Famous Inner Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Inner poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous inner poems. These examples illustrate what a famous inner poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
W S Merwin
Gray whale
Now that we are sinding you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day
The bewilderment will diminish like...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Inside Ayers Rock is lit
with paired fluorescent lights
on steel pillars supporting the ceiling
of haze-blue marquee cloth
high above the non-slip pavers.
Curving around the cafeteria
throughout vast inner space
is a Milky way of plastic chairs
in foursomes around tables
all the way to the truck drivers' enclave.
Dusted coolabah trees grow to the ceiling,
TVs talk in gassy colours, and
round the walls are Outback shop fronts:
the...Read more of this...
by
Michael Ondaatje
On the warm July river
head back
upside down river
for a roof
slowly paddling
towards an estuary between trees
there's a dog
learning to swim near me
friends on shore
my head
dips
back to the eyebrow
I'm the prow
on an ancient vessel,
this afternoon
I'm going down to Peru
soul between my teeth
a blue heron
with its awkward
broken backed flap
upside down
one of us is wrong
he
his blue grey thud
thinking he knows
the blue way
out of...Read more of this...
by
Carolyn Kizer
He was believed by his peers to be an important poet,
But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden,
Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin.
Over sixty, and a father many times over,
The objects of his attention grew younger and younger:
He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends;
He pressed on them drinks and drugs,
And of course he...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
1842
I
As I ride, as I ride,
With a full heart for my guide,
So its tide rocks my side,
As I ride, as I ride,
That, as I were double-eyed,
He, in whom our Tribes confide,
Is descried, ways untried
As I ride, as I ride.
II
As I ride, as I ride
To our Chief and his Allied,
Who dares chide my heart's pride
As I ride, as I ride?
Or...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Tis true my garments threadbare are,
And sorry poor I seem;
But inly I am richer far
Than any poet's dream.
For I've a hidden life no one
Can ever hope to see;
A sacred sanctuary none
May share with me.
Aloof I stand from out the strife,
Within my heart a song;
By virtue of my inner life
I to myself belong.
Against man-ruling...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift
To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie
With her fair visage an inverted sky
Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift,
Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth
(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address
The inner me that thirsts for her no less,
And has so long been...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Outer -- from the Inner
Derives its Magnitude --
'Tis Duke, or Dwarf, according
As is the Central Mood --
The fine -- unvarying Axis
That regulates the Wheel --
Though Spokes -- spin -- more conspicuous
And fling a dust -- the while.
The Inner -- paints the Outer --
The Brush without the Hand --
Its Picture publishes -- precise --
As is the inner Brand --
On...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Must all of worth be travailled for, and those
Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?
Must years go by in sad uncertainty
Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,
Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows
All inner meanings will reveal, but we
Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be
Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes,
The agonies of splendid dreams,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Creeley
Most explicit--
the sense of trap
as a narrowing
cone one's got
stuck into and
any movement
forward simply
wedges once more--
but where
or quite when,
even with whom,
since now there is no one
quite with you--Quite? Quiet?
English expression: Quait?
Language of singular
impedance? A dance? An
involuntary gesture to
others not there? What's
wrong here? How
reach out to the
other side all
others live on as
now you see the
two doctors, behind
you, in mind's eye,
probe into...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain
In Dalton that would someday make his fortune.
There'd been some Boston people out to see it:
And experts said that deep down in the mountain
The mica sheets were big as plate-glass windows.
He'd like to take me there and show it to me.
"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember
You said you knew the...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
It was the pleasant season yet,
When the stones at cottage doors
Dry quickly, while the roads are wet,
After the silver showers.
The green leaves they looked greener still,
And the thrush, renewing his tune,
Shook a loud note from his gladsome bill
Into the bright blue noon.
Robin Hood's mother looked out, and said
"It were a shame and a sin
For fear of getting a wet...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep,
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep,
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun
Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, "cocky" on Mylora Run.
Jimmy loved the super's daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath.
Long and earnestly he sought her, but he feared...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
with its shoulders gathered in like a Greek chorus,
with its tongue like a king making up rules as he goes,
with its tongue quite openly like a cat lapping...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
when the time comes
yield
to the forces outside you
images simply
of your inner compulsions
when the time comes
invite
your enemies inside you
inversions simply
of your face on the world
when the time comes
die
from the fears that hold you
the action simply
of seceding old skins
when the time comes
arise
that marsh birds greet you
rendering simply
the raw joy-notes of dawn...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Leeds this silent solemn Sunday
Tempest Road is clear of all
But wistful birds, parked cars
And vagrant trees.
The surgery and pharmacy are shuttered tight
"Get your medication straight into your bag",
The friendly GP gravely warned, "The junks
Lay in wait to grab and run from those no longer young
The building site’s scaffolding of bone
Masks pristine piles of bricks where
May winds mourn and moan...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
Entering a cell, penetrating deep
As a flying saucer
To find a new galaxy
Would be an honorable task
For a new scientist interested
More in the inner state of the soul
Than in outer space.
...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(I)
if you can’t scientifically explain it
dawkins says it has no value – some hope
inside the mechanical framework of a guess
(as far as any fact can truly grope)
doubts roam – mere looking can’t attain it
twentieth-century science perceived that mess
the more you probed the inner – more the scope
for chaos (uncertainty) – no mind could drain it
tie it to a marriage...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WITH the glamour of the Gay
How you made our hearts to flame;
Gave each life some airy aim:
Ever round you seemed to play
Sunlight from some inner day.
Dazzling as with red and gold;
Rich with beauty, love and youth—
How were we to know the truth,
That if all the tale were told
Life for you was sad and cold?
For you found if we would...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,
in which you see all Forms intensified.
(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,
would disappear into that vastness.)
Space reaches from us and translates Things:
to become the very essence of a tree,
throw inner space around it, from that space
that lives in you. Encircle it with restraint.
It has no limits. For the first...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
HE bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away,
The life that had been light to him,
So fled her beauty leaving dim
The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows not why.
Love’s immortality so...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Did you ever see an alligator
Come up to the air from the mud,
Staring blindly under the full glare of noon?
Have you seen the stabled horses at night
Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern?
Have you ever walked in darkness
When an unknown door was open before you
And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles
Of...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.
Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .
He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.
To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he...Read more of this...
by
Charles Simic
It isn't the body
That's a stranger.
It's someone else.
We poke the same
Ugly mug
At the world.
When I scratch
He scratches too.
There are women
Who claim to have held him.
A dog
Follows me about.
It might be his.
If I'm quiet, he's quieter.
So I forget him.
Yet, as I bend down
To tie my shoelaces,
He's standing up.
We caste a single shadow.
Whose shadow?
I'd like to say:
"He was un the...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
ONE thing in all things have I seen:
One thought has haunted earth and air:
Clangour and silence both have been
Its palace chambers. Everywhere
I saw the mystic vision flow
And live in men and woods and streams,
Until I could no longer know
The dream of life from my own dreams.
Sometimes it rose like fire in me
Within the depths of my own mind,
And spreading...Read more of this...
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