Famous Instant(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Instant(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous instant(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous instant(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Butler Yeats
King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had outridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire,
And where beech-trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Pour me, O cupbearer! some wine colored like the
flowers of the Judas-tree, pour, O cupbearer! for grief
comes to oppress my soul; pour for me the nectar, for
it is possible that in making me a stranger to myself, it
will free me one instant from the vicissitudes of this
world.
386...Read more of this...
by
Richard Brautigan
Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Oh! blame not the bard, if he fly to the bowers
Where Pleasure lies, carelessly smiling at Fame;
He was born for much more, and in happier hours
His soul might have burn'd with a holier flame.
The string, that now languishes loose o'er the lyre,
Might have bent a proud bow to the warrior's dart;
And the lip, which...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Not a single time has the Wheel of Heaven been propitious
to me, never for one instant has it allowed me
to hear a sweet voice, not a day has it given me a
second of happiness but that very day it has plunged
me into an abyss of grief....Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXI. Cesare, poi che 'l traditor d' Egitto. THE COUNTENANCE DOES NOT ALWAYS TRULY INDICATE THE HEART. When Egypt's traitor Pompey's honour'd headTo Cæsar sent; then, records so relate,To shroud a gladness manifestly great,Some feigned tears the specious monarch shed:And, when misfortune her dark mantle spreadO'er Hannibal, and his...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
From the time since I am, I have not been for an instant
without drunkenness. This night is that of Kidr
and I this night am drunk; my lips are glued to that of
the cup and, leaning my breast against the jar, I have
held the neck of the flask in my hand until day....Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
When all the world would keep a matter hid,
Since Truth is seldom Friend to any crowd,
Men write in Fable, as old AEsop did,
Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
And this they needs must do, or it will fall
Unless they please they are not heard at all.
When desperate Folly daily laboureth
To work confusion upon all we...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past
And all the grey waves flamed to red again
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills;
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
[Concerning O. Henry (Sidney Porter)]
"He could not forget that he was a Sidney."
Is this Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown,
The darling of the glad and gaping town?
This is that dubious hero of the press
Whose slangy tongue and insolent address
Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon
The man with yellow journals round him strewn.
We laughed...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Here we securely live, and eat
The cream of meat;
And keep eternal fires,
By which we sit, and do divine,
As wine
And rage inspires.
If full, we charm; then call upon
Anacreon
To grace the frantic Thyrse:
And having drunk, we raise a shout
Throughout,
To praise his verse.
Then cause we Horace to be read,
Which sung or said,
A goblet, to the brim,
Of lyric wine, both swell'd and crown'd,
Around
We...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The universe is but a point in our poor round of life;
the Djeihoun [Oxus] but a feeble trace of tears and
blood; Hell but a spark of useless worry which we give
ourselves, and Paradise an instant of repose, which here
below we rarely catch....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light
'We think differently at night'
she told me once
lying back languidly
And she would quote Cocteau
'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
...Read more of this...
by
Hermogénes Irisarri
Fair maid! believe me, love is like a lake,
Whose crystal depths reflect thy brow of snow;
The roses on thy cheek that come and go,
When in thy azure eyes the smiles awake,
No passing winds the liquid mirror wake,
The cool refreshing airs so softly blow.
But hidden currents in the depths below
The angry surface in an instant shake.
Gaze then in safety from the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
For each ecstatic instant
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.
For each beloved hour
Sharp pittances of years,
Bitter contested farthings
And coffers heaped with tears....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
***** are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
And in the seaward haze
With moveless hands
And face and gaze,
Then turns to go...
And what does he see when he gazes so?
They say he sees as an instant thing
More clear than today,
A sweet soft scene
That once was in play
By that briny green;
Yes,...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.
'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust --
Ruin is formal -- Devil's work
Consecutive and slow --
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping -- is Crash's law....Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
No news of navies burnt at seas;
No noise of late spawn'd tittyries;
No closet plot or open vent,
That frights men with a Parliament:
No new device or late-found trick,
To read by th' stars the kingdom's sick;
No gin to catch the State, or wring
The free-born nostril of the King,
We send to you; but here a jolly
Verse crown'd with ivy and with holly;
That...Read more of this...
by
Charles Simic
Dismembered angel
In whose heart the earth is still on fire,
The moon still has not been split-off;
Here is the message
Your long night announces:
Everything my eye encompasses this instant:
This fire, the cupped-hand, this window
With trees and miles of snow beyond it,
Even this thought, this poem,
Will be compressed
Into a lump of your sleep
For some other awakening....Read more of this...
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