Famous Good News Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?

by Emily Dickinson
 Of Tolling Bell I ask the cause?
"A Soul has gone to Heaven"
I'm answered in a lonesome tone --
Is Heaven then a Prison?

That Bells should ring till all should know
A Soul had gone to Heaven
Would seem to me the more the way
A Good News should be given....Read more of this...

Sekhmet the Lion-headed Goddess of War

by Margaret Atwood
 He was the sort of man
who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That's not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where...Read more of this...

The Rolling English Road

by G K Chesterton
 Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy...Read more of this...

How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix

by Robert Browning
 I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by...Read more of this...

Come-by-Chance

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary -- 
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact -- 
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population 
Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act. 
And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee, 
And the...Read more of this...

Face Lift

by Sylvia Plath
 You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as...Read more of this...

St. Winefreds Well

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 ACT I. SC. I

Enter Teryth from riding, Winefred following.

T. WHAT is it, Gwen, my girl? why do you hover and haunt me? 

W. You came by Caerwys, sir? 
T. I came by Caerwys. 
W. There
Some messenger there might have met you from my uncle. 
T. Your uncle met the messenger—met me; and this the message:
Lord Beuno comes to-night. 
W....Read more of this...

Wallace Stevens On His Way To Work

by David Wagoner
 He would leave early and walk slowly
 As if balancing books
 On the way to school, already expecting
To be tardy once again and heavy
 With numbers, the unfashionably rounded
 Toes of his shoes invisible beyond
The slope of his corporation. He would pause
 At his favorite fundamentally sound
 Park bench, which had been the birthplace
Of paeans and ruminations on other...Read more of this...

Eddis Service

by Rudyard Kipling
 Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
 In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
 For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
 And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
 Though Eddi rang the bell.

"'Wicked weather for walking,"
 Said Eddi of Manhood End.
"But I must go on with the service
 For such as care...Read more of this...

Exiles

by Constantine P Cavafy
 It goes on being Alexandria still. Just walk a bit
along the straight road that ends at the Hippodrome
and you'll see palaces and monuments that will amaze you.
Whatever war-damage it's suffered,
however much smaller it's become,
it's still a wonderful city.
And then, what with excursions and books
and various kinds of study, time does go by.
In the evenings we meet on the sea...Read more of this...

A Tree Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 (A. D. 1200)
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
 Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
 Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,
 (All of a Midsummer morn!)
Surely we sing no little thing,
 In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!


Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
 Or ever AEneas began.
Ash...Read more of this...

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