Famous Goings On Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Diary of a Church Mouse

by John Betjeman
 Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is...Read more of this...

The Wrong Way Home

by Edward Taylor
 All night a door floated down the river.
It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure
from its former life, like the time the lovers
leaned against it kissing for hours
and whispering those famous words.
Later, there were harsh words and a shoe
was thrown and the door was slammed.
Comings and goings by the thousands,
the early mornings and late nights, years, years.
O they've got...Read more of this...

The Old Issue

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
 "Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
 (Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)

"Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," peal the Trumpets,
 "Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall.
"It is the King!"--inexorable...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria CANTO VI ( Dyscomfyture )

by Lewis Carroll
 As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore: 

Yet, having once begun to try,
Dares not desert his quest,
But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
On one small hut against the sky
Wherein he hopes to rest: 

Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
With...Read more of this...

Ask Me

by William Stafford
 Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at...Read more of this...

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

by Anne Sexton
 If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
pissing in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The...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...

The Trade

by Rudyard Kipling
 They bear, in place of classic names,
 Letters and numbers on their skin.
 They play their grisly blindfold games
 In little boxes made of tin.
 Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,
 Sometimes they learn where mines are laid,
 Or where the Baltic ice is thin.
 That is the custom of "The Trade."

 Few prize-courts sit upon their claims.
 They seldom...Read more of this...

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying, What I do is me:...Read more of this...

The Wrong Way Home

by James Tate
 All night a door floated down the river.
It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure
from its former life, like the time the lovers
leaned against it kissing for hours
and whispering those famous words.
Later, there were harsh words and a shoe
was thrown and the door was slammed.
Comings and goings by the thousands,
the early mornings and late nights, years, years.
O they've got...Read more of this...

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