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Famous Empties Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...to fear 
my virgin glance? 
feigned utterly or real 
why do they shrink? 
my trance frightens them, 
breaks the dance, 
empties the market-place; 
if I but pass they fall 
back, frantically; 
must always people mock? 
unless they shrink and reel 
as in the temple 
at your uttered will. 

O Hymen king, 
lord, greatest, power, might, 
look for my face is dark, 
burnt with your light, 
your fire, O Hymen lord; 
is there none left 
can equal me 
in ecstasy, desire? 
is there none...Read more of this...
by Doolittle, Hilda



...s, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a perfect hour.
From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day
Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly
Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn
Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...bove
the sheets in a symbol of wholeness, a curve
of thumb and forefinger, ringed with wide gold, 
and the instant that empties his breath is a flame 
faced with a sudden cathedral's new stone....Read more of this...
by Finch, Annie
...Shadows 

creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch 

as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief 

stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus 

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid 

the way I'll miss you will be this obvious. 

I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides...Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick
...tongue and teeth.



The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me,

Making my neck prick as it scatters dust

Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clich?,

Anoints its carved channels and cavities

With infinite black ooze and sap.



And I don’t trust that corner cupboard!

Opening its dark doors like the jaws of

Cerberus, shelving its stacks to heave

At my head, ready to snap its quick lock

Round my wrist like a crab.



I watch the windows wink and blink,

Tug at thei...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry



...nt storms, or wreck ' 
 Remedeless. Races cease, and men forget 
 They were. Slaves rise to rule their lords. She 
 And empties, godlike in her mood. No pause 
 Her changes leave, so many are those who call 
 About her gates, so many she dowers, and all 
 Revile her after, and would crucify 
 If words could reach her, but she heeds nor hears, 
 Who dwells beyond the noise of human laws 
 In the blest silence of the Primal Spheres. 

 - But let us to the greater woes descend. ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...h, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!

III.

See, the church empties apace:
Fast they extinguish the lights.
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes' grace!
Here's a crank pedal wants setting to rights,
Baulks one of holding the base.

IV.

See, our huge house of the sounds,
Hushing its hundreds at once,
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds!
O you may challenge them, not a response
Get the church-saints on their rou...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...round 
Still ending, still renewing, through mid Heaven, 
With borrowed light her countenance triform 
Hence fills and empties to enlighten the Earth, 
And in her pale dominion checks the night. 
That spot, to which I point, is Paradise, 
Adam's abode; those lofty shades, his bower. 
Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires. 
Thus said, he turned; and Satan, bowing low, 
As to superiour Spirits is wont in Heaven, 
Where honour due and reverence none neglects, 
Took leav...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ck on the wall.
I may strike a match to orient myself

In the meantime, there's the heart
Stopping hush as the building
Empties, the elevators stop running,
The grains of dust stay put.
Hours of quiescent sleuthing
Before the Madonna with the mop

Shuffles down the long corridor
Trying doorknobs, turning mine.
That's just little old me sweating
In the customer's chair, I'll say.
Keep your nose out of it.
I'm not closing up till he breaks....Read more of this...
by Simic, Charles
...an who dragged a croker sack
between the cotton rows to pick. He dragged
a gunnysack behind him in the ditch
collecting empties. Him they chose
the Likeliest to Sack Seed in the feed store,
or to suck seed. He was your daddy. He sacked
groceries part-time, and they jeered:
you sorry sack of ****. Sackcloth,
which Job sewed upon his skin, was goat hair.
God who clothed the heavens with such blackness
said, I make sackcloth their covering.
Isaiah understood. God had him speak a...Read more of this...
by Haxton, Brooks
...
the building just the same as the master-men who
rule the building.

Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor
empties its men and women who go away and eat
and come back to work.
Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and
all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on
them.
One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed
elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers
work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water
and mop clean from the fl...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl
...e the ordinary monuments 
 of the city. 

 * 

 When we die 
 our bodies powder, our bodies 

 the vessel & the vessel 
empties. 

 Our dying does not fill 
the hive with the stench 

 of dying. But outside 
 the world hungers. 

 A cockroach, stung, 
can be dragged back out. 

 A careless child 

 forced a snail inside with a stick once. 
 We waxed over the orifice of its shell 

 sealing the creature in. And here, 

the bottom of the comb, 
 a mouse, 
 driven in by winter &...Read more of this...
by Flynn, Nick
...broached the can lids, causing fat tears,
who tasted, dipped and did his thin stoppered chemistry
on our labour, as the empties chattered downstage and fumed.

Under the high roof, black-crusted and stainless steels
were walled apart: black romped with leather belts
but paddlewheels sailed the silvery vats where muscles
of the one deep cream were exercised to a bullion
to be blocked in paper. And between waves of delivery
the men trod on water, hosing the rainbows of a shift....Read more of this...
by Murray, Les
...of the sick, 
of the New Jerusalem? 
You will have to polish up the stars 
with Bab-o and find a new God 
as the earth empties out 
into the gnarled hands of the old redeemer....Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...(an' the Captain took champagne),
 An' the Arabites was shootin' all the while;
An' we left our wounded 'appy with the empties on the plain,
 An' we used the bloomin' guns for pro-jec-tile!
We limbered up an' galloped -- there were nothin' else to do --
 ('Orse Gunners, listen to my song!)
An' the Battery came a-boundin' like a boundin' kangaroo,
 But they didn't watch us comin' very long.
 As the Captain, etc.

We was goin' most extended -- we was drivin' very fine,
 An' th...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...om light and hymns from heaven did bless.
What you abound with, cast abroad
To those that want, and ease your load.
Who empties thus, will bring more in;
But riot is both loss and sin.
Dress finely what comes not in sight,
And then you keep your Christmas right....Read more of this...
by Vaughan, Henry
...ples.
I am dying as I sit. I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs. I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death. Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I suck up? Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is th...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things