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Famous Greeting Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...,
And so thoroughly is known
Each others' purpose by his own,
They can parley without meeting,
Need is none of forms of greeting,
They can well communicate
In their innermost estate;
When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.
Not with scarfs or perfumed gloves
Do these celebrate their loves,
Not by jewels, feasts, and savors,
Not by ribbons or by favors,
But by the sun-spark on the sea,
And the cloud-shadow on the lea,
The soothing lapse of morn ...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...urrounding waste.
Of night or loneliness it recks me not;
I fear the dread events that dog them both,
Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person
Of our unowned sister.
 ELD. BRO. I do not, brother,
Infer as if I thought my sister's state
Secure without all doubt or controversy;
Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear
Does arbitrate the event, my nature is
That I incline to hope rather than fear,
And gladly banish squint suspicion.
My sister is not ...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...We in our marvellousness of single knowledge,
Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate
And drawing into his light the greeting fire
Of God,—God known in ecstasy of love
Wedding himself to utterance of himself ...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...an minstrel!"
As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straightway
Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old man
Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, while Basil, enraptured,
Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips,
Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and daughters.
Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the cidevant blacksmith,
All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor;
Much they marvelled to h...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...hich flow?
They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.
Reason's not one that weeps.
What logic of greeting lies
Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss
All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss
The vague blackness of night into pattern and plan,
So,
(But would I could know, but would I could know,)
With your question embroid'ring the dark of the question of...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...y thee, ere the hot sun count
"His dewy rosary on the eglantine."
Lorenzo, courteously as he was wont,
Bow'd a fair greeting to these serpents' whine;
And went in haste, to get in readiness,
With belt, and spur, and bracing huntsman's dress.

XXV.
And as he to the court-yard pass'd along,
Each third step did he pause, and listen'd oft
If he could hear his lady's matin-song,
Or the light whisper of her footstep soft;
And as he thus over his passion hung,
He heard a...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n those empurpled stairs
That climb into the windy halls of heaven
And here he glances on an eye new-born,
And gets for greeting but a wail of pain;
And here he stays upon a freezing orb
That fain would gaze upon him to the last; 
And here upon a yellow eyelid fallen
And closed by those who mourn a friend in vain,
Not thankful that his troubles are no more.
And me, altho' his fire is on my face
Blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell
Whether I mean this day to end myse...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...e,
And you the prognosis,
You in the cough.

Gesturer, when is your spur, your cloud?
You in the airport rituals of greeting and parting.
Indicter, who is your claimant?
Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your
Elected silence, where was your seed?

What is Imagination
But your lost child born to give birth to you?

Dire one. Desired one.
Savior, sentencer--

Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...obeyed; 
Yet chains in Hell, not realms, expect: Mean while 
From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight, 
This greeting on thy impious crest receive. 
So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high, 
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell 
On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight, 
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield, 
Such ruin intercept: Ten paces huge 
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee 
His massy spear upstaid; as if on earth 
Winds...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...t her, faint with fear,
Cowering and trembling as though she some evil
Spirit were seeing. "What means this uncivil
Greeting, Dear Heart?" He saw her 
senses blur.

XLVII
Swaying and catching at the seat, she tried To 
speak, but only gurgled in her throat.
At last, straining to hold herself, she cried To him for pity, 
and her strange words smote
A coldness through him, for she begged Gervase To leave her, 
'twas too much a second time.
Gervase must go, alway...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...better for the roles we have to play.
Therefore I beseech you, withdraw that hand,
Offer it no longer as shield or greeting,
The shield of a greeting, Francesco:
There is room for one bullet in the chamber:
Our looking through the wrong end
Of the telescope as you fall back at a speed
Faster than that of light to flatten ultimately
Among the features of the room, an invitation
Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"
Syndrome, though the "all" tells tersely
Enough how it w...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before; 
...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...
We're neither saints nor Philip Sidneys, 
But mortal men with mortal kidneys."



He took his snuff, and wheezed a greeting, 
And waddled off to mother's meeting; 
I hung my head upon my chest, 
I give old purple parson best. 
For while the Plough tips round the Pole 
The trained mind outs the upright soul, 
As Jesus said the trained mind might, 
Being wiser than the sons of light, 
But trained men's minds are spread so thin 
They let all sorts of darkness in; 
Whate...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...hange
From tenderness, tho' once to meet or part
But on short absence so could sense derange
That tears have graced the greeting of my heart;
They were proud drops and had my leave to fall,
Not on thy pity for my pain to call. 

14
When sometimes in an ancient house where state
From noble ancestry is handed on,
We see but desolation thro' the gate,
And richest heirlooms all to ruin gone;
Because maybe some fancied shame or fear,
Bred of disease or melancholy fate,
Hath dr...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...up hill and down,  And to the wood at length is come,  She spies her friends, she shouts a greeting;  Oh me! it is a merry meeting,  As ever was in Christendom.   The owls have hardly sung their last,  While our four travellers homeward wend;  The owls have hooted all night long,  And with the owls began my song,  And with the owls must end.Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rhuemy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
 greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...death redeeming you;Or, if the flame of passion blazed too high,My greeting changed, with short speech and cold eyeMy sorrow moved you or my terror shook.That these the arts I used, the way I took,Smiles varying scorn as sunshine follows rain,You know, and well have sung in many a deathless strainRead more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...t other women lived among mankind.
Now for the first time after years of meeting,
Never exchanging more than formal greeting,
She spoke to me— that sharp determined way
People will speak when they have things to say.

XLVII 
ROSAMUND: Susan, go home with your offspring. Fly. 
Live in America. SUSAN: Rosamund, why? 
ROSAMUND: Why, my dear girl, haven't you seen
What English country life can mean 
With too small an income to keep the place 
Going? Already I ...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...gel pure and clear. 

In ecstasy my heart is beating, 
Old joys for it anew revive; 
Inspired and God-filled, it is greeting 
The fire, and tears, and love alive....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...re still alive,
And I am nearing seventy-four,
While you have touch'd at seventy-five,
And so I send a birthday line
Of greeting; and my son, who dipt
In some forgotten book of mine
With sallow scraps of manuscript,
And dating many a year ago,
Has hit on this, which you will take,
My Fitz, and welcome, as I know,
Less for its own than for the sake
Of one recalling gracious times,
When, in our younger London days,
You found some merit in my rhymes,
And I more pleasure in your ...Read more of this...

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