Famous Ear Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Spirit is the Conscious Ear

by Emily Dickinson
 The Spirit is the Conscious Ear.
We actually Hear
When We inspect -- that's audible --
That is admitted -- Here --

For other Services -- as Sound --
There hangs a smaller Ear
Outside the Castle -- that Contain --
The other -- only -- Hear --...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Flowers And Worms

by Anne Sexton
 Let the flowers make a journey 
on Monday so that I can see 
ten daisies in a blue vase 
with perhaps one red ant 
crawling to the gold center. 
A bit of the field on my table, 
close to the worms 
who struggle blinding, 
moving deep into their slime, 
moving deep into God's abdomen, 
moving like oil through water,...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXXXIV

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 198] SONNET CLXXXIV. Onde tolse Amor l' oro e di qual vena. THE CHARMS OF HER COUNTENANCE AND VOICE.  Whence could Love take the gold, and from what vein,To form those bright twin locks? What thorn could growThose roses? And what mead that white bestowOf the fresh dews,...Read more of this...

Barclay Of Ury

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Up the streets of Aberdeen,
By the kirk and college green,
Rode the Laird of Ury;
Close behind him, close beside,
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed,
Pressed the mob in fury.

Flouted him the drunken churl,
Jeered at him the serving-girl,
Prompt to please her master;
And the begging carlin, late
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate,
Cursed him as he passed her.

Yet, with calm and stately mien,
Up the streets...Read more of this...

OF LOVE: A Sonnet

by Robert Herrick
 How Love came in, I do not know,
Whether by th'eye, or ear, or no;
Or whether with the soul it came,
At first, infused with the same;
Whether in part 'tis here or there,
Or, like the soul, whole every where.
This troubles me; but I as well
As any other, this can tell;
That when from hence she does depart,
The outlet then is from the...Read more of this...

The Battle of El-Teb

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Great Britain, I think no shame
To write in praise of brave General Graham!
Whose name will be handed down to posterity without any stigma,
Because, at the battle of El-Teb, he defeated Osman Digna.

With an army about five thousand strong,
To El-Teb, in the year 1884, he marched along,
And bivouacked there for the night;
While around their fires they only...Read more of this...

On My Birthday July 21

by Matthew Prior
 I, MY dear, was born to-day-- 
So all my jolly comrades say: 
They bring me music, wreaths, and mirth, 
And ask to celebrate my birth: 
Little, alas! my comrades know 
That I was born to pain and woe; 
To thy denial, to thy scorn, 
Better I had ne'er been born: 
I wish to die, even whilst I say-- 
'I,...Read more of this...

Never The Time And The Place

by Robert Browning
 Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
This path--how soft to pace!
This May -- what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine
With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,
With a hostile eye at my...Read more of this...

To my quick ear the Leaves -- conferred --

by Emily Dickinson
 To my quick ear the Leaves -- conferred --
The Bushes -- they were Bells --
I could not find a Privacy
From Nature's sentinels --

In Cave if I presumed to hide
The Walls -- begun to tell --
Creation seemed a mighty Crack --
To make me visible --...Read more of this...

Elegy on the Death of Lady Middleton

by Mary Darby Robinson
 THE knell of death, that on the twilight gale, 
Swells its deep murmur to the pensive ear; 
In awful sounds repeats a mournful tale, 
And claims the tribute of a tender tear. 

The dreadful hour is past ! the mandate giv'n! 
The gentle MIDDLETON shall breathe no more, 
Yet who shall blame the wise decrees of Heaven, 
Or the...Read more of this...

Ode to Reflection

by Mary Darby Robinson
 O THOU, whose sober precepts can controul 
The wild impatience of the troubled soul, 
Sweet Nymph serene ! whose all-consoling pow'r 
Awakes to calm delight the ling'ring hour; 
O hear thy suppliant's ardent pray'r ! 
Chase from my pensive mind corroding care, 
Steal thro' the heated pulses of the brain, 
Charm sorrow to repose­and lull the throb of pain....Read more of this...

Psalm 103 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.8-18 
L. M.
God's gentle chastisement; or, His tender mercy to his people.

The Lord, how wondrous are his ways!
How firm his truth! how large his grace!
He takes his mercy for his throne,
And thence he makes his glories known.

