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Famous Harvard Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...s 28 below.
No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls
to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though, 
have much to mention to you.

At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard
in the dead of winter when we must be sad
and feel by the weather had.
Chrysanthemums crest, far way, in the Emperor's garden
and, whenever we are, we must beg always pardon
Pardon was the word.

Pardon was the only word, in ferocious cold
like Asiatic prisons, where we live
and strive and strive to forgive.
Melted my h...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John



...o cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide,...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...ious.
The S'ciety for Psychical Research
Was cognizant. Her husband was worth millions.
I think he owned some shares in Harvard College.)

New Hampshire used to have at Salem
A company we called the White Corpuscles,
Whose duty was at any hour of night
To rush in sheets and fool's caps where they smelled
A thing the least bit doubtfully perscented
And give someone the Skipper Ireson's Ride.

One each of everything as in a showcase.

More than enough land for a specimen
You'll...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ther used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house ...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne
...In memory of D. W. Prall


The ghosts of James and Peirce in Harvard Yard
At star-pierced midnight, after the chapel bell
(Episcopalian! palian! the ringing soared!)
Stare at me now as if they wish me well.
In the waking dream amid the trees which fall,
Bar and bough of shadow, by my shadow crossed,
They have not slept for long and they know all,
Know time's exhaustion and the spirit's cost.

"We studied the radiant s...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore



...
For neither amnesty nor forgiveness is bestowed upon poets, poetry and poems,
For William James, the lovable genius of Harvard 
spoke the terrifying truth: "Your friends may forget, God
 may forgive you, But the brain cells record 
 your acts for the rest of eternity."
What a terrifying thing to say!
This is the endless doom, without remedy, of poetry.
This is also the joy everlasting of poetry....Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore
...
and she lifted her face to it
and thought it part of the river.
And cars and trucks went by
on Memorial Drive.
And the Harvard students in the brick
hallowed houses studied Sappho in cement rooms.
And this Sappho danced on the grass.
and danced and danced and danced.
It was a death dance.
The Larz Anderson bridge wore its lights
and many cars went by,
and a few students strolling under
their Coop umbrellas.
And a black man who asked this Sappho the time,
the time, as if her ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...ures are important 
Yet not so important; so I stayed, deserving 
A degree from real roses, forgetting 
The Ph.D. at Harvard, which for me was waiting 

Of course it was not about Michelangelo, 
But does it really matter? I saw paintings 
And landscapes, dead lands and lands 
Alive, knowing it's more important 
To feel than to know. I had it all in my head; 
And I stayed where dreaming 
Was more important than competing 

In the land where the women come and go, ...Read more of this...
by Stojanovic, Dejan
...) from which these words are taken,
will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism
in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine's Confessions again. The
collocation
of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
In the first part of Part V three themes ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night, 
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--
...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry