Famous Formula Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A light exists in spring

...e furthest slope we know;
   It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
   Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
   It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
   Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
   Upon a sacrament....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


Dirge Without Music

...nto the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the
 love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the
 world.

Down, down, down into the...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

I got so I could take his name

...- driven through --

Could dimly recollect a Grace --
I think, they call it "God" --
Renowned to ease Extremity --
When Formula, had failed --

And shape my Hands --
Petition's way,
Tho' ignorant of a word
That Ordination -- utters --

My Business, with the Cloud,
If any Power behind it, be,
Not subject to Despair --
It care, in some remoter way,
For so minute affair
As Misery --
Itself, too vast, for interrupting -- more --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

I Grant You Ample Leave

..."I grant you ample leave 
To use the hoary formula 'I am' 
Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 
But fill the void with definition, 'I' 
Will be no more a datum than the words 
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so' 
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web 
With vibrant ether clotted into worlds: 
Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I' 
Tu...Read more of this...
by Eliot, George

I watched the Moon around the House

...To lift her Glass -- upon --

But never Stranger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine -- for not a Foot -- nor Hand --
Nor Formula -- had she --

But like a Head -- a Guillotine
Slid carelessly away --
Did independent, Amber --
Sustain her in the sky --

Or like a Stemless Flower --
Upheld in rolling Air
By finer Gravitations --
Than bind Philosopher --

No Hunger -- had she -- nor an Inn --
Her Toilette -- to suffice --
Nor Avocation -- nor Concern
For little Mysteries

As hara...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


One Song America Before I Go

...e and Nature are not great with reference to the Present only,
But greater still from what is yet to come, 
Out of that formula for Thee I sing....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Somehow myself survived the Night

...Somehow myself survived the Night
And entered with the Day --
That it be saved the Saved suffice
Without the Formula.

Henceforth I take my living place
As one commuted led --
A Candidate for Morning Chance
But dated with the Dead....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

The Pangolin

...d of anything is he,
 and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle
at every step. Consistent with the
 formula--warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few hairs--
 that
 is a mammal; there he sits on his own habitat,
 serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always
 curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work partly
 done,
 says to the alternating blaze,
 "Again the sun!
 anew each day; and new and new and new,
 that comes into and stead...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

The Pearl Diver

...e wandered, steering by stars and by sun. 

Fearless he was beyond credence, looking at death eye to eye: 
This was his formula always, "All man go dead by and by -- 
S'posing time come no can help it -- s'pose time no come, then no die." 

Dived in the depths of the Darnleys, down twenty fathom and five; 
Down where by law, and by reason, men are forbidden to dive; 
Down in a pressure so awful that only the strongest survive: 

Sweated four men at the air pumps, fast as the ...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

Tis Seasons since the Dimpled War

...r
And each of us were slain
And Centuries 'twill be and more
Another Massacre before
So modest and so vain --
Without a Formula we fought
Each was to each the Pink Redoubt --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

XXXIV (You are the daughter of the sea)

...ands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams....Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

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