Not half so high his power hath spread
The starry heav'ns above our head,
As his rich love exceeds our praise,
Exceeds the highest hopes we...Read more of this...

One Almost Might

by A S J Tessimond
 Wouldn't you say,
Wouldn't you say: one day,
With a little more time or a little more patience, one might
Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight
One of the moment's hundred strands, unfray
Beginnings from endings, this from that, survey
Say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch
Part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch
Or cuff or bruise but...Read more of this...

In the Trenches

by Isaac Rosenberg
 I snatched two poppies 
From the parapet’s ledge, 
Two bright red poppies 
That winked on the ledge. 
Behind my ear 
I stuck one through, 
One blood red poppy 
I gave to you. 

The sandbags narrowed 
And screwed out our jest, 
And tore the poppy 
You had on your breast ... 
Down - a shell - O! Christ, 
I am...Read more of this...

e Coin Behind Your Ear

by Connie Wanek
 Before you knew you owned it
it was gone, stolen, and you were a fool.
How you never felt it is the wonder,
heavy and thick,
lodged deep in your hair like a burr.
You still see the smile of the magician
as he turned the coin in his long fingers,
which had so disturbed your ear
with their caress. You watched him
lift it into the light,...Read more of this...

E.P. Ode Pour Lelection De Son Sepulchre

by Ezra Pound
 For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--

No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;

Idmen gar toi panth, hos eni troie
Caught in...Read more of this...

Dream Song 128: A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday

by John Berryman
 A hemorrhage of his left ear of Good Friday-”
so help me Jesus-”then made funny too
the other, further one.
There must have been a bit. Sheets scrubbed away 
soon all but three nails. Doctors in this city O
will not (his wife cried) come.

Perhaps he's for it. IF that Filipino doc
had diagnosed ah here in Washington
that ear-infection ha
he'd have been grounded, so...Read more of this...

The Roundel

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
A roundel is wrought.
Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught--
Love, laughter, or mourning--remembrance of rapture or fear--
That fancy may fashion to hang in the...Read more of this...

From An Album Of 1604

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HOPE provides wings to thought, and love to hope.
Rise up to Cynthia, love, when night is clearest,
And say, that as on high her figure changeth,
So, upon earth, my joy decays and grows.
And whisper in her ear with modest softness,
How doubt oft hung its head, and truth oft wept.
And oh ye thoughts, distrustfully inclined,
If ye are therefore by the loved...Read more of this...

The Baldness Of Chewed-Ear

by Robert William Service
 When Chewed-ear Jenkins got hitched up to Guinneyveer McGee,
His flowin' locks, ye recollect, wuz frivolous an' free;
But in old Hymen's jack-pot, it's a most amazin' thing,
Them flowin' locks jest disappeared like snow-balls in the Spring;
Jest seemed to wilt an' fade away like dead leaves in the Fall,
An' left old Chewed-ear balder than a white-washed cannon ball.

Now Missis Chewed-ear Jenkins,...Read more of this...

February

by Thomas Chatterton
 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, 
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string; 
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, 
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. 
If in the trammels of the doleful line 
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend; 
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine, 
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend. 

Now the rough goat withdraws...Read more of this...

End of Another Home Holiday

by D. H. Lawrence
I

When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?

Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
    (Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...

I pray thee to my counsel lend thine ear,

by Omar Khayyam
I pray thee to my counsel lend thine ear,
Cast off this false hypocrisy's veneer;
This life a moment is, the next all time,
Sell not eternity for earthly gear!...Read more of this...

I heard as if I had no Ear

by Emily Dickinson
 I heard, as if I had no Ear
Until a Vital Word
Came all the way from Life to me
And then I knew I heard.

I saw, as if my Eye were on
Another, till a Thing
And now I know 'twas Light, because
It fitted them, came in.

I dwelt, as if Myself, were out,
My Body but within
Until a Might detected me
And set my kernel...Read more of this...

The Census-Taker

by Robert Frost
 I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening
To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house
Of one room and one window and one door,
The only dwelling in a waste cut over
A hundred square miles round it in the mountains:
And that not dwelt in now by men or women.
(It never had been dwelt in, though, by women,
So what is this I make a sorrow of?)
I...Read more of this...

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