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Famous However Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thoreau, Henry David
...k, 
And close connecting link 
Tween heaven and earth. 
I only know it is, not how or why, 
My greatest happiness; 
However hard I try, 
Not if I were to die, 
Can I explain. 

I fain would ask my friend how it can be, 
But when the time arrives, 
Then Love is more lovely 
Than anything to me, 
And so I'm dumb. 

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, 
But only thinks and does; 
Though surely out 'twill leak 
Without the help of Greek, 
Or any tongue....Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...
Bring a flashlight, Ms. Dog, 
and look in every corner of the brain 
and ask and ask and ask 
until the kingdom, 
however *****,
will come....Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...e 
 Spake first, "Regard not; for a threat misaimed 
 Falls idle. Fear not to continue past. 
 His power to us, however else it be, 
 Is not to hinder." Then, that bulk inflate 
 Confronting, - "Peace, thou greed! thy lusting rage 
 Consume thee inward! Not thy word we wait 
 The path to open. It is willed on high, - 
 There, where the Angel of the Sword ye know 
 Took ruin upon the proud adultery 
 Of him thou callest as thy prince." 

 Thereat 
 As sails...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...see in vain, 
And once beheld, would ask of him again: 
And those to whom he spake remember'd well, 
And on the words, however light, would dwell. 
None knew nor how, nor why, but he entwined 
Himself perforce around the hearer's mind; 
There he was stamp'd, in liking, or in hate, 
If greeted once; however brief the date 
That friendship, pity, or aversion knew, 
Still there within the inmost thought he grew. 
You could not penetrate his soul, but found 
Despite your...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...d Indians but veritable
Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,
Like those who furnished Adam's sons with wives;
However uninnocent they may have been
In being there so early in our history.
They'd been there then a hundred years or more.
Pity he didn't ask what they were up to
At that date with a wharf already built,
And take their name. They've since told me their name—
Today an honored one in Nottingham.
As for what they were up to more than fishing—...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...by work 
Divine the sovran Architect had framed. 
From hence no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight, 
Star interposed, however small he sees, 
Not unconformed to other shining globes, 
Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowned 
Above all hills. As when by night the glass 
Of Galileo, less assured, observes 
Imagined lands and regions in the moon: 
Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades 
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens 
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in fl...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...y power 
Within me clear; not only to discern 
Things in their causes, but to trace the ways 
Of highest agents, deemed however wise. 
Queen of this universe! do not believe 
Those rigid threats of death: ye shall not die: 
How should you? by the fruit? it gives you life 
To knowledge; by the threatener? look on me, 
Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live, 
And life more perfect have attained than Fate 
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot. 
Shall that be...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed his credulousness,
And that one unctuous mount which lured him, rogue,
To buy strange shares...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...o says of it: "Realism in this portrait
No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . . . 
However its distortion does not create
A feeling of disharmony . . . . The forms retain
A strong measure of ideal beauty," because
Fed by our dreams, so inconsequential until one day
We notice the hole they left. Now their importance
If not their meaning is plain. They were to nourish
A dream which includes them all, as they are
Final...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...lop’d; 
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here! 
However sweet these laid-up stores—however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain
 here; 
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here; 
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a
 little
 while. 

10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...r dress is picturesque; and I have seen the Capitan Pacha more than once wearing it as a kind of incog. Their legs, however, are generally naked. The buskins described in the text as sheathed behind with silver are those of an Arnaut robber, who was my host (he had quitted the profession) at his Pyrgo, near Gastouni in the Morea; they were plated in scales one over the other, like the back of an armadillo. 

(29) The characters on all Turkish scimitars contain som...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before....Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...earnings shall be told complete,
When gentle death shall bid it cease to beat,
And from all dear illusions disenthrall:
However then thou shalt appear to call
My fearful heart, since down at others' feet
It bade me kneel so oft, I'll not retreat
From thee, nor fear before thy feet to fall. 
And I shall say, "Receive this loving heart
Which err'd in sorrow only; and in sin
Took no delight; but being forced apart
From thee, without thee hoping thee to win,
Most prized what ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...pass into the silent life. 
And one hath had the vision face to face, 
And now his chair desires him here in vain, 
However they may crown him otherwhere. 

`"And some among you held, that if the King 
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: 
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard 
That which he rules, and is but as the hind 
To whom a space of land is given to plow. 
Who may not wander from the allotted field 
Before his work be done; but, being done...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...is an obsolete past tense from
"pluck."

2. No more than will Malkin's maidenhead: a proverbial saying;
which, however, had obtained fresh point from the Reeve's
Tale, to which the host doubtless refers.

3. De par dieux jeo asente: "by God, I agree". It is
characteristic that the somewhat pompous Sergeant of Law
should couch his assent in the semi-barbarous French, then
familiar in law procedure.

4. Ceyx and Alcyon: Chaucer treats of these in th...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...that species chaind by the middle, grinning and
snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their
chains: however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then
the weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect,
first coupled with & then devourd, by plucking off first one limb
and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk. this
after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devourd
too; and here & there I saw one savourily p...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph 
Who shines so in the corner; yet I fear, 
If there were many Lilias in the brood, 
However deep you might embower the nest, 
Some boy would spy it.' 
At this upon the sward 
She tapt her tiny silken-sandaled foot: 
'That's your light way; but I would make it death 
For any male thing but to peep at us.' 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed; 
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, 
And sweet as English air could make h...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...e 'Anti-jacobin,' by his present patrons. Hence all this 'skimble-scamble stuff' about 'Satanic,' and so forth. However, it is worthy of him — 'qualis ab incepto.' 

If there is anything obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. He might have written hexameters, as he has written everything else, for aught that the writer cared — had they been upon another subject. But to attempt t...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...one realms of air, knitting the world to the clouds.
Not one zephyr on soaring pinion conveys to my hearing
Echoes, however remote, marking man's pleasures and pains.
Am I in truth, then, alone? Within thine arms, on thy bosom,
Nature, I lie once again!--Ah, and 'twas only a dream
That assailed me with horrors so fearful; with life's dreaded phantom,
And with the down-rushing vale, vanished the gloomy one too.
Purer my life I receive again from thine altar unsulli...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...For ever and ever from my native land; 
That I was now of that unhappy band 
Who lose the old, and cannot gain the new 
However loving and however true 
To their new duties. I could never be 
An English woman, there was that in me 
Puritan, stubborn that would not agree 
To English standards, though I did not see
The truth, because I thought them, good or ill,
So great a people—and I think so still.

But a day came when I was forced to face
Facts. I was taken down...Read more of this...

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