Famous Doors Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Supplement of an Imperfect Copy of Verses of Mr. William

by Sir John Suckling
 One of her hands one of her cheeks lay under,
Cosening the pillow of a lawful kiss,
Which therefore swell'd, and seem'd to part asunder,
As angry to be robb'd of such a bliss!
The one look'd pale and for revenge did long,
While t'other blush'd, 'cause it had done the wrong.

Out of the bed the other fair hand was
On a green satin quilt,...Read more of this...

Roofs

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Amelia Josephine Burr)

The road is wide and the stars are out
and the breath of the night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet.
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my 
face,
And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a human dwelling 
place.
I never have seen a...Read more of this...

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

by Alan Seeger
 Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms 
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, 
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, 
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, 
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold 
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, 
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains 
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...

The Heart has many Doors --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Heart has many Doors --
I can but knock --
For any sweet "Come in"
Impelled to hark --
Not saddened by repulse,
Repast to me
That somewhere, there exists,
Supremacy --...Read more of this...

Dusty Doors

by Carl Sandburg
 CHILD of the Aztec gods,
how long must we listen here,
how long before we go?

The dust is deep on the lintels.
The dust is dark on the doors.
If the dreams shake our bones,
 what can we say or do?

Since early morning we waited.
Since early, early morning, child.
There must be dreams on the way now.
There must be a song for our bones.

The...Read more of this...

Garden Francies

by Robert Browning
 I. THE FLOWER'S NAME

Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the...Read more of this...

Locked Doors

by Anne Sexton
 For the angels who inhabit this town,
although their shape constantly changes,
each night we leave some cold potatoes
and a bowl of milk on the windowsill.
Usually they inhabit heaven where,
by the way, no tears are allowed.
They push the moon around like
a boiled yam.
The Milky Way is their hen
with her many children.
When it is night the cows lie down
but the moon, that...Read more of this...

Gates and Doors

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Richardson Little Wright)

There was a gentle hostler
(And blessed be his name!)
He opened up the stable
The night Our Lady came.
Our Lady and Saint Joseph,
He gave them food and bed,
And Jesus Christ has given him
A glory round his head.
So let the gate swing open
However poor the yard,
Lest weary people visit you
And find their passage barred;
Unlatch the door at midnight
And let...Read more of this...

Shut Not Your Doors andc

by Walt Whitman
 SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries, 
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves, yet needed most, I bring; 
Forth from the army, the war emerging—a book I have made, 
The words of my book nothing—the drift of it everything; 
A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by the intellect,
But you, ye...Read more of this...

I Made A Mistake

by Charles Bukowski
 I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked "are these yours?" 
and she looked and said,
"no, those belong to a dog." 
she left after that and I haven't seen
her since. she's not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back...Read more of this...

Mesmerism

by Robert Browning
 I.

All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?

II.

If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
And a cat's in the water-butt---

III.

And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 13: The half-shut doors through which we heard that music

by Conrad Aiken
 The half-shut doors through which we heard that music
Are softly closed. Horns mutter down to silence.
The stars whirl out, the night grows deep.
Darkness settles upon us. A vague refrain
Drowsily teases at the drowsy brain.
In numberless rooms we stretch ourselves and sleep.

Where have we been? What savage chaos of music
Whirls in our dreams?—We suddenly rise in darkness,
Open our eyes, cry...Read more of this...

Circles of Doors

by Carl Sandburg
 I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
And she sent him word she loved him so much,
So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
All was nothing if her love for him was not first
Of all; the patter of her lips ran, I love him,
I love...Read more of this...

'Tis labour lost thus to all doors to crawl,

by Omar Khayyam
'Tis labour lost thus to all doors to crawl,
Take thy good fortune, and thy bad withal;
Know for a surety each must play his game,
As from heaven's dice-box fate's dice chance to fall....Read more of this...

Mill-Doors

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU never come back.
I say good-by when I see you going in the doors,
The hopeless open doors that call and wait
And take you then for--how many cents a day?
How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers?

I say good-by because I know they tap your wrists,
In the dark, in the silence, day by day,
And all the blood of you...Read more of this...

Doors Doors Doors

by Anne Sexton
 1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.

The room will do. All that's left of the old life
is jampacked on shelves from floor to ceiling
like a supermarket: your books, your dead wife
generously fat...Read more of this...

God of the Open Air

by Henry Van Dyke
 I

Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair
With flowers beneath, above with starry lights,
And set thine altars everywhere,--
On mountain heights,
In woodlands dim with many a dream,
In valleys bright with springs,
And on the curving capes of every stream:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the sea,
And on far islands, where the tide
Visits the...Read more of this...

The Island

by Edith Nesbit
 Does the wind sing in your ears at night, in the town, 
Rattling the windows and doors of the cheap-built place? 
Do you hear its song as it flies over marsh and down? 
Do you feel the kiss that the wind leaves here on my face? 
Or, wrapt in a lamplit quiet, do you restrain 
Thoughts that would take...Read more of this...

Doors of Daring

by Henry Van Dyke
 The mountains that enfold the vale
With walls of granite, steep and high,
Invite the fearless foot to scale
Their stairway toward the sky. 

The restless, deep, dividing sea
That flows and foams from shore to shore,
Calls to its sunburned chivalry,
"Push out, set sail, explore!" 

And all the bars at which we fret, 
That seem to prison and control, 
Are but the doors...Read more of this...

I Now O Friend Whom Noiselessly The Snows

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 I NOW, O friend, whom noiselessly the snows
Settle around, and whose small chamber grows
Dusk as the sloping window takes its load:

* * * * *

The kindly hill, as to complete our hap,
Has ta'en us in the shelter of her lap;
Well sheltered in our slender grove of trees
And ring of walls, we sit between her knees;
A disused quarry, paved with...Read more of this...

The Widow and Her Son XXI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Night fell over North Lebanon and snow was covering the villages surrounded by the Kadeesha Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night. 

In a lone house near those villages lived a...Read more of this...

The Lantern Out Of Doors

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Sometimes a lantern moves along the night,
 That interests our eyes. And who goes there?
 I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where,
With, all down darkness wide, his wading light? 
Men go by me whom either beauty bright
 In mould or mind or what not else makes rare:
 They rain against our much-thick and marsh air
Rich beams, till...Read more of this...

Grieg Being Dead

by Carl Sandburg
 GRIEG being dead we may speak of him and his art.
Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not.
Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and the rest,
Grieg being dead does not care a hell’s hoot what we say.

 Morning, Spring, Anitra’s Dance,
 He dreams them at the doors of new stars....Read more of this...

The Married Man

by Rudyard Kipling
 The bachelor 'e fights for one
 As joyful as can be;
But the married man don't call it fun,
 Because 'e fights for three --
For 'Im an' 'Er an' It
 (An' Two an' One make Three)
'E wants to finish 'is little bit,
 An' e' wants to go 'ome to is tea!

The bachelor pokes up 'is 'ead
 To see if you...Read more of this...

Arlo Will

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Did you ever see an alligator
Come up to the air from the mud,
Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?
Have you seen the stabled horses at night
Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?
Have you ever walked in darkness
When an unknown door was open before you
And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles
Of...Read more of this...

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