Famous Impassive Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Impassive poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous impassive poems. These examples illustrate what a famous impassive poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Eavan Boland
Against the enormous rocks of a rough coast
The ocean rams itself in pitched assault
And spastic rage to which there is no halt;
Foam-white brigades collapse; but the huge host
Has infinite reserves; at each attack
The impassive cliffs look down in gray disdain
At scenes of sacrifice, unrelieved pain,
Figured in froth, aquamarine and black.
Something in the blood-chemistry of life,
Unspeakable, impressive, undeterred,
Expresses itself without...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.
Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold,
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching;
But...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
EARTH! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth;
For an athlete is enamour’d of me—and I of him;
But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth,
I dare not...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!
2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!
3
O...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
RECORDERS ages hence!
Come, I will take you down underneath this impassive exterior—I will tell you what to
say
of
me;
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend, the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend, his lover, was fondest,
Who was not proud of his songs, but of the measureless...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Hullo! here’s my platoon, the lot I had last year.
‘The war’ll be over soon.’
‘What ’opes?’
‘No bloody fear!’
Then, ‘Number Seven, ’shun! All present and correct.’
They’re standing in the sun, impassive and erect.
Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
Jordan, who’s out to win a D.C.M. some night;
And Hughes that’s keen on...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
YOU felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cells—you sentenced assassins, chain’d and
hand-cuff’d
with
iron;
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my
ankles
with
iron?
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
OF Public Opinion;
Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!)
Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to himself, What will the people say
at
last?
Of the frivolous Judge—Of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor—Of such as
these,
standing helpless and exposed;
Of the mumbling and screaming priest—(soon, soon deserted;)
Of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I see thee clearer for the Grave
That took thy face between
No Mirror could illumine thee
Like that impassive stone --
I know thee better for the Act
That made thee first unknown
The stature of the empty nest
Attests the Bird that's gone....Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other's eyes. . .
She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand,
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.
'A lovely night,' he says, 'the moon,
Comes up for you and me.
Just like...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were
lacking.
Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of...Read more of this...
by
Louise Gluck
What can I tell you that you don't know
that will make you tremble again?
Forsythia
by the roadside, by
wet rocks, on the embankments
underplanted with hyacinth --
For ten years I was happy.
You were there; in a sence,
you were always with me, the house, the garden
constrantly lit,
not with lights as we have in the sky
but with those emblems of light
which are more powerful,...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other's eyes. . .
She pokes her parasol into the sleepy sand,
Or sifts the lazy whiteness through her hand.
'A lovely night,' he says, 'the moon,
Comes up for...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top
Blood -- blood and torn grass --
Had marked the rise of his agony --
This lone hunter.
The grey-green woods impassive
Had watched the threshing of his limbs.
A canoe with flashing paddle,
A girl with soft searching eyes,
A call: "John!"
. . . . .
Come, arise, hunter!
Can you not hear?
The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top....Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Mother of all the high-strung poets and singers departed,
Mother of all the grass that weaves over their graves the glory of the field,
Mother of all the manifold forms of life, deep-bosomed, patient, impassive,
Silent brooder and nurse of lyrical joys and sorrows!
Out of thee, yea, surely out of the fertile depth below thy breast,
Issued in some strange way, thou lying...Read more of this...
by
Jennifer Reeser
Imagining you’d come to say goodbye,
I made a doll of raffia and string.
I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt
of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye
I stitched thick lashes. Such a touching thing
she was! That even you could not debate –
impassive, undemanding and inert.
Yes, surely she’d cause you yourself to sigh.
Around her breast, I sewed a loden ring
to...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
AN old man bending, I come, among new faces,
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children,
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me;
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Impassive poems.