Famous Except Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Except poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous except poems. These examples illustrate what a famous except poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Pablo Neruda
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
The only thing I miss about Los Angeles
is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing
--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars
--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow
through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Would you believe me
if I told you the name of the farmers
at the end of the lake
where it grew shallow over the mossy rocks
and if you came in the morning the grass was blue
the fur of the rocks was wet the small frogs jumped
and the lake was silent behind you
except for echoes
you tied your boat carefully to a tree
before setting...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Art not ashamed to give thyself to corruption?—to
neglect thus both what is commanded and what is forbidden?
Even if you succeed in appropriating all the
goods of the earth to yourself, what can you do with
them except to abandon them in your turn?...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I
Ah, who will tell me, in these leaden days,
Why the sweet Spring delays,
And where she hides, -- the dear desire
Of every heart that longs
For bloom, and fragrance, and the ruby fire
Of maple-buds along the misty hills,
And that immortal call which fills
The waiting wood with songs?
The snow-drops came so long ago,
It seemed that Spring...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of...Read more of this...
by
Vernon Scannell
They should not have left him there alone,
Alone that is except for the cat.
He was only nine, not old enough
To be left alone in a basement flat,
Alone, that is, except for the cat.
A dog would have been a different thing,
A big gruff dog with slashing jaws,
But a cat with round eyes mad...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Except the Heaven had come so near --
So seemed to choose My Door --
The Distance would not haunt me so --
I had not hoped -- before --
But just to hear the Grace depart --
I never thought to see --
Afflicts me with a Double loss --
'Tis lost -- and lost to me --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
(As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)
I
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
II
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Lancaster bore him--such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer--a little wild.
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two
And sees old friends he somehow can't get near....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Except Thy absence there is nothing of worth that can
bruise to the quick; he cannot be acute who is not taken
with Thy subtle charms, and, although there exist in
Thy mind no care for any one, there is none who may
not be preoccupied with Thee.
288...Read more of this...
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to beOne against whom there was no official complaint,And all the reports on his conduct agreeThat, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was asaint,For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.Except for the War till the day he retiredHe worked in a factory and never got fired,But...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare. 5
No flower upon the ground
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound. ...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
1. In terrors Los shrunk from his task:
His great hammer fell from his hand:
His fires beheld, and sickening,
Hid their strong limbs in smoke.
For with noises ruinous loud;
With hurtlings & clashings & groans
The Immortal endur'd his chains,
Tho' bound in a deadly sleep.
2. All the myriads of Eternity:
All the wisdom & joy of life:
Roll like a sea around him,...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
I don't know one damned butterfly from another
my ignorance of the stars is formidable,
also of dogs & ferns
except that around my house one destroys the other
When I reckon up my real ignorance, pal,
I mumble "many returns"-”
next time it will be nature & Thoreau
this time is Baudelaire if one had the skill
and even those problems O
At the mysterious urging of...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
A lion met America
in the road
they stared at each other
two figures on the crossroads in the desert.
America screamed
The lion roared
They leaped at each other
America desperate to win
Fighting with bombs, flamethrowers,
knives forks submarines.
The lion ate America, bit off her head
and loped off to...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Except the smaller size
No lives are round --
These -- hurry to a sphere
And show and end --
The larger -- slower grow
And later hang --
The Summers of Hesperides
Are long....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Except to Heaven, she is nought.
Except for Angels -- lone.
Except to some wide-wandering Bee
A flower superfluous blown.
Except for winds -- provincial.
Except by Butterflies
Unnoticed as a single dew
That on the Acre lies.
The smallest Housewife in the grass,
Yet take her from the Lawn
And somebody has lost the face
That made Existence -- Home!...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.
The child's head, bent to the book-colored shelves,
Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering,
Moving in blind grace ... yet from the mural, Care
The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist,
Seizes the baby hero by the hair
And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children,
Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawn
But blanched like...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage...Read more of this...
by
Robert Seymour Bridges
'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft and charm so rare
Too soon returned to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.
I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor...Read more of this...
by
Kunchan Nambiar
The kingdom of the Gandharaka ruler
Has turned into a mere desert.
The land of the Simhala King
Is now filled with lions and leopards.
The lord of the Chera people
Feeds himself on cheap vegetables.
The Chola King has nothing to eat
Except the maize of low quality
The kings of the Kuru house
Have nothing but jackfruit seeds.
The lord of the land of Kashmir
Is busy eating cucumbers.
The...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!
The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that's nearest.
This compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In...Read more of this...
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