Famous Higher Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In the Street

by Henry Lawson
 Where the needle-woman toils 
Through the night with hand and brain, 
Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – 
Till her eyes seem to crawl, 
And her brain seems to creep – 

And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! 
It is there the fire-brand blazes in my blood; and...Read more of this...

Upon a Little Lady Under the Discipline of an Excellent Person

by Anne Killigrew
 I. 
HOw comes the Day orecast ? the Flaming Sun
Darkn'd at Noon, as if his Course were run ? 
He never rose more proud, more glad, more gay, 
Ne're courted Daphne with a brighter Ray ! 
 And now in Clouds he wraps his Head, 
As if not Daphne, but himself were dead ! 
 And all the little...Read more of this...

When The Fox Dies His Skin Counts.*

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 (* The name of a game, known in English as "Jack's 
alight.")

WE young people in the shade

Sat one sultry day;
Cupid came, and "Dies the Fox"

With us sought to play.

Each one of my friends then sat

By his mistress dear;
Cupid, blowing out the torch,

Said: "The taper's here!"

Then we quickly sent around

The expiring brand;
Each one put it hastily

ln his neighbour's hand.

Dorilis then...Read more of this...

To Mr. H. Lawes on His Airs

by John Milton
 Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song 
First taught our English music how to span 
Words with just note and accent, not to scan 
With Midas’ ears, committing short and long, 
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,
With praise enough for Envy to look wan; 
To after age thou shalt be writ the man 
That with smooth air...Read more of this...

In an Old Farmhouse

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Outside the afterlight's lucent rose
Is smiting the hills and brimming the valleys, 
And shadows are stealing across the snows;
From the mystic gloom of the pineland alleys. 
Glamour of mingled night and day 
Over the wide, white world has sway, 
And through their prisoning azure bars, 
Gaze the calm, cold eyes of the early stars. 

But here, in this long,...Read more of this...

Table Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Composed for the merry party already mentioned, 
on the occasion of the departure for France of the hereditary prince, 
who was one of the number, and who is especially alluded to in the 
3rd verse.]

O'ER me--how I cannot say,--

Heav'nly rapture's growing.
Will it help to guide my way

To yon stars all-glowing?
Yet that here I'd sooner be,

To assert I'm able,
Where, with...Read more of this...

To George Sand: A Recognition

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 TRUE genius, but true woman ! dost deny
The woman's nature with a manly scorn
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial ! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn, _
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony
Disproving thy man's name: and while before
The world thou burnest...Read more of this...

Not any higher stands the Grave

by Emily Dickinson
 Not any higher stands the Grave
For Heroes than for Men --
Not any nearer for the Child
Than numb Three Score and Ten --

This latest Leisure equal lulls
The Beggar and his Queen
Propitiate this Democrat
A Summer's Afternoon --...Read more of this...

The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 One, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is; 
Surely this is not that; but that is assuredly this. 

What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under; 
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder. 

Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt; 
We...Read more of this...

The Souls of the Slain

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 The thick lids of Night closed upon me 
 Alone at the Bill 
 Of the Isle by the Race {1} - 
 Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face - 
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me 
 To brood and be still. 

II 

 No wind fanned the flats of the ocean, 
 Or...Read more of this...

A shady friend for torrid days

by Emily Dickinson
A shady friend for torrid days
Is easier to find
Than one of higher temperature
For frigid hour of mind.

The vane a little to the east
Scares muslin souls away;
If broadcloth breasts are firmer
Than those of organdy,

Who is to blame? The weaver?
Ah! the bewildering thread!
The tapestries of paradise!
So notelessly are made!...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCIX. Parrà forse ad alcun, che 'n lodar quella. HE INVITES THOSE TO WHOM HIS PRAISES SEEM EXCESSIVE TO BEHOLD THE OBJECT OF THEM.  Haply my style to some may seem too freeIn praise of her who holds my being's chain,Queen of her sex describing her to reign,Wise, winning, good, fair,...Read more of this...

The Stranger

by Aleksandr Blok
 The restaurants on hot spring evenings
Lie under a dense and savage air.
Foul drafts and hoots from dunken revelers
Contaminate the thoroughfare. 
Above the dusty lanes of suburbia
Above the tedium of bungalows
A pretzel sign begilds a bakery
And children screech fortissimo. 

