Famous First Of All Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Man Young And Old: I. First Love

by William Butler Yeats
 Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.

But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.

She smiled and that...Read more of this...

The Buglers First Communion

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 A buglar boy from barrack (it is over the hill
There)—boy bugler, born, he tells me, of Irish
 Mother to an English sire (he
Shares their best gifts surely, fall how things will), 

This very very day came down to us after a boon he on
My late being there begged of me, overflowing
 Boon in my bestowing,
Came, I say, this day...Read more of this...

Twas warm -- at first -- like Us --

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twas warm -- at first -- like Us --
Until there crept upon
A Chill -- like frost upon a Glass --
Till all the scene -- be gone.

The Forehead copied Stone --
The Fingers grew too cold
To ache -- and like a Skater's Brook --
The busy eyes -- congealed --

It straightened -- that was all --
It crowded Cold to Cold --
It multiplied...Read more of this...

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?

by Christopher Marlowe
 It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;

And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where...Read more of this...

The first We knew of Him was Death --

by Emily Dickinson
 The first We knew of Him was Death --
The second -- was -- Renown --
Except the first had justified
The second had not been....Read more of this...

I Wish I Could Remember That First Day

by Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only...Read more of this...

The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain

by Delmore Schwartz
 The common rain had come again
Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous,
Fainting falling in the first evening
Of the first perception of the actual fall,
The long and late light had slowly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
 more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned, 
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
...Read more of this...

The First Rain

by Yehuda Amichai
 The first rain reminds me
Of the rising summer dust.
The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear.
A year is a trained beast with no memories.
Soon you will again wear your harnesses,
Beautiful and embroidered, to hold
Sheer stockings: you
Mare and harnesser in one body.

The white panic of soft flesh
In the panic of a sudden vision
Of ancient saints....Read more of this...

How Springs Came First

by Robert Herrick
 These springs were maidens once that loved,
But lost to that they most approved:
My story tells, by Love they were
Turn'd to these springs which we see here:
The pretty whimpering that they make,
When of the banks their leave they take,
Tells ye but this, they are the same,
In nothing changed but in their name....Read more of this...

Sonnet LXII: When First I Ended

by Michael Drayton
 When first I ended, then I first began, 
The more I travell'd, further from my rest, 
Where most I lost, there most of all I wan,
Pined with hunger rising from a feast. 
Methinks I fly, yet want I legs to go, 
Wise in conceit, in act a very sot, 
Ravish'd with joy amid a hell of woe; 
What most...Read more of this...

The First Step

by Constantine P Cavafy
 The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritus:
"I've been writing for two years now
and I've composed only one idyll.
It's my single completed work.
I see, sadly, that the ladder
of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I'm standing on now
I'll never climb any higher."
Theocritus retorted: "Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you...Read more of this...

The First Jasmines

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Ah, these jasmines, these white jasmines!
I seem to remember the first day when I filled my hands with
these jasmines, these white jasmines.
I have loved the sunlight, the sky and the green earth;
I have heard the liquid murmur of the river thorough the
darkness of midnight;
Autumn sunsets have come to me at the bend of a road in the
lonely waste, like...Read more of this...

Your pardon first I crave

by Mercy Otis Warren
Your pardon first I crave for this intrusion. 
The topic's such it looks like a delusion; 
And next your candour, for I swear and vow, 
Such an attempt I never made till now. 
But constant laughing at the Desp'rate fate, 
The bastard sons of Mars endur'd of late, 
Induc'd me thus to minute down the notion,
Which put my risibles in...Read more of this...

Ode Written On The First Of January

by Robert Southey
 Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
For well the funeral song
Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
This consecrated day,
To Mirth and Indolence.

Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant...Read more of this...

I dreaded that first Robin so

by Emily Dickinson
 I dreaded that first Robin, so,
But He is mastered, now,
I'm accustomed to Him grown,
He hurts a little, though --

I thought If I could only live
Till that first Shout got by --
Not all Pianos in the Woods
Had power to mangle me --

I dared not meet the Daffodils --
For fear their Yellow Gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my...Read more of this...

My first well Day -- since many ill --

by Emily Dickinson
 My first well Day -- since many ill --
I asked to go abroad,
And take the Sunshine in my hands,
And see the things in Pod --

A 'blossom just when I went in
To take my Chance with pain --
Uncertain if myself, or He,
Should prove the strongest One.

The Summer deepened, while we strove --
She put some flowers away --
And Redder cheeked Ones...Read more of this...

First We Take Manhattan

by Leonard Cohen
 They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom 
For trying to change the system from within 
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them 
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
I'm guided by a signal in the heavens 
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin 
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons 
First we take Manhattan,...Read more of this...

I dreaded that first Robin

by Emily Dickinson
I dreaded that first Robin, so,
But He is mastered, now,
I'm some accustomed to Him grown,
He hurts a little, though—

I thought if I could only live
Till that first Shout got by—
Not all Pianos in the Woods
Had power to mangle me—

I dared not meet the Daffodils—
For fear their Yellow Gown
Would pierce me with a fashion
So foreign to my own—

I wished the Grass...Read more of this...

My First Affair With That Older Woman

by Charles Bukowski
 when I look back now

at the abuse I took from

her

I feel shame that I was so

innocent,

but I must say

she did match me drink for

drink,

and I realized that her life

her feelings for things

had been ruined

along the way

and that I was no mare than a

temporary

companion;

she was ten years older

and mortally hurt by the past

and the present;

she treated me badly:

desertion, other

men;

she brought...Read more of this...

Mentana : First Anniversary

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.

As the light of a face much loved
Was the face of the light that clomb;
As a mother's whitened with woes
Her adorable head that...Read more of this...

The Faun Sees Snow for the First Time

by Richard Aldington
 Zeus, 
Brazen-thunder-hurler, 
Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos, 
Send vengeance on these Oreads 
Who strew 
White frozen flecks of mist and cloud 
Over the brown trees and the tufted grass 
Of the meadows, where the stream 
Runs black through shining banks 
Of bluish white. 

Zeus, 
Are the halls of heaven broken up 
That you flake down upon me 
Feather-strips of marble? 

Dis and...Read more of this...

At First. To Charlotte Cushman

by Sidney Lanier
 My crippled sense fares bow'd along
His uncompanioned way,
And wronged by death pays life with wrong
And I wake by night and dream by day.

And the Morning seems but fatigued Night
That hath wept his visage pale,
And the healthy mark 'twixt dark and light
In sickly sameness out doth fail.

And the woods stare strange, and the wind is dumb,
-- O Wind, pray talk...Read more of this...

First winter rain

by Matsuo Basho
 First winter rain--
even the monkey
 seems to want a raincoat....Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so...Read more of this...

This Is The First Thing

by Philip Larkin
 This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood....Read more of this...

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