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Famous Idling Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Rich, Susan
...n you combine known quantities,

bake twelve minutes at a certain heat.

The other rabbis, the scholars,

teenagers idling by the beach,

they receive his offerings,

in the early hours, share his grief.

It’s enough now, they say.

Each day more baked goods to friends,

and friends of friends, even

the neighborhood cops. He can’t stop,

holds on to the rhythmic opening

and closing of the oven,

the timer’s expectant ring.

I was just baking, he says if
...Read more of this...



by Hardy, Thomas
...'s Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought."

"You see that man?" -- "Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do."

"You see that man?" -- "Nay, leave me!" then I plead,
"I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!"

"Good. That man goes to Rome -- to...Read more of this...

by Rich, Susan
...indows,

watch her watch me to decide if I’ll pay.

It’s South Africa, after all, after apartheid;

but we’re still idling here, my car to her curb,

my automatic locks to her inadequate wage....Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old ch...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...Maidenly lake, fathomless lake,
Stay as you were once, overgrown with rushes,
Idling with a reflected cloud, for my sake
Whom your shore no longer touches.

Your girl was always real to me.
Her bones lie in a city by the sea.
Everything occurs too normally.
A unique love simply wears away.

Girl, hey, girl, we repose in an abyss.
The base of a skull, a rib, a pelvis,
Is it you? me? We are more than this.
No...Read more of this...



by Parker, Dorothy
...the little way,
Up and down the little hill.

It is good to love again;
Scan the renovated skies,
Dip and drive the idling pen,
Sweetly tint the paling lies.

Trace the dripping, pierced heart,
Speak the fair, insistent verse,
Vow to God, and slip apart,
Little better, Little worse.

Would we need not know before
How shall end this prettiness;
One of us must love the more,
One of us shall love the less.

Thus it is, and so it goes;
We shall have our day, my de...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ale
Messenger for spicy ale.

 Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--st...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...n: a shop's sign - GARAGE, and then white gates
Where waiting cars wait with the unrest of trembling
Breathing hard and idling, until the slow~descent
Of the red cones of sunset: a dead march: a slow tread and heavy

Of the slowed horses of Apollo
- Until the slowed horses of Apollo go over the horizon 
And all things are parked, slowly or willingly, 
into the customary or at random places....Read more of this...

by Jackson, Helen Hunt
...He lies on his back, the idling smith, 
A lazy, dreaming fellow is he; 
The sky is blue, or the sky is gray, 
He lies on his back the livelong day, 
Not a tool in sight, say what they may, 
A curious sort of smith is he. 

The powers of the air are in league with him; 
The country around believes it well; 
The wondering folk draw spying near; 
Never sight nor sound do they see o...Read more of this...

by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...aurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless h...Read more of this...

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