And every evening beyond the barriers
Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm
Go strolling beside the drainage ditches -- 
A tilted derby and...Read more of this...

Jacob Goodpasture

by Edgar Lee Masters
 When Fort Sumter fell and the war came
I cried out in bitterness of soul:
"O glorious republic now no more!"
When they buried my soldier son
To the call of trumpets and the sound of drums
My heart broke beneath the weight
Of eighty years, and I cried:
"Oh, son who died in a cause unjust!
In the strife of Freedom slain!"
And I crept here under...Read more of this...

The Higher Unity

by G K Chesterton
 The Rev. Isaiah Bunter has disappeared into the interior of the Solomon Islands, and it is feared that he may have been devoured by the natives, as there has been a considerable revival of religious customs among the Polynesians.--A real paragraph from a real Paper; only the names altered.

It was Isaiah Bunter
Who sailed to the world's end,
And spread religion...Read more of this...

The Higher Pantheism

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,-
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He, tho' He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign...Read more of this...

You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop

by Marge Piercy
 You ask why sometimes I say stop
why sometimes I cry no
while I shake with pleasure.
What do I fear, you ask,
why don't I always want to come
and come again to that molten
deep sea center where the nerves
fuse open and the brain
and body shine with a black wordless light
fluorescent and heaving like plankton.

If you turn over the old refuse
of sexual slang,...Read more of this...

My Fathers Hats

by Mark Irwin
 Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
 on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling
 the soft crowns and imagine
I was in a forest, wind hymning
 through pines, where the musky scent
of rain clinging to damp earth was
 his scent I loved, lingering on
bands, leather, and on the inner silk
 crowns where I would...Read more of this...

Sunday

by George Herbert
 O day most calm, most bright 
The fruit of this, the next world's bud, 
Th'endorsement of supreme delight, 
Writ by a friend, and with his blood; 
The couch of time; care's balm and bay: 
The week were dark, but for thy light: 
Thy torch doth show the way. 

The other days and thou 
Make up one man; whose face...Read more of this...

Preparation

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 We must not force events, but rather make
The heart soil ready for their coming, as
The earth spreads carpets for the feet of Spring, 
Or, with the strengthening tonic of the frost, 
Prepares for Winter. Should a July noon
Burst suddenly upon a frozen world
Small joy would follow, even tho' that world
Were longing for the Summer. Should the sting
Of sharp December...Read more of this...

The Temper (II)

by George Herbert
 It cannot be. Where is that mighty joy, 
Which just now took up all my heart? 
Lord, if thou must needs use thy dart, 
Save that, and me; or sin for both destroy.

The grosser world stand to thy word and art; 
But thy diviner world of grace
Thou suddenly dost raise and race, 
And ev'ry day a new Creator art

O...Read more of this...

A Simile

by Matthew Prior
 Dear Thomas, didst thou never pop
Thy head into a tin-man's shop?
There, Thomas, didst thou never see
('Tis but by way of simile)
A squirrel spend his little rage
In jumping round a rolling cage?
The cage, as either side turn'd up,
Striking a ring of bells a-top?--

Mov'd in the orb, pleas'd with the chimes,
The foolish creature thinks he climbs:
But here or there, turn wood...Read more of this...

The Quality of Courage

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Black trees against an orange sky, 
Trees that the wind shook terribly, 
Like a harsh spume along the road, 
Quavering up like withered arms, 
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms 
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below 
The iron ice stung like a goad, 
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet, 
And all the air was bitter sleet. 

And...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

by Thomas Hardy
 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...

Blind Mans Buff

by William Blake
 When silver snow decks Susan's clothes,
And jewel hangs at th' shepherd's nose,
The blushing bank is all my care,
With hearth so red, and walls so fair;
`Heap the sea-coal, come, heap it higher,
The oaken log lay on the fire.'
The well-wash'd stools, a circling row,
With lad and lass, how fair the show!
The merry can of nut-brown ale,
The laughing jest, the love-sick tale,
Till,...Read more of this...

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