Famous In Concert Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Concert

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 In memory of Dimitri Mitropoulos


The harpist believes there is music
in the skeletons of fish

The French horn player believes
in enormous golden snails

The piano believes in nothing
and grins from ear to ear

Strings are scratching their bellies
openly, enjoying it

Flutes and oboes complain
in dialects of the same tongue

Drumsticks rattle a calfskin
from the sleep of another life

because the supernatural crow
on the podium flaps his...Read more of this...

The Concert

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 No, I will go alone.
I will come back when it's over.
Yes, of course I love you.
No, it will not be long.
Why may you not come with me?—
You are too much my lover.
You would put yourself
Between me and song.

If I go alone,
Quiet and suavely clothed,
My body will die in its chair,
And over my head a flame,
A mind that is twice...Read more of this...

Mary

by Edgar Bowers
 The angel of self-discipline, her guardian
Since she first knew and had to go away
From home that spring to have her child with strangers,
Sustained her, till the vanished boy next door
And her ordeal seemed fiction, and the true
Her mother’s firm insistence she was the mother
And the neighbors’ acquiescence. So she taught school,
Walking a mile each way to ride the street...Read more of this...

The Marionettes Of Distant Masters

by Russell Edson
 A pianist dreams that he's hired by a wrecking company to 
ruin a piano with his fingers . . . 
 On the day of the piano wrecking concert, as he's 
dressing, he notices a butterfly annoying a flower in his window 
box. He wonders if the police should be called. Then he thinks 
maybe the butterfly is just...Read more of this...

Alexander And Zenobia

by Anne Bronte
 Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above. 
It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.

One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.

The...Read more of this...

Musketaquid

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And pitying through my solitary...Read more of this...

Careers

by Robert William Service
 I knew three sisters,--all were sweet;
 Wishful to wed was I,
And wondered which would mostly meet
 The matrimonial tie.
I asked the first what fate would she
 Wish joy of life to bring to her.
She answered: 'I would like to be
 A concert singer.'

I asked the second, for my mind
 Was set on nuptial noosing,
Unto what lot was she inclined
...Read more of this...

Little Pierres Song

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In a humble room in London sat a pretty little boy,
By the bedside of his sick mother her only joy,
Who was called Little Pierre, and who's father was dead;
There he sat poor boy, hungry and crying for bread. 

There he sat humming a little song, which was his own,
But to the world it was entirely unknown,
And as he sang...Read more of this...

Christs Nativity

by Henry Vaughan
 1 Awake, glad heart! get up and sing!
2 It is the birth-day of thy King.
3 Awake! awake!
4 The Sun doth shake
5 Light from his locks, and all the way
6 Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.

7 Awake, awake! hark how th' wood rings;
8 Winds whisper, and the busy springs
9 A concert make;
10 Awake! awake!
11 Man is their high-priest, and should...Read more of this...

Happy As The Day Is Long

by James Tate
 I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXXI. Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita. THINKING ALWAYS OF LAURA, IT PAINS HIM TO REMEMBER WHERE SHE IS LEFT.  Still have I sought a life of solitude;The streams, the fields, the forests know my mind;That I might 'scape the sordid and the blind,Who paths forsake trod by the wise and good:Read more of this...

My Felisberto

by Edward Taylor
 My felisberto is handsomer than your mergotroid,
although, admittedly, your mergotroid may be the wiser of the two. 
Whereas your mergotroid never winces or quails, 
my felisberto is a titan of inconsistencies.
For a night of wit and danger and temptation 
my felisberto would be the obvious choice.
However, at dawn or dusk when serenity is desired 
your mergotroid cannot be ignored.
Merely...Read more of this...

Happy As The Day Is Long

by Edward Taylor
 I take the long walk up the staircase to my secret room.
Today's big news: they found Amelia Earhart's shoe, size 9.
1992: Charlie Christian is bebopping at Minton's in 1941.
Today, the Presidential primaries have failed us once again.
We'll look for our excitement elsewhere, in the last snow
that is falling, in tomorrow's Gospel Concert in Springfield.
It's a good day to be...Read more of this...

Hiawathas photographing ( Part V )

by Lewis Carroll
 Last, the youngest son was taken:
Very rough and thick his hair was,
Very round and red his face was,
Very dusty was his jacket,
Very fidgety his manner.
And his overbearing sisters
Called him names he disapproved of:
Called him Johnny, 'Daddy's Darling,'
Called him Jacky, 'Scrubby School-boy.'
And, so awful was the picture,
In comparison the others
Seemed, to one's bewildered fancy,
To have partially succeeded.


Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all...Read more of this...

Candle Hat

by Billy Collins
 In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing...Read more of this...

Eudaemon

by Alan Seeger
 O happiness, I know not what far seas, 
Blue hills and deep, thy sunny realms surround, 
That thus in Music's wistful harmonies 
And concert of sweet sound 
A rumor steals, from some uncertain shore, 
Of lovely things outworn or gladness yet in store: 


Whether thy beams be pitiful and come, 
Across the sundering of vanished years, 
From childhood and...Read more of this...

An Invitation to Dafnis

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 When such a day, blesst the Arcadian plaine,
Warm without Sun, and shady without rain,
Fann'd by an air, that scarsly bent the flowers,
Or wav'd the woodbines, on the summer bowers,
The Nymphs disorder'd beauty cou'd not fear,
Nor ruffling winds uncurl'd the Shepheards hair,
On the fresh grasse, they trod their measures light,
And a long Evening made, from noon, to night.
Come then my...Read more of this...

Take This Waltz

by Leonard Cohen
 (After Lorca) 

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp...Read more of this...

Poetry And Religion

by Les Murray
 Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier's one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion. 

Full...Read more of this...

Room 5: The Concert Singer

by Robert William Service
 I'm one of these haphazard chaps
Who sit in cafes drinking;
A most improper taste, perhaps,
Yet pleasant, to my thinking.
For, oh, I hate discord and strife;
I'm sadly, weakly human;
And I do think the best of life
Is wine and song and woman.

Now, there's that youngster on my right
Who thinks himself a poet,
And so he toils from morn to night
And vainly hopes to...Read more of this...

Musketaquid

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Because I was content with these poor fields, 
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 
And found a home in haunts which others scorned, 
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
And granted me the freedom of their state, 
And in their secret senate have prevailed 
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, 
Made moon and planets parties...Read more of this...

Give me my cup in hand, and sing a glee

by Omar Khayyam
Give me my cup in hand, and sing a glee
In concert with the bulbul's symphony;
Wine would not gurgle as it leaves the flask,
If drinking mute were right for thee and me!...Read more of this...

Concert Party

by Siegfried Sassoon
 (EGYPTIAN BASE CAMP)


They are gathering round.... 
Out of the twilight; over the grey-blue sand, 
Shoals of low-jargoning men drift inward to the sound— 
The jangle and throb of a piano ... tum-ti-tum... 
Drawn by a lamp, they come 
Out of the glimmering lines of their tents, over the shuffling sand. 

O sing us the songs, the songs of our...Read more of this...

Pleasure

by Charlotte Bronte
 A Short Poem or Else Not Say I

True pleasure breathes not city air, 
Nor in Art's temples dwells, 
In palaces and towers where 
The voice of Grandeur dwells.

No! Seek it where high Nature holds 
Her court 'mid stately groves, 
Where she her majesty unfolds, 
And in fresh beauty moves;

Where thousand birds of sweetest song, 
The wildly rushing storm 
And...Read more of this...

Band Concert

by Carl Sandburg
 BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.

Cowboy rags and ****** rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato...Read more of this...

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