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Famous Entrance Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...source.
This cornucopia of air! This very heaven
of simple day! We do not know, can never know,
the alphabet to find us entrance there.
So, in the street, we stand and stare,
to greet a friend, and shake his hand,
yet know him beyond knowledge, like ourselves;
ocean unknowable by unknowable sand.

V

The locust tree spills sequins of pale gold
in spiral nebulae, borne on the Invisible
earthward and deathward, but in change to find
the cycles to new birth, new life. Li Po
allo...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad



...s clear of clouds. The same skyful of clouds was up there. She got
out on the boulevard and walked east and reached the entrance of The Blue Mirror. She
walked in, and there was Walter sitting alone and drunk at the end of the bar. She walked
up and sat down next to him. "Missed me, baby?" she asked. Walter looked up. He
recognized her. He didn't answer. He looked at the bartender and the bartender walked
toward them They all knew eachother....Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...u passing gale, 
Beneath those grassy tombs their bodies lie, 
But they have risen from each labour bere 
To make their entrance on a nobler stage. 
What though with us they walk the humble vale 
Of indigence severe, with want oppress'd? 
Riches belong not to their family, 
Nor sloth luxurious nor the pride of kings; 
But truth meek-ey'd and warm benevolence 
Wisdom's high breeding in her sons rever'd 
Bespeaks them each the children[2] of a king. 
The christian truth of orig...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...22b} the bairn to avenge,
the sole-born son. -- On his shoulder lay
braided breast-mail, barring death,
withstanding entrance of edge or blade.
Life would have ended for Ecgtheow’s son,
under wide earth for that earl of Geats,
had his armor of war not aided him,
battle-net hard, and holy God
wielded the victory, wisest Maker.
The Lord of Heaven allowed his cause;
and easily rose the earl erect.



XXIII

’MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-swo...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...e live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don't have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder,
Because sometimes you feel thirty years younger and sometimes
thirty years older.
Now you begin to realize who it was that reached the height of
imbecility,
It was whoever said tha...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden



...y the heavenly Muse,
Storied of old in high immortal verse
Of dire Chimeras and enchanted isles,
And rifted rocks whose entrance leads to Hell;
For such there be, but unbelief is blind.
 Within the navel of this hideous wood,
Immured in cypress shades, a sorcerer dwells,
Of Bacchus and of Circe born, great Comus,
Deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries,
And here to every thirsty wanderer
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup,
With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing pois...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...I am at the entrance to a tunnel
These phrases drill through time.
Perhaps I am that which waits at the end of the tunnel.
I speak with eyes closed.
                         Someone
has planted
           a forest of magnetic needles
in my eyelids,
                  someone
guides the thread of these words.
                                    The page
has bec...Read more of this...
by Paz, Octavio
...ay, 
 Went forward on that hard and dreadful way. 





Canto III 


 THE gateway to the city of Doom. Through me 
 The entrance to the Everlasting Pain. 
 The Gateway of the Lost. The Eternal Three 
 Justice impelled to build me. Here ye see 
 Wisdom Supreme at work, and Primal Power, 
 And Love Supernal in their dawnless day. 
 Ere from their thought creation rose in flower 
 Eternal first were all things fixed as they. 
 Of Increate Power infinite formed am I 
 That deathl...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...ook of knowledge fair 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
So much the rather thou, celestial Light, 
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence 
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
Of things invisible to mortal sight. 
Now had the Almighty Father from above, 
From the pure empyrean where he sits 
High thron'd above all high...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...passed that way. 
One gate there only was, and that looked east 
On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw, 
Due entrance he disdained; and, in contempt, 
At one flight bound high over-leaped all bound 
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within 
Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf, 
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, 
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve 
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, 
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fo...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...himself, fearless returned 
From compassing the earth; cautious of day, 
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried 
His entrance, and foreworned the Cherubim 
That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, 
The space of seven continued nights he rode 
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line 
He circled; four times crossed the car of night 
From pole to pole, traversing each colure; 
On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse 
From entrance or Cherubick watch, ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ascended, mute, and sad, 
For Man; for of his state by this they knew, 
Much wondering how the subtle Fiend had stolen 
Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome news 
From Earth arrived at Heaven-gate, displeased 
All were who heard; dim sadness did not spare 
That time celestial visages, yet, mixed 
With pity, violated not their bliss. 
About the new-arrived, in multitudes 
The ethereal people ran, to hear and know 
How all befel: They towards the throne supreme, 
Accountable,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...'s seed renewed; 
So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace: 
And on the east side of the garden place, 
Where entrance up from Eden easiest climbs, 
Cherubick watch; and of a sword the flame 
Wide-waving; all approach far off to fright, 
And guard all passage to the tree of life: 
Lest Paradise a receptacle prove 
To Spirits foul, and all my trees their prey; 
With whose stolen fruit Man once more to delude. 
He ceased; and the arch-angelick Power prepared 
For swif...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...in." To Paul
The hollow looked too sound and clean and empty
Ever to have housed birds or beasts or bees.
There was no entrance for them to get in by.
It looked to him like some new kind of hollow
He thought he'd better take his jackknife to.
So after work that evening be came back
And let enough light into it by cutting
To see if it was empty. He made out in there
A slender length of pith, or was it pith?
It might have been the skin a snake had cast
And left stood up on end...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...d loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The Palatine hath welcomed back her king,
And with his name the seven mountains ring!

And Naples hath outlived her dream of pain,
And mocks her tyrant! Venice lives again,
New risen from the waters! and the cry
Of Light and Truth, of Love and Liberty,
Is heard in lordly Genoa, and wh...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...at within the farm-house old,
  Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
  An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,
  The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
  The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,
  Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
  Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished sce...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d a collection choicer far
Than or Whitehall's, or Mantua's were.

But, of these pictures and the rest,
That at the entrance likes me best;
Where the same posture, and the look
Remains, with which I first was took:
A tender shepherdess, whose hair
Hangs loosely playing in the air,
Transplanting flowers from the green hill,
To crown her head, and bosom fill....Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...the flocks up the mountain,
Or catlike couched hard by the fountain
To waylay the date-gathering negress:
So guarded he entrance or egress.
``How he stands!'' quoth the King: ``we may well swear,
(``No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere
``And so can afford the confession,)
``We exercise wholesome discretion
``In keeping aloof from his threshold;
``Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold,
``Their first would too pleasantly purloin
``The visitor's brisket or surloin:
``...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...ny of the thousand tables they will pass.
Let them wait.  Let them correctly choose the right turn 
Or the left, this entrance ramp, that exit, the last 
Confusing fork before the familiar driveway 
Three hundred miles and more from these bleak thunderheads.
Let them regather into the chairs exactly 
Matched to their numbers, blessing the bountiful or 
The meager with voices that soar toward renewal.
Let them have mercy on themselves.  Let my children,
Grown now, be ...Read more of this...
by Fincke, Gary
...r felt before;
    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
            This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
    And so faintly you came tap...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry