Famous Heavier Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown 
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He...Read more of this...

Beat! Beat! Drums!

by Walt Whitman
 1
BEAT! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow! 
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force, 
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation; 
Into the school where the scholar is studying; 
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain; 
So fierce you whirr and...Read more of this...

The Forsaken

by Amy Lowell
 Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear 
me! I am very weary. I have come
from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache 
for such
far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my 
thoughts grow confused.
I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you know the cause!

Beautiful Holy Lady, take my...Read more of this...

The Terrific Cyclone of 1893

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1893, and on the 17th and 18th of November,
Which the people of Dundee and elsewhere will long remember,
The terrific cyclone that blew down trees,
And wrecked many vessels on the high seas. 

All along the coast the Storm Fiend did loudly roar,
Whereby many ships were wrecked along the shore,
And many seamen lost their lives,
Which caused...Read more of this...

With A Golden Necklace

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THIS page a chain to bring thee burns,

That, train'd to suppleness of old,
On thy fair neck to nestle, yearns,

In many a hundred little fold.

To please the silly thing consent!

'Tis harmless, and from boldness free;
By day a trifling ornament,

At night 'tis cast aside by thee.

But if the chain they bring thee ever,

Heavier, more fraught with weal or woe,
I'd then, Lisette,...Read more of this...

113. A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton Esq

by Robert Burns
 EXPECT na, sir, in this narration,
A fleechin, fleth’rin Dedication,
To roose you up, an’ ca’ you guid,
An’ sprung o’ great an’ noble bluid,
Because ye’re surnam’d like His Grace—
Perhaps related to the race:
Then, when I’m tir’d-and sae are ye,
Wi’ mony a fulsome, sinfu’ lie,
Set up a face how I stop short,
For fear your modesty be hurt.


 This may do—maun do, sir,...Read more of this...

A Symbol

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 (This fine poem is given by Goethe amongst a 
small collection of what he calls Loge (Lodge), meaning thereby 
Masonic pieces.)

THE mason's trade 
Observe them well,

Resembles life, And 
watch them revealing

With all its strife,-- How 
solemn feeling
Is like the stir made And 
wonderment swell

By man on earth's face. The 
hearts of the brave.

Though weal and woe The 
voice of...Read more of this...

The Hands of the Betrothed

by D. H. Lawrence
 Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness, 
Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty; 
Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress 
Means even less than her many words to me. 

Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only
Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips
Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely 
Fruit...Read more of this...

A Marriage

by R S Thomas
 We met
 under a shower
of bird-notes.
 Fifty years passed,
love's moment
 in a world in
servitude to time.
 She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
 closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
 `Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
 partner for
the last dance, And she,
 who in life
had done everything
 with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
 for the shedding
of one sigh no
...Read more of this...

Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, 
 Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? 
 Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, 
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, 
 Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, 
 Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? 
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,...Read more of this...

Lorelei

by Sylvia Plath
 It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more...Read more of this...

Monolog From A Mattress

by Louis Untermeyer
Can that be you, la mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eye-lid and make sure... Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet—
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull to-day;
I have that—something—heavier on...Read more of this...

144. A Winter Night

by Robert Burns
 WHEN biting Boreas, fell and dour,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phoebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r,
 Far south the lift,
Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r,
 Or whirling drift:


Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,
Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,
While burns, wi’ snawy wreaths up-choked,
 Wild-eddying swirl;
Or, thro’ the mining outlet bocked,
 Down headlong hurl:


List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle,
I...Read more of this...

Snowfall in the Afternoon

by Robert Bly
1

The grass is half-covered with snow.
It was the sort of snowfall that starts in late afternoon 
And now the little houses of the grass are growing dark.

2

If I reached my hands down near the earth 
I could take handfuls of darkness!
A darkness was always there which we never noticed.

3

As the snow grows heavier the cornstalks fade farther away 
And the...Read more of this...

At Castle Wood

by Emily Brontë
 The day is done, the winter sun
Is setting in its sullen sky;
And drear the course that has been run,
And dim the hearts that slowly die.

No star will light my coming night;
No morn of hope for me will shine;
I mourn not heaven would blast my sight,
And I ne'er longed for joys divine.

Through life's hard task I did not ask
Celestial aid,...Read more of this...

The Neighbor

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Strange violin, why do you follow me?
In how many foreign cities did you
speak of your lonely nights and those of mine.
Are you being played by hundreds? Or by one?

Do in all great cities men exist
who tormented and in deep despair
would have sought the river but for you?
And why does your playing always reach me?

Why is it that I am...Read more of this...

To My Wife

by Philip Larkin
 Choice of you shuts up that peacock-fan
The future was, in which temptingly spread
All that elaborative nature can.
Matchless potential! but unlimited
Only so long as I elected nothing;
Simply to choose stopped all ways up but one,
And sent the tease-birds from the bushes flapping.
No future now. I and you now, alone.

So for your face I have exchanged all faces,
For your few properties...Read more of this...

Sonnet X

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 243] SONNET X. Nell' età sua più bella e più fiorita. HE DESIRES TO DIE, THAT HIS SOUL MAY BE WITH HER, AS HIS THOUGHTS ALREADY ARE.  E'en in youth's fairest flower, when Love's dear swayIs wont with strongest power our hearts to bind,Leaving on earth her fleshly veil...Read more of this...

Answers In A Game Of Questions

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE LADY.

IN the small and great world too,

What most charms a woman's heart?
It is doubtless what is new,

For its blossoms joy impart;
Nobler far is what is true,

For fresh blossoms it can shoot

Even in the time of fruit.

THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN.

With the Nymphs in wood and cave

Paris was acquainted well,
Till Zeus sent, to make him rave,

Three of those in Heav'n who...Read more of this...

An Enigma

by Edgar Allan Poe
 "Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce, 
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet. 
Through all the flimsy things we see at once 
As easily as through a Naples bonnet- 
Trash of all trash!- how can a lady don it? 
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff- 
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff 
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you...Read more of this...

Savior! Ive no one else to tell

by Emily Dickinson
 Savior! I've no one else to tell --
And so I trouble thee.
I am the one forgot thee so --
Dost thou remember me?
Nor, for myself, I came so far --
That were the little load --
I brought thee the imperial Heart
I had not strength to hold --
The Heart I carried in my own --
Till mine too heavy grew --
Yet -- strangest...Read more of this...

Regeneration

by Henry Vaughan
 1.

Award, and still in bonds, one day 
I stole abroad, 
It was high-spring, and all the way 
Primros'd, and hung with shade; 
Yet, was it frost within, 
And surly winds 
Blasted my infant buds, and sin 
Like clouds eclips'd my mind.

2.

Storm'd thus; I straight perceiv'd my spring 
Mere stage, and show, 
My walk a monstrous, mountain's thing 
Rough-cast with...Read more of this...

The Cumberland

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
AT anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 
On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war; 
And at times from the fortress across the bay 
The alarum of drums swept past, 
Or a bugle blast 5 
From the camp on the shore. 

Then far away to the south uprose 
A little feather of snow-white smoke, 
And we knew that the iron ship of...Read more of this...

The Star-Apple Kingdom

by Derek Walcott
 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the...Read more of this...

Melancholia

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Silently without my window,
Tapping gently at the pane,
Falls the rain.
Through the trees sighs the breeze
Like a soul in pain.
Here alone I sit and weep;
Thought hath banished sleep.
Wearily I sit and listen
To the water's ceaseless drip.
To my lip
Fate turns up the bitter cup,
Forcing me to sip;
'T is a bitter, bitter drink,
Thus I sit and think,—
Thinking things unknown and awful,
Thoughts on wild,...Read more of this...

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