Famous First Step Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous First Step 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 step poems. These examples illustrate what a famous first step poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Frost
What tree may not the fig be gathered from?
The grape may not be gathered from the birch?
It's all you know the grape, or know the birch.
As a girl gathered from the birch myself
Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,
I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.
I was born, I suppose, like anyone,
And grew...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness—these forms—the power of motion,
The least insect or animal—the senses—eyesight—love;
The first step, I say, aw’d me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish’d to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs....Read more of this...
by
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath –
first step, to renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen I said, “Heart, congratulations on entering the circle of...Read more of this...
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...
by
Anne Sexton
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of...Read more of this...
by
John Ashbery
Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet andsalutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything--bush and tree--to take...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
"A Priest in Spite of Himself"
"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play!"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world
between.
Oh, Mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)
"How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street?"
I haven't time to...Read more of this...
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