Famous Habits Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Habits poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous habits poems. These examples illustrate what a famous habits poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ezra Pound
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled....Read more of this...
by
Badger Clark
At a roundup on the Gily,
One sweet mornin' long ago,
Ten of us was throwed right freely
By a hawse from Idaho.
And we thought he'd go-a-beggin'
For a man to break his pride
Till, a-hitchin' up one leggin,
Boastful Bill cut...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an Old Person whose habitsInduced him to feed upon Rabbits;When he'd eaten eighteen, he turned perfectly green,Upon which he relinquished those habits. ...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
In Rotterdam I'm
going to speak about
the state of poetry
on a panel with a Pole
and a Turk. It's worth
being alive to utter
that sentence. A
German from Furth,
my father's home town
and Henry Kissinger's,
will preside. His name
is Joachim Sartorius,
which sounds like a
pseudonym Kierkegaard
might use to condemn
the habits of his age
and ours when nothing
ever happens but the
publicity is immediate
and the town meeting
ends with the...Read more of this...
by
Jorge Luis Borges
Oh days devoted to the useless burden
of putting out of mind the biography
of a minor poet of the Southem Hemisphere,
to whom the fates or perhaps the stars have given
a body which will leave behind no child,
and blindness, which is semi-darkness and jail,
and old age, which is the dawn of death,
and fame, which absolutely nobody deserves,
and the practice of weaving...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
Thou’rt up betimes, my little bird,And out this morning early,For still the tender bud is closed,And still the grass is pearly.Why rise so soon, thou little bird,Thy soft, warm nest forsaking?To brave the dull, cold morning sky,While day is scarcely breaking?Ah! thou art wise, thou little bird,For fast the hours are flying;And this young day, but dawning now,Will soon, alas!...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an old person of Shoreham,Whose habits were marked by decorum;He bought an Umbrella, and sate in the cellar,Which pleased all the people of Shoreham. ...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
now, when he stares there, he gets angry:--
something unfulfilled there, something dead
to what he once thought he surely could be--
Now, just the glamour of habits...
Once, instead,
he thought insight would remake him, he'd reach
--what?...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I'm scared of it all, God's truth! so I am;
It's too big and brutal for me.
My nerve's on the raw and I don't give a damn
For all the "hoorah" that I see.
I'm pinned between subway and overhead train,
Where automobillies swoop down:
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again --
I'm scared of the terrible town.
I want to go...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 138] SONNET CVIII. Quanto più desiose l' ali spando. FAR FROM HIS FRIENDS, HE FLIES TO THEM IN THOUGHT. The more my own fond wishes would impelMy steps to you, sweet company of friends!Fortune with their free course the more contends,And elsewhere bids me roam, by snare and...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
You've read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
To understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are same and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better,...Read more of this...
by
Keith Douglas
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I
Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about. There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood -
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
When with the virgin morning thou dost rise,
Crossing thyself come thus to sacrifice;
First wash thy heart in innocence; then bring
Pure hands, pure habits, pure, pure every thing.
Next to the altar humbly kneel, and thence
Give up thy soul in clouds of frankincense.
Thy golden censers fill'd with odours sweet
Shall make thy actions with their ends to meet....Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
This is not the way I am.
Really, I am much taller in person,
the hairline I conceal reaches back
to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife
will not believe in has always been why
I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman.
I've saved his pines, the small acclamations
I used to show my friends. And the billyclub
I keep by my...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXVI. Voglia mi sprona; Amor mi guida e scorge. HE DESCRIBES HIS STATE, SPECIFYING THE DATE OF HIS ATTACHMENT. Passion impels me, Love escorts and leads,Pleasure attracts me, habits old enchain,Hope with its flatteries comforts me again,And, at my harass'd heart, with fond touch pleads.Poor wretch! it trusts her still,...Read more of this...
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,when grief has been made so public, and exposedto the critique of a whole epochthe frailty of our conscience and anguish, of whom shall we speak? For every day they dieamong us, those who were doing us some good,who knew it was never enough buthoped to improve a little by living....Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up...Read more of this...
by
Nikki Giovanni
Life Cyclesshe realized she wasn't one of life's winners when she wasn't sure life to her was some dark dirty secret that like some unwanted child too late for an abortion was to be borne alone she had so many private habits she would masturbate sometimes she...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XXI. I' vo pensando, e nel pensier m' assale. SELF-CONFLICT. Ceaseless I think, and in each wasting thoughtSo strong a pity for myself appears,[Pg 227]That often it has broughtMy harass'd heart to new yet natural tears;Seeing each day my end of life draw nigh,Instant in prayer,...Read more of this...
by
John Matthew
I pause midway in the in the whirl,
Of deadlines, things undone,
And average the sadness and joys -
There remains only loneliness,
Of which I see no cure,
No bitter palliatives, no anodyne.
We remain in life’s journey,
Like loners sitting depressed,
On solitary park benches, or,
Standing in balconies, staring,
Loneliness gnawing at our minds,
As hungry ants at a grain of food.
Often in life’s vicious lanes,
In lonesome...Read more of this...
by
Robert Seymour Bridges
'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...
by
Nikki Giovanni
Habitsi haven't written a poem in so long i may have forgotten how unless writing a poem is like riding a bike or swimming upstream or loving you it may be a habit that once aquired is never lost but you say i'm foolish of course you love me...Read more of this...
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