Famous Following Poems by Famous Poets

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

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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...

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

by Rg Gregory
  (i) introduction

  his home in ruins
  his parents gone
  frederick seeks
  to reclaim his throne

   to the golden mountain
   he sets his path
   the enchantress listening
   schemes with wrath

  four desperate trials
  which she takes from store
  to silence frederick
  for ever...Read more of this...

It Rained The Day They Buried Tito Puente

by Emanuel Xavier
 It rained the day they buried Tito Puente
The eyes of drug dealers following me
as I walked through the streets
past shivering prostitutes
women of every sex
young boys full of piss
and lampposts like ghosts in the night
past Jimmy the hustler boy 
with the really big dick 
cracked out on the sidewalk
wrapped in a blanket donated by the trick
that also gave him genital...Read more of this...

Life

by Charlotte Bronte
 As late I journey'd o'er the extensive plain
Where native Otter sports his scanty stream,
Musing in torpid woe a Sister's pain,
The glorious prospect woke me from the dream.

At every step it widen'd to my sight -
Wood, Meadow, verdant Hill, and dreary Steep,
Following in quick succession of delight, -
Till all - at once - did my eye ravish'd sweep!

May this (I...Read more of this...

What I Did In The Moonlight

by James Lee Jobe
 I planted my grief
in freshly turned earth
A tree grows there now
You should see the size of it

I filled my wheel-barrow
with all my pointless regrets
I put them out by the curb
A truck will pick them up on Thursday

I spent some time following my cat
She led me all around our yard
stopping to rub her face in mint
I rubbed my face in...Read more of this...

Alcidor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 While Monarchs in stern Battle strove 
For proud Imperial Sway; 
Abandon'd to his milder Love, 
Within a silent peaceful Grove, 
Alcidor careless lay. 

Some term'd it cold, unmanly Fear; 
Some, Nicety of Sense, 
That Drums and Trumpets cou'd not hear, 
The sullying Blasts of Powder bear, 
Or with foul Camps dispense. 

A patient Martyr to their Scorn, 
And each...Read more of this...

Frost at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This...Read more of this...

Demeter And Persephone

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When...Read more of this...

Godwin James

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;
You were not torn by aching nerves,
Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.
You did not starve, for the government fed you.
You did not suffer yet cry...Read more of this...

His Boys

by Robert William Service
 "I'm going, Billy, old fellow. Hist, lad! Don't make any noise.
There's Boches to beat all creation, the pitch of a bomb away.
I've fixed the note to your collar, you've got to get back to my Boys,
You've got to get back to warn 'em before it's the break of day."

The order came to go forward to a trench-line traced on...Read more of this...

One Day

by Rupert Brooke
 Today I have been happy. All the day
I held the memory of you, and wove
Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,
And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,
And sent you following the white waves of sea,
And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,
Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
Being glad with a new foolish quiet...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

Though Deep Indifference Should Drowse

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 THOUGH deep indifference should drowse
The sluggish life beneath my brows,
And all the external things I see
Grow snow-showers in the street to me,
Yet inmost in my stormy sense
Thy looks shall be an influence.

Though other loves may come and go
And long years sever us below,
Shall the thin ice that grows above
Freeze the deep centre-well of love?
No, still below light amours, thou
Shalt...Read more of this...

Blueberries

by Robert Frost
 "You ought to have seen what I saw on my way 
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day: 
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb, 
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum 
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come! 
And all ripe together, not some of them green 
And some of them ripe!...Read more of this...

Winter Journey Over The Hartz Mountains

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [The following explanation is necessary, in order 
to make this ode in any way intelligible. The Poet is supposed to 
leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition 
in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal 
friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode 
alternately describes, in a...Read more of this...

To Ben Jonson upon Occasion of his Ode of Defiance Annexed t

by Thomas Carew
 'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand 
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand 
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due; 
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true 
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line 
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline 
From that her zenith, and foretells a red 
And blushing evening,...Read more of this...

Harry Wilmans

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was just turned twenty-one,
And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite...Read more of this...

Hymn 22 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 Flesh and spirit.

Rom. 8:1 

What vain desires and passions vain
Attend this mortal clay!
Oft have they pierced my soul with pain,
And drawn my heart astray.

How have I wandered from my God!
And, following sin and shame,
In this vile world of flesh and blood
Defiled my nobler frame!

For ever blessed be thy grace
That formed my soul anew,
And made it of a heav'n-born race,
Thy...Read more of this...

Victor Hugo

by Henry Van Dyke
 Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
You, who hailed with a morning song
Dream-light gilding a throne of old:
You, who turned when the dream grew cold,
Singing still, to the light that shone
Pure from Liberty's ancient throne,
Over the human throng!
You, who dared in...Read more of this...

Sonnet 117 - All we were going strong

by John Berryman
 All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen—ecstasies—
among so much good we tamped down the crime.

The weather's changing. This...Read more of this...

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

by Adrienne Rich
 The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes,...Read more of this...

Song of the Indian Maid from Endymion

by John Keats
 O SORROW! 
 Why dost borrow 
 The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?-- 
 To give maiden blushes 
 To the white rose bushes? 
 Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips? 

 O Sorrow! 
 Why dost borrow 
 The lustrous passion from a falcon-eye?-- 
 To give the glow-worm light? 
 Or, on...Read more of this...

The Hill We Climb

by Amanda Gorman
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't...Read more of this...

A Following

by Charles Bukowski
 the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
 and it was a man from Denver:

 "Chinaski, you got a following in
 Denver..."
 "yeah?"
 "yeah, I got a magazine and I want some
 poems from you..."
 "**** YOU, CHINASKI!" I heard a voice
 in the background...
 "I see you have a friend,"
 I said.
 "yeah," he answered, "now, I want
 six poems..."
...Read more of this...

The Ambition Bird

by Anne Sexton
 So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M., 
the clock tolling its engine 

like a frog following 
a sundial yet having an electric 
seizure at the quarter hour. 

The business of words keeps me awake. 
I am drinking cocoa, 
that warm brown mama. 

I would like a simple life 
yet all night I am laying 
poems away in...Read more of this...

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