Famous Hang On Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Hang 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 hang on poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hang on poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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I can wade Grief

by Emily Dickinson
 I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!

Power is only Pain --
Stranded, thro' Discipline,
Till Weights -- will hang --
Give Balm -- to Giants --
And they'll wilt, like Men --
Give...Read more of this...

Escape

by Elinor Wylie
 When foxes eat the last gold grape, 
And the last white antelope is killed, 
I shall stop fighting and escape 
Into a little house I'll build.

But first I'll shrink to fairy size, 
With a whisper no one understands, 
Making blind moons of all your eyes, 
And muddy roads of all your hands.

And you may grope for me in vain...Read more of this...

A Solemn thing within the Soul

by Emily Dickinson
 A Solemn thing within the Soul
To feel itself get ripe --
And golden hang -- while farther up --
The Maker's Ladders stop --
And in the Orchard far below --
You hear a Being -- drop --

A Wonderful -- to feel the Sun
Still toiling at the Cheek
You thought was finished --
Cool of eye, and critical of Work --
He shifts the stem --...Read more of this...

Sonnet 72: O lest the world should task you to recite

by William Shakespeare
 O, lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me that you should love
After my death, dear love, forget me quite;
For you in me can nothing worthy prove—
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceasèd I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart.
O, lest your true...Read more of this...

Brother of All with Generous Hand

by Walt Whitman
 1
BROTHER of all, with generous hand, 
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o’er thy tomb, I and my Soul, 
A thought to launch in memory of thee, 
A burial verse for thee. 

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire? 
—The life thou lived’st we know not, 
But that thou walk’dst...Read more of this...

Polyphony In A Cathedral

by A S J Tessimond
 Music curls
In the stone shells
Of the arches, and rings
Their stone bells.

Music lips
Each cold groove
Of parabolas' laced
Warp and woof,
And lingers round nodes
Of the ribbed roof

Chords open
Their flowers among
The stone flowers; blossom;
Stalkless hang....Read more of this...

Mi Musa Triste (My Sad Muse)

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishVagos preludios. En la noche espléndidaSu voz de perlas una fuente calla,Cuelgan las brisas sus celestes pifanosEn el follaje. Las cabezas pardasDe los búhos acechan.Las flores se abren más, como asombradas.Los cisnes de marfil tienden los cuellosEn las lagunas pálidas.Selene mira del azul. Las frondasTiemblan… y todo! hasta el silencio, calla…Es que ella pasa con su boca tristeY el gran...Read more of this...

he lines hang loose

by Kalidasa
he lines hang loose; the steeds unreined
Dart forward with a will.
Their ears are pricked; their necks are strained;
Their plumes lie straight and still.
They leave the rising dust behind;
They seem to float upon the wind....Read more of this...

A Little Sonnet About Little Things

by Anonymous
The little, smoky vaporsProduce the drops of rain;These little drops commingle,And form the boundless main.Then, drops compose the fountains;And little grains of sandCompose the mighty mountains,That high above us stand.The little atoms, it is said,Compose the solid earth;Such truths will show, if rightly read,What little things are worth.For, as the sea of drops is made,So it is Heaven’s plan,That atoms...Read more of this...

Snake

by John Burnside
 I saw a young snake glide
Out of the mottled shade
And hang, limp on a stone:
A thin mouth, and a tongue
Stayed, in the still air.

It turned; it drew away;
Its shadow bent in half;
It quickened and was gone

I felt my slow blood warm.
I longed to be that thing.
The pure, sensuous form.

And I may be, some time....Read more of this...

Smoke

by Erica Jong
 Can you imagine the air filled with smoke?
It was. The city was vanishing before noon
or was it earlier than that? I can't say because
the light came from nowhere and went nowhere. 
This was years ago, before you were born, before
your parents met in a bus station downtown.
She'd come on Friday after work all the way
from Toledo, and he'd dressed...Read more of this...

