Famous Filling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The General Public

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 "Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning. 
"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then," 
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face 
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now! 
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain? 
The time that I remember best is this -- 

A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,...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...

Song at Sunset

by Walt Whitman
 SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me! 
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past! 
Inflating my throat—you, divine average! 
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing. 

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection, 
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things; 
Corroborating forever the triumph of things. 

Illustrious every one! 
Illustrious what...Read more of this...

Good Old Moon

by Li Po
 When I was a boy I called the moon a
white plate of jade, sometimes it looked
like a great mirror hanging in the sky,
first came the two legs of the fairy
and the cassia tree, but for whom the rabbit
kept on pounding medical herbs, I
just could not guess. Now the moon is being
swallowed by the toad and the light
flickers out leaving...Read more of this...

Camerons Heart

by Henry Lawson
 The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came, 
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame'; 
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant -- 
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt. 
The meenister called him `ungodly -- a stray...Read more of this...

Anticipation

by Amy Lowell
 I have been temperate always,
But I am like to be very drunk
With your coming.
There have been times
I feared to walk down the street
Lest I should reel with the wine of you,
And jerk against my neighbours
As they go by.
I am parched now, and my tongue is horrible in my mouth,
But my brain is noisy
With the clash and gurgle of filling...Read more of this...

The Triumph Of Love

by Friedrich von Schiller
 By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!

In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang--
Mankind from lifeless stone.

Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and...Read more of this...

Talking To My Father Whose Ashes Sit In A Closet And Listen

by Lisa Zaran
 Death is not the final word. 
Without ears, my father still listens, 
still shrugs his shoulders 
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer. 

I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob, 
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him 
what does he think about the war in Iraq 
and how does he...Read more of this...

Love Letter Written In A Burning Building

by Anne Sexton
 I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting...Read more of this...

Sonnet XII

by Alan Seeger
 Like as a dryad, from her native bole 
Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, 
To a slow river at whose silent verge 
Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, 
Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal 
Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, 
Bend till thine image from the pool beam up 
Arched with blue...Read more of this...

Call It Music

by Philip Levine
 Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in...Read more of this...

Sea Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
     Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
   Tired of the green caresses of the land,
     Withdraws into its own infinity.

   But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
     Filling the vacant...Read more of this...

There is not a night when my mind is not in a state of

by Omar Khayyam
There is not a night when my mind is not in a state of
stupefaction. There is not one when my breast is not
inundated with pearls that flow from my eyes. The disquiet
which possesses me keeps the bowl of my head from
filling itself with wine, can a bowl overturned ever be
filled?...Read more of this...

In the Home Stretch

by Robert Frost
 SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,
And...Read more of this...

Dream On

by James Tate
 Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church 
as if that were a natural part of life. 
Investing money is...Read more of this...

Filling Station

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms, 
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of...Read more of this...

At Tower Peak

by Gary Snyder
At Tower Peak

 Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing
 Freeways are clogged all day
 Academies packed with scholars writing papers
 City people lean and dark
 This land most real 
 As its western-tending golden slopes
 And bird-entangled central valley swamps
 Sea-lion, urchin coasts
 Southerly salmon-probes 
 Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills
 Along a range of granite peaks
 The...Read more of this...

On The Lord Gen. Fairfax At The Seige Of Colchester

by John Milton
 Fairfax, whose name in armes through Europe rings
Filling each mouth with envy, or with praise,
And all her jealous monarchs with amaze,
And rumors loud, that daunt remotest kings,
Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings
Victory home, though new rebellions raise
Their Hydra heads, & the fals North displaies
Her brok'n league, to impe their serpent wings,
O yet a nobler task awaites thy hand;
Yet what...Read more of this...

Dream Song 4: Filling her compact and delicious body

by John Berryman
 Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni.-”Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de...Read more of this...

Climbing West Of Lotus Flower Peak

by Li Po
 Amongst the grandeur of Hua Shan
I climb to the Flower Peak,
and fancy I see fairies and immortals
carrying lotus in their
sacred white hands, robes flowing
they fly filling the sky with colour
as they rise to the palace of heaven,
inviting me to go to the cloud stage
and see Wei Shu-ching, guardian angel
of Hua Shan; so dreamily I go with them
riding to the...Read more of this...

Passport

by Mahmoud Darwish
 They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah . . . Don’t leave 
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don’t leave me pale like the moon!

All the birds that...Read more of this...

The Harvest Moon

by Ted Hughes
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon. 
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum. 

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and...Read more of this...

A Humble Heroine

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas at the Seige of Matagarda, during the Peninsular War,
That a Mrs Reston for courage outshone any man there by far;
She was the wife of a Scottish soldier in Matagarda Port,
And to attend to her husband she there did resort. 

'Twas in the Spring of the year 1810,
That General Sir Thomas Graham occupied Matagarda with 150 men;
These consisted of...Read more of this...

I cannot go to school today!

by Shel Silverstein
"I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.

And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is...Read more of this...

A Birthday Present

by Sylvia Plath
 What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one,...Read more of this...

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