Famous Entering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Well-Beloved

by Thomas Hardy
 I wayed by star and planet shine 
 Towards the dear one's home 
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine 
 When the next sun upclomb. 

I edged the ancient hill and wood 
 Beside the Ikling Way, 
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood 
 In the world's earlier day. 

And as I quick and quicker walked 
 On...Read more of this...

Cavalry Crossing a Ford

by Walt Whitman
 A LINE in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands; 
They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—Hark to the musical
 clank; 
Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink; 
Behold the brown-faced men—each group, each person, a picture—the negligent rest
 on
 the
 saddles; 
Some emerge on the opposite bank—others are just...Read more of this...

Lays of Sorrow

by Lewis Carroll
 The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam, [1] a
sound was heard in the old henhouse,
A beating of a hammer. 
Of stalwart form, and visage warm,
Two youths were seen within it,
Splitting up an old tree into perches for their poultry
At a hundred strokes [2] a minute. 
The work is done, the hen has taken
Possession of...Read more of this...

The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 1: 1931-1934

by Anais Nin
 "Am I, at bottom, that fervent little Spanish Catholic child who chastised herself for loving toys, who forbade herself the enjoyment of sweet foods, who practiced silence, who humiliated her pride, who adored symbols, statues, burning candles, incense, the caress of nuns, organ music, for whom Communion was a great event? I was so exalted by the idea of...Read more of this...

This is to Love

by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath –
first step, to renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen I said,   “Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of...Read more of this...

I had been hungry all the Years --

by Emily Dickinson
 I had been hungry, all the Years --
My Noon had Come -- to dine --
I trembling drew the Table near --
And touched the Curious Wine --

'Twas this on Tables I had seen --
When turning, hungry, Home
I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope -- for Mine --

I did not know the ample Bread --
'Twas so unlike the...Read more of this...

The Romantic Age

by Ogden Nash
 This one is entering her teens,
Ripe for sentimental scenes,
Has picked a gangling unripe male,
Sees herself in bridal veil,
Presses lips and tosses head,
Declares she's not too young to wed,
Informs you pertly you forget
Romeo and Juliet.
Do not argue, do not shout;
Remind her how that one turned out....Read more of this...

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

by Larry Levis
 --The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
 --for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Steamer Storm Queen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye landsmen, all pray list to me,
While I relate a terrible tale of the sea,
Concerning the screw steamer "Storm Queen"
Which was wrecked, alas! a most heast-rending scene. 

From Sebastopol, with a cargo of grain, she was on her way,
And soon after entering the Bay of Biscay,
On the 21st of December, they experienced a fearful storm
Such as they never experienced...Read more of this...

Prayer

by Jorie Graham
 Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
 infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there...Read more of this...

A March in the Ranks Hard-prest

by Walt Whitman
 A MARCH in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown; 
A route through a heavy wood, with muffled steps in the darkness; 
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating; 
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building; 
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted...Read more of this...

Death By Water

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
  Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
  Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
  And the profit and loss.
                                   ...Read more of this...

Love In The Asylum

by Dylan Thomas
 A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
 A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
 Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
 At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of...Read more of this...

Beneath A Mountains Brow

by John Trumbull
 "Beneath a mountain's brow, the most remote 
And inaccessible by Shepherds trod, 
In a deep cave, dug by no mortals hands 
An Hermit lived,--a melancholy man 
Who was the wonder of our wand'ring swains: 
Austere and lonely--cruel to himself 
They did report him--the cold earth his bed, 
Water his drink, his food the Shepherd's alms. 
I went to see...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

As At Thy Portals Also Death

by Walt Whitman
 AS at thy portals also death, 
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, 
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, 
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, 
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin, 
I kiss and kiss convulsively again the...Read more of this...

Rudiger - A Ballad

by Robert Southey
 Author Note: Divers Princes and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair
Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or
small barge make toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain,
the one end fastened about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it
an unknown soldier, a man of a comely...Read more of this...

Sonnet 02: Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
 Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
 I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
 And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
 But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on...Read more of this...

An Imitation of Spenser

by William Blake
 Thou fair hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, while the sun rests on the mountains light,
Thy bright torch of love; Thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves; and when thou drawest the 
Blue curtains, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake;...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria CANTO VI ( Dyscomfyture )

by Lewis Carroll
 As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore: 

Yet, having once begun to try,
Dares not desert his quest,
But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
On one small hut against the sky
Wherein he hopes to rest: 

Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
With...Read more of this...

Sestina IV

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA IV. Chi è fermato di menar sua vita. HE PRAYS GOD TO GUIDE HIS FRAIL BARK TO A SAFE PORT.  Who is resolved to venture his vain lifeOn the deceitful wave and 'mid the rocks,Alone, unfearing death, in little bark,Can never be far distant from his end:Therefore betimes he should...Read more of this...

As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor

by James Wright
 And how can I, born in evil days
And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate?

 -- Written A.D. 819


Po Chu-i, balding old politician,
What's the use?
I think of you,
Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,
When you were being towed up the rapids
Toward some political job or other
In the city of Chungshou.
You made it, I guess,
By dark.

But it is 1960,...Read more of this...

Bringing in the Wine

by Li Po
 See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
... Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin...Read more of this...

In The Valley Of The Elwy

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 I remember a house where all were good
 To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:
 Comforting smell breathed at very entering,
Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood.
That cordial air made those kind people a hood
 All over, as a bevy of eggs the mothering wing
 Will, or mild nights the new morsels of spring:
Why, it seemed...Read more of this...

Bringing in the Wine

by Li Bai
See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
... Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin a...Read more of this...

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