The Battle-Field

by William Cullen Bryant
ONCE this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, 
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd, 
And fiery hearts and arm¨¨d hands 
Encountered in the battle-cloud. 

Ah! never shall the land forget 5 
How gushed the life-blood of her brave¡ª 
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet, 
Upon the soil they fought to save. 

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still; 
Alone...Read more of this...

Song of the Moon

by Claude McKay
 The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone. 
Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

There is no magic from your presence here,
Ho, moon, sad moon, tuck up your trailing...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVI: Where Antique Woods

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Where antique woods o'er-hang the mountains's crest,
And mid-day glooms in solemn silence lour;
Philosophy, go seek a lonely bow'r,
And waste life's fervid noon in fancied rest.
Go, where the bird of sorrow weaves her nest,
Cooing, in sadness sweet, through night's dim hour;
Go, cull the dew-drops from each potent flow'r
That med'cines to the cold and reas'ning breast!
Go, where the brook in liquid...Read more of this...

As Watchers hang upon the East

by Emily Dickinson
 As Watchers hang upon the East,
As Beggars revel at a feast
By savory Fancy spread --
As brooks in deserts babble sweet
On ear too far for the delight,
Heaven beguiles the tired.

As that same watcher, when the East
Opens the lid of Amethyst
And lets the morning go --
That Beggar, when an honored Guest,
Those thirsty lips to flagons pressed,
Heaven to us, if true....Read more of this...

States Attorney Fallas

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I, the scourge-wielder, balance-wrecker,
Smiter with whips and swords;
I, hater of the breakers of the law;
I, legalist, inexorable and bitter,
Driving the jury to hang the madman, Barry Holden,
Was made as one dead by light too bright for eyes,
And woke to face a Truth with bloody brow:
Steel forceps fumbled by a doctor's hand
Against my boy's head as he entered life
Made him...Read more of this...

The Maple

by Bob Hicok
 The Maple

is a system of posture for wood. 
A way of not falling down 
for twigs that happens 
to benefit birds. I don't know. 
I'm staring at a tree, 
at yellow leaves 
threshed by wind and want you 
reading this to be staring 
at the same tree. I could 
cut it down and laminate it 
or ask you to...Read more of this...

To hang our head -- ostensibly

by Emily Dickinson
 To hang our head -- ostensibly --
And subsequent, to find
That such was not the posture
Of our immortal mind --

Affords the sly presumption
That in so dense a fuzz --
You -- too -- take Cobweb attitudes
Upon a plane of Gauze!...Read more of this...

Thanksgiving

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure...Read more of this...

The Bankrupt Peace-Maker

by Vachel Lindsay
 I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.
The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.
His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.
He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.
He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.
He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.
Like a black-mailer hating his victim...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

Wont And Done

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I HAVE loved; for the first time with passion I rave!
I then was the servant, but now am the slave;

I then was the servant of 
all:
By this creature so charming I now am fast bound,
To love and love's guerdon she turns all around,

And her my sole mistress 
I call.

l've had faith; for the first time my faith is now...Read more of this...

a reader's de profundis

by Rg Gregory
 in my reading of the moment i have learned
the figure next to christ in da vinci’s last supper
(a painting i have actually seen in a milan church
fragilely restored) is a woman – an honour earned
by mary magdalene who (according to research)
turns out to be christ’s wife – hang on what a whopper

cry those who can’t contemplate centuries of teaching
down...Read more of this...

Sappho - A Monodrama

by Robert Southey
 Argument.

To leap from the promontory of LEUCADIA was believed by the Greeks to be
a remedy for hopeless love, if the self-devoted victim escaped with
life. Artemisia lost her life in the dangerous experiment: and Sappho is
said thus to have perished, in attempting to cure her passion for Phaon.


SAPPHO

(Scene the promontory of Leucadia.)

This is the spot:--'tis here Tradition says
That hopeless Love...Read more of this...

A. E. F

by Carl Sandburg
 THERE will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point absently and...Read more of this...

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