Famous Holding On Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Whoever You are Holding Me now in Hand

by Walt Whitman
 WHOEVER you are, holding me now in hand, 
Without one thing, all will be useless, 
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further, 
I am not what you supposed, but far different. 

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? 

The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive; 
You...Read more of this...

Sounds of Imagination

by Dejan Stojanovic
I imagined I was a mountain 
Then I became a cloud over that mountain 
Lightning and thunder pummeled the mountain 
Pierced the heart of the earth, 
Becoming lava and exploding as a volcano. 

I imagined I was a star 
Light traveling into space 
Then I grew as a tree 
With leaves of galaxies eating the light 
Becoming the angel of...Read more of this...

The Cambaroora Star

by Henry Lawson
 So you're writing for a paper? Well, it's nothing very new 
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw; 
You are young and educated, and a clever chap you are, 
But you'll never run a paper like the CAMBAROORA STAR. 
Though in point of education I am nothing but a dunce, 
I myself -- you mayn't...Read more of this...

An Arundel Tomb

by Philip Larkin
 Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding...Read more of this...

Sea-adventurers' Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("En partant du Golfe d'Otrante.") 
 
 {Bk. XXVIII.} 


 We told thirty when we started 
 From port so taut and fine, 
 But soon our crew were parted, 
 Till now we number nine. 
 
 Tom Robbins, English, tall and straight, 
 Left us at Aetna light; 
 He left us to investigate 
 What made...Read more of this...

For All

by Gary Snyder
For All

 Ah to be alive
 on a mid-September morn
 fording a stream
 barefoot, pants rolled up,
 holding boots, pack on,
 sunshine, ice in the shallows,
 northern rockies.

 Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
 stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
 cold nose dripping
 singing inside
 creek music, heart music,
 smell of sun on gravel.

 I pledge allegiance

...Read more of this...

Morning in the Burned House

by Margaret Atwood
 In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside...Read more of this...

The Revolutionary

by D. H. Lawrence
 Look at them standing there in authority 
The pale-faces, 
As if it could have any effect any more. 

Pale-face authority,
Caryatids, 
Pillars of white bronze standing rigid, lest the skies fall. 

What a job they've got to keep it up. 
Their poor, idealist foreheads naked capitals 
To the entablature of clouded heaven. 

When the skies are going to fall, fall...Read more of this...

Freedom

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 he drank wine all night of the 
28th, and he kept thinking of her: 
the way she walked and talked and loved 
the way she told him things that seemed true 
but were not, and he knew the color of each 
of her dresses 
and her shoes-he knew the stock and curve of 
each heel 
as well as the...Read more of this...

Prayers of Steel

by Carl Sandburg
 LAY me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be...Read more of this...

After Years

by Ted Kooser
 Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and...Read more of this...

The Guardian-Angel

by Robert Browning
 A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step,...Read more of this...

The Gulls

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 I 

Soft is the sky in the mist-kirtled east,
Light is abroad on the sea,
All of the heaven with silver is fleeced, 
Holding the sunrise in fee.
Lo! with a flash and uplifting of wings
Down where the long ripples break,
Cometh a bevy of glad-hearted things, 
'Tis morn, for the gulls are awake. 


II 

Slumberous calm on the ocean and shore 
Comes...Read more of this...

The Player Piano

by Randall Jarrell
 I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
When I told her that I came from Pasadena
She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

I felt that I had met someone from home.
No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common
Like...Read more of this...

Song of the Colours: by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Dear is my inlaid sword; across the Border
   It brought me much reward; dear is my Mistress,
   The jewelled treasure of an amorous hour.
   Dear beyond measure are my dreams and Fancies.

   These I adore; for these I live and labour,
   Holding them more than sword or...Read more of this...

Like Snow

by Robert Graves
 She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,
So that some muttered 'Too much light',
And drew the curtains close.
Like snow, warmer than fingers feared,
And to soil friendly;
Holding the histories of the night
In yet unmelted tracks....Read more of this...

The Legend of Evil

by Rudyard Kipling
 I
This is the sorrowful story
 Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
 Holding their neighbours' tails: --

"Our fathers lived in the forest,
 Foolish people were they,
They went down to the cornland
 To teach the farmers to play.

"Our fathers frisked in the millet,
 Our fathers skipped in the wheat,
Our fathers hung from the branches,
 Our fathers danced in...Read more of this...

The Walrus and the Carpenter

by Lewis Carroll
The sun was shining on the sea,
   Shining with all his might;
He did his very best to make
   The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
   The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
   Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
   After...Read more of this...

Gift Silver Poem

by Odysseus Elytis
Translation from Greek: Marios Dikaiakos

I know that all this is worthless and that the language
I speak doesn't have an alphabet

Since the sun and the waves are a syllabic script
which can be deciphered only in the years of sorrow and exile

And the motherland a fresco with successive overlays
frankish or slavic which, should you try to restore,
you are immediately sent to prison...Read more of this...

The Witchs Life

by Anne Sexton
 When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story
window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming...Read more of this...

Bored

by Margaret Atwood
 All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove,...Read more of this...

Holding On

by Philip Levine
 Green fingers 
holding the hillside, 
mustard whipping in 
the sea winds, one blood-bright 
poppy breathing in 
and out. The odor 
of Spanish earth comes 
up to me, yellowed 
with my own piss. 
 40 miles from Málaga 
half the world away 
from home, I am home and 
nowhere, a man who envies 
grass. 
 Two oxen browse 
yoked together...Read more of this...

A Hillside Thaw

by Robert Frost
 To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them...Read more of this...

Mourning

by Victor Hugo
 ("Charle! ô mon fils!") 
 
 {March, 1871.} 


 Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me? 
 Must all fade, naught endure? 
 Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee, 
 But still for us obscure? 
 
 My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines! 
 Sweet mutual love we've known; 
 For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...

Maktoob

by Alan Seeger
 A shell surprised our post one day 
And killed a comrade at my side. 
My heart was sick to see the way 
He suffered as he died. 

I dug about the place he fell, 
And found, no bigger than my thumb, 
A fragment of the splintered shell 
In warm aluminum. 

I melted it, and made a mould, 
And poured...Read more of this...

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