Famous Guests Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Guests poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous guests poems. These examples illustrate what a famous guests poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Burns
HIS face with smile eternal drest,
Just like the Landlord’s to his Guest’s,
High as they hang with creaking din,
To index out the Country Inn.
He looked just as your sign-post Lions do,
With aspect fierce, and quite as harmless too.
——————A head, pure, sinless quite of brain and soul,
The very image of a barber’s Poll;
It shews a human face, and wears a wig,
And...Read more of this...
by
Vernon Scannell
Unlovely city, to which few tourists come
With squinting cameras and alien hats;
Left under a cloud by those who love the sun
And can afford to marry – a cloud of bits
Of soot more myriad than gnats, a cloud
Of smoke and rain, an insubstantial threat
Whose colour is the pigment of long wrath,
I think of you, surprised to find my blood
Warmed by...Read more of this...
by
Jane Austen
When stretch'd on one's bed
With a fierce-throbbing head,
Which preculdes alike thought or repose,
How little one cares
For the grandest affairs
That may busy the world as it goes!
How little one feels
For the waltzes and reels
Of our Dance-loving friends at a Ball!
How slight one's concern
To conjecture or learn
What their flounces or hearts...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MANY a guest I'd see to-day,
Met to taste my dishes!
Food in plenty is prepar'd,
Birds, and game, and fishes.
Invitations all have had,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Pretty girls I hope to see,
Dear and guileless misses,
Ignorant how sweet it is
Giving tender kisses.
Invitations all have had,
All proposed attending.
Johnny, go and look around!
Are they hither wending?
Women also I expect,
Loving...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
To the guests that must go bid
God's speed and brush away all traces
of their steps.
Take to your bosom with a smile
what is easy and simple and near.
To-day is the festival of phantoms
that know not when they die.
Let your laughter be but a meaning-
less mirth like twinkles of light on
the ripples.
Let your life lightly dance on the
edges of Time like...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
COME let us plant the apple-tree.
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots and there
Sift the dark mould with kindly care 5
And press it o'er them tenderly
As round the sleeping infant's feet
We softly fold the cradle sheet;
So plant we the apple-tree....Read more of this...
by
William Browne
STEER, hither steer your winged pines,
All beaten mariners!
Here lie Love's undiscover'd mines,
A prey to passengers--
Perfumes far sweeter than the best
Which make the Phoenix' urn and nest.
Fear not your ships,
Nor any to oppose you save our lips;
But come on shore,
Where no joy dies till Love hath gotten more.
For swelling waves our panting breasts,
Where never storms arise,
Exchange, and be awhile our...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful Nokomis,
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines,
When her rival the rejected,
Full of jealousy and hatred,
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
Cut...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Vogelweid the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Wurtzburg's minster towers.
And he gave the monks his treasures,
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;
Saying, "From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn't know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
After so long an absence
At last we meet agin:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
Or does it give us pain?
The tree of life has been shaken,
And but few of us linger now,
Like the prophets two or three berries
In the top of the uppermost bough.
We cordially greet each other
In the old, familiar...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
"What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"
Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh,...Read more of this...
by
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
amidst swirling wine
and flickers of silver guests quote
Dante, Brecht, Kant and each other.
I wait in the hall after not
powdering my nose, trying to re-
compose that woman who’ll
graciously take her place
at the table and won’t tell her hosts:
I looked into your bedroom
and closets, smelled your
“Obsession” and “Brut,” sat...Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more.
Whether at dusk or daybreak
Or at blinding noon, a retinue
Of shadows that no door
Excludes.--One like a kind of scrawl,
Hands scrawled trembling and blue,
A harelipped and hunchbacked dwarf
With a smile like a grapefruit rind,
Who jabbers the way I do
When the brain is empty and tired
And the guests no longer...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!
Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air,
God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair!
The bride,...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Was it a dreame, or did I see it playne,
a goodly table of pure yvory:
all spred with iuncats, fit to entertayne,
the greatest Prince with pompous roialty.
Mongst which there in a siluer dish did ly,
twoo golden apples of vnualewd price:
far passing those which Hercules came by,
or those which Atalanta did entice.
Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice,
That many sought yet...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Climbing the heights of Berkeley
Nightly I watch the West.
There lies new San Francisco,
Sea-maid in purple dressed,
Wearing a dancer's girdle
All to inflame desire:
Scorning her days of sackcloth,
Scorning her cleansing fire.
See, like a burning city
Sets now the red sun's dome.
See, mystic firebrands sparkle
There on each store and home.
See how...Read more of this...
by
Maggie Estep
My first job was when I was about 15. I had met
a girl named Hope who became my best friend. Hope and I were flunking math
class so we became speed freaks. This honed our algebra skills and we quickly
became whiz kids. For about 5 minutes. Then, our brains started to fry
and we were just teenage speed freaks.
Then, we decided...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Unto my Books -- so good to turn --
Far ends of tired Days --
It half endears the Abstinence --
And Pain -- is missed -- in Praise --
As Flavors -- cheer Retarded Guests
With Banquettings to be --
So Spices -- stimulate the time
Till my small Library --
It may be Wilderness -- without --
Far feet of failing Men --
But Holiday -- excludes...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
III. — TO SIR ROBERT WROTH. Art ta'en with neither's vice nor sport : That at great times, art no ambitious guest Of sheriff 's dinner, or mayor's feast. Nor com'st to view the better cloth of state, The richer hangings, or crown-plate ; Nor throng'st (when masquing is) to have a sight There wasted, some not...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
How the handsome Yenadizze
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding;
How the gentle Chibiabos,
He the sweetest of musicians,
Sang his songs of love and longing;
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
Told his tales of strange adventure,
That the feast might be more joyous,
That the time might pass more gayly,
And...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,
certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed
like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.
To some of us, the dejected...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Oh, banquet not in those shining bowers,
Where Youth resorts, but come to me,
For mine's a garden of faded flowers,
More fit for sorrow, for age, and thee.
And there we shall have our feast of tears,
And many a cup in silence pour;
Our guests, the shades of former years,
Our toasts, to lips that bloom no...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.
The fields fall...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.
I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.
As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler...Read more of this...
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