stepped
into your room. You were sitting
at the desk where I now write this.
Forsythia outside the window
and sun spilled over you
like a thick yellow miracle
as if another planet
was coaxing you out of the house
--all th...Read more of this...
by Ondaatje, Michael
...e sounds:
Diagrams,
 skeletal,
 strange?

Is it winds
 curling round invisible corners?
Polyphony of perfumes?
Antennae discovering an axis,
 erecting the architecture of a world?

Is it
 orchestration of the finger-tips,
 graph of a fugue:
Scaffold for colours:
 colour itself being god?...Read more of this...
by Tessimond, A S J
...ur, 
Leaping along the verge of death and night, 
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight 
Four long years past, discovering pride and power. 

You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall
Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again. 
But not to ebbing music were they slain 
Who sleep in ruined graves, beyond recall; 
Who, following phantom-glory, friend and foe, 
Into the darkness that was War must go;
Blind; banished from desire.
O mortal heart 
Be still; you have d...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...Clear are her eyes,
Like purest skies;
Discovering from thence
A baby there
That turns each sphere,
Like an Intelligence....Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry