Famous Existing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Existing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous existing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous existing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Dryden
To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew,
Excellent in the Two Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting
Thou youngest Virgin Daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the blest;
Whose palms, new-plucked from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green, above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us in thy wand'ring...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.
And he realized that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation.
But what Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?
And what loved the shot-pellets
That...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
All that thou doest is right; but, friend, don't carry this precept
On too far,--be content, all that is right to effect.
It is enough to true zeal, if what is existing be perfect;
False zeal always would find finished perfection at once....Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
I was here from the moment of the
Beginning, and here I am still. And
I shall remain here until the end
Of the world, for there is no
Ending to my grief-stricken being.
I roamed the infinite sky, and
Soared in the ideal world, and
Floated through the firmament. But
Here I am, prisoner of measurement.
I heard...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1919
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Love is sharper than stones or sticks;
Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;
Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;
Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.
Show me a love was done and through,
Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!
Son, to your death you'll pay your due-
Women and elephants never forget.
Ever a man, alas, would mix,
Ever a man, heigh-ho, must woo;
So...Read more of this...
by
Robert Bly
Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body
Bringing fish up near the sun
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!
I have wandered in a face for hours
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon....Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
TO the garden, the world, anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,
Amorous, mature—all beautiful to me—all wondrous;
My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
When she came out, that white little Russian dancer,
With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young,
He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players,
And only heard an immortal music sung,—
Of dryads flashing in the green woods of April,
On cobwebs trembing over the deep, wet grass:
Fleeing their shadows with laughter, with hands...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand,
Until a sudden sky
Reveals the fact that One is rapt
Forever from the Eye --
Members of the Invisible,
Existing, while we stare,
In Leagueless Opportunity,
O'ertakenless, as the Air --
Why didn't we detain Them?
The Heavens with a smile,
Sweep by our disappointed Heads
Without a syllable --...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
The flower in the glass peanut bottle formerly in the
kitchen crooked to take a place in the light,
the closet door opened, because I used it before, it
kindly stayed open waiting for me, its owner.
I began to feel my misery in pallet on floor, listening
to music, my misery, that's why I want to sing.
The room closed...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Existing things were already predestined upon the
tablet of creation. The brush [of the universe] did not
paint good and bad. With destiny God imprinted whatever
should be so imprinted, and the efforts that we
make in these directions are wholly lost....Read more of this...
by
Louis Untermeyer
Can that be you, la mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eye-lid and make sure... Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet—
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull to-day;
I have that—something—heavier on...Read more of this...
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