Famous Displace Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Humble-Bee

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
BURLY dozing humble-bee  
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique  
Far-off heats through seas to seek; 
I will follow thee alone 5 
Thou animated torrid-zone! 
Zigzag steerer desert cheerer  
Let me chase thy waving lines; 
Keep me nearer me thy hearer  
Singing over shrubs and vines. 10 

Insect lover of...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book VI Canto X

by Edmund Spenser
Calidore sees the Graces daunce,
To Colins melody:
The whiles his Pastorell is led,
[I]nto captiuity.
 

W Ho now does follow the foule Blatant Beast,
Whilest Calidore does follow that faire Mayd,
Vnmyndfull of his vow and high beheast,
Which by the Faery Queene was on him layd,
That he should neuer leaue, nor be delayd
From chacing him, till he had it attchieued?
But now entrapt of loue,...Read more of this...

Coral

by Derek Walcott
 This coral's hape ecohes the hand
It hollowed. Its

Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stoneSet on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXIII. I' vidi in terra angelici costumi. THE EFFECTS OF HER GRIEF.  On earth reveal'd the beauties of the skies,Angelic features, it was mine to hail;[Pg 151]Features, which wake my mingled joy and wail,While all besides like dreams or shadows flies.And fill'd with tears I saw those...Read more of this...

The Pro-Consuls

by Rudyard Kipling
 The overfaithful sword returns the user
His heart's desire at price of his heart's blood.
The clamour of the arrogant accuser
Wastes that one hour we needed to make good.
This was foretold of old at our outgoing;
This we accepted who have squandered, knowing,
The strength and glory of our reputations,
At the day's need, as it were dross, to guard
The tender and new-dedicate foundations
Against...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXI

by Edmund Spenser
 WAs it the worke of nature or of Art?
which tempred so the feature of her face:
that pride and meeknesse mixt by equall part,
doe both appeare t'adorne her beauties grace.
For with mild pleasance, which doth pride displace,
she to her loues doth lookers eyes allure:
& with sterne countenance back again doth chace
their looser lookes that stir vp lustes impure,
With such strange...Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...

Cities

by Hilda Doolittle
 Can we believe -- by an effort 
comfort our hearts: 
it is not waste all this, 
not placed here in disgust, 
street after street, 
each patterned alike, 
no grace to lighten 
a single house of the hundred 
crowded into one garden-space. 

Crowded -- can we believe, 
not in utter disgust, 
in ironical play -- 
but the maker of cities...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait At 28

by David Berman
 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...

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