Famous Finishing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Finishing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous finishing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous finishing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Carl Sandburg
LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf
song under the eaves.
I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower Came.
And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not
understand.
A man...Read more of this...
by
Gerald Stern
I remember Galileo describing the mind
as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree,
or jumping into the backseat of a car,
and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
Route 80 between the wheels of a giant...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By haughty Celia spent in dressing;
The goddess from her chamber issues,
Arrayed in lace, brocades, and tissues.
Strephon, who found the room was void
And Betty otherwise employed,
Stole in and took a strict survey
Of all the litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the matter clear,
An inventory follows here.
And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative'-”teaching at The Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote-”
Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No'
and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
I say to my woman, "Jeffers was
a great poet. think of a title
like Be Angry At The Sun. don't you
realize how great that is?
"you like that negative stuff." she
says
"positively," I agree, finishing my
drink and pouring another.
"in one of Jeffers' poems, not the sun poem,
this woman fucks a stallion because her
husband is such a gross spirit....Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Beauty and love let no one separate,
Whom exact Nature did to each other fit,
Giving to Beauty love as finishing fate
And to Love beauty as true colour of it.
Let he but friend be who the soul finds fair,
But let none love outside the body's thought,
So the seen couple's togetherness shall bear
Truth to the beauty each in the other sought.
I could but...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter saying: “I am just finishing my ‘Faun’s Holiday.’ I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.”)
Here by a snowbound river
In scrapen holes we shiver,
And like old bitterns we
Boom to you plaintively:
Robert, how can I rhyme
Verses for your desire—
Sleek fauns...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
CHANTING the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides;
Out of the old and new—out of the square entirely divine,
Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)... from this side JEHOVAH am I,
Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am;
Not Time affects me—I am Time, old, modern as any;
Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments;
As the...Read more of this...
by
Galway Kinnell
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Oh! how gentle are your hands and their slow caress winding about my neck and gliding over my body, when I tell you at the fall of evening how my strength grows heavy day by day with the lead of my weakness!
You do not wish me to become a shadow and a wreck like those who go towards the darkness,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought
A further force of life
Developed from within,--
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.
We wondered at our blindness,--
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post,--
At our stupidity
When, duller than our dulness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!...Read more of this...
by
Julie Hill Alger
When the molten earth seethed
in its whirling cauldron
nobody watched the pot
from a tall wooden stool
set out in windy space
beyond flame's reach;
and when the spattering mush
steamed, gurgled, boiled over,
mounded up in smoking hills
no giant mixing spoon
smoothed out the lumps and bubbles
as the pottage cooled to rock.
No kitchen timer ticked
precisely...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
GReat wrong I doe, I can it not deny,
to that most sacred Empresse my dear dred,
not finishing her Queene of faery,
that mote enlarge her liuing prayses dead:
But lodwick, this of grace to me aread:
doe ye not thinck th'accomplishment of it,
sufficient worke for one mans simple head,
all were it as the rest but rudely writ.
How then should I without another...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Her final Summer was it --
And yet We guessed it not --
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded Her, We thought
A further force of life
Developed from within --
When Death lit all the shortness up
It made the hurry plain --
We wondered at our blindness
When nothing was to see
But Her Carrara Guide post --
At Our Stupidity --
When duller than our dullness
The Busy Darling lay --
So...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
OR
The Child Is Father Of The Man, But Not For Quite A While
So Thomas Edison
Never drank his medicine;
So Blackstone and Hoyle
Refused cod-liver oil;
So Sir Thomas Malory
Never heard of a calory;
So the Earl of Lennox
Murdered Rizzio without the aid of vitamins or calisthenox;
So Socrates and Plato
Ate dessert without finishing their potato;
So spinach was too spinachy
For Leonardo da Vinaci;
Well, it's all...Read more of this...
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