Famous Hold Back Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Hold Back poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous hold back poems. These examples illustrate what a famous hold back poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ause it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no sig...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...nce then
trying to create according to our plan
that we'd bring, against all odds, our full power
to every subject. Hold back nothing
because we were women. Clara, our strength still lies
in the things we used to talk about:
how life and death take one another's hands,
the struggle for truth, our old pledge against guilt.
And now I feel dawn and the coming day.
I love waking in my studio, seeing my pictures
come alive in the light. Sometimes I feel
it is m...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...oly Mother, but you had a son, you know there are times when a
woman
must give all. There is some call to give and hold back
nothing.
I swear I obeyed God then, and this child who lives in me is the
sign.
What am I saying? He is dead, my beautiful, strong man! I
shall never
feel him caress me again. This is the only baby I shall
have.
Oh, Holy Virgin, protect my baby! My little, helpless
baby!
He will look like his father, and he will be as fast a r...Read more of this...
by
Graham, Jorie
...al-form at last,
into its archival many-headed, many-legged colony . . .
Oh look at you.
What is it you hold back? What piece of time is it the list
won't cover? You down there, in the theater of
operations -- you, throat of the world -- so diacritical --
(are we all waiting for the phone to ring?) --
(what will you say? are you home? are you expected soon?) --
oh wanderer back from break, all your attention focused
-- as if the thinking were an oar, this ...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Duncan Campbell
...uestion! -
Something tremendous
Moves to the answer.
Hunger and poverty
Heaped like the ocean
Welters and mutters,
Hold back the sickles!
Millions of children
Born to their mothers' womb,
Starved at the nipple, cry,--
Ours is the harvest!
Millions of women
Learned in the tragical
Secrets of poverty,
Sweated and beaten, cry,--
Hold back the sickles!
Millions of men
With a vestige of manhood,
Wild-eyed and gaunt-throated,
Shout with a leonine
Accent of anger,
Leaves us ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...'Tain't my business to advise,
But ye might ha' known 'twould happen from the way the valley
lies.
Where ye can't hold back the water you must try and save the
sile.
Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd spile!"
They spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees,
And planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees.
And when the spates of Autumn whirl the gravel-beds away
You can see their faithful fragments, iron-hard in i...Read more of this...
by
Graves, Robert
...s?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,
How many the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?
Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the...Read more of this...
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