Famous Internal Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas

...ES: 

In the year 2000, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College
in Poughkeepsie, New York, used external and internal evidence to show
that Clement Clarke Moore could not have been the author of this poem,
but that it was probably the work of Livingston, and that Moore had
written another, and almost forgotten, Christmas piece, "Old
Santeclaus." Foster's analysis of this deception appears in his Author
Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (New York: Henry Holt, 2000)...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo


Allouette

...er hell,
Plunge in deeper darks
Wretches who can slay and sell
Sunny-hearted larks.

You who eat, you are the worst:
By internal pains,
May you ever be accurst
Who pluck these poor remains.
But for you wingèd joy would soar
To heaven from the sod:
In ecstasy a lark would pour
Its gratitude to God....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

For The Last Wolverine

...much
Your unnoticed going will mean:
How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton's internal fire the elk's
Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the "blind swallowing
Thing," with himself, to eat
The world, and not to be driven off it
Until it is gone, even if it takes

Forever. I take you as you are

And make of you what I will,
Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty

Non-survivor.

 Lord, let me die but not die
Out.

Copyright © ...Read more of this...
by Dickey, James

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

...world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.


IV

Time ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

One Train May Hide Another

...Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading 
 A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa M...Read more of this...
by Koch, Kenneth


Paradise Lost: Book 08

...ll on me, called 
By Nature as in aid, and closed mine eyes. 
Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell 
Of fancy, my internal sight; by which, 
Abstract as in a trance, methought I saw, 
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape 
Still glorious before whom awake I stood: 
Who stooping opened my left side, and took 
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm, 
And life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound, 
But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed: 
The rib...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...leared, and ye shall be as Gods, 
Knowing both good and evil, as they know. 
That ye shall be as Gods, since I as Man, 
Internal Man, is but proportion meet; 
I, of brute, human; ye, of human, Gods. 
So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off 
Human, to put on Gods; death to be wished, 
Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring. 
And what are Gods, that Man may not become 
As they, participating God-like food? 
The Gods are first, and that advantage use 
On our belie...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Part 4 of Trout Fishing in America

...so that one would have said that

the cranium was formed by one solitary bone. . . . The

meninges were attached to the internal walls of the cranium

so firmly that while sawing the bone around the interior to

detach the bone from the dura the strength of two robust men

was not sufficient. . . . The cerebrum with cerebellum

weighed about six medical pounds. The kidneys were very

large but healthy and the urinary bladder was relatively

small. "

 On May 2, 1824, the body...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Sky Diving

... to return to earth     It is not tragic    I will spiral   through that Black hole   losing skin limbs   internal organs   searing   my naked soul    Landing   in the next galaxy   with only my essence   embracing myself   as    I dream of you    ...Read more of this...
by Giovanni, Nikki

Stanzas To Augusta

...her ray— 
And hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;

In that deep midnight of the mind,
And that internal strife of heart,
When dreading to be deemed too kind,
The weak despair—the cold depart;

When fortune changed—and love fled far,
And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose, and set not to the last.

Oh, blest be thine unbroken light!
That watched me as a seraph's eye,
And stood between me and the night,
For ever ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Seven Of Pentacles

...off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

The Vision of Judgment

...o bad, 
That hell has nothing better left to do 
Than leave them to themselves: so much more mad 
And evil by their own internal curse, 
Heaven cannot make them better, nor I worse. 

XLII 

'Look to the earth, I said, and say again: 
When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm 
Began in youth's first bloom and flush to reign, 
The world and he both wore a different form, 
And must of earth and all the watery plain 
Of ocean call'd him king: through many a storm 
His...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Wife of Baths Tale

...hant's Tales to be interposed between those of the Man of
Law and the Wife of Bath; but in the Merchant's Tale there is
internal proof that it was told after the jolly Dame's. Several
manuscripts contain verses designed to serve as a connexion;
but they are evidently not Chaucer's, and it is unnecessary to
give them here. Of this Prologue, which may fairly be regarded
as a distinct autobiographical tale, Tyrwhitt says: "The
extraordinary length of it, as well as the vein of p...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

There is no Fatwa in this Land

...terhood
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe.
A place without borders and
without internal wrinkles,
without possibilities for asylum and exile.

There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.

There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe. No one
foresaw the exit fr...Read more of this...
by Kramberger, Taja

Theres a certain Slant of light

...ternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us --
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are --

None may teach it -- Any --
'Tis the Seal Despair --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air --

When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Three Songs For Mayday Morning

...her libellous verse scorching

The academic groves of Leeds in sheets by the thousand,

Mailed through the university's internal post. She called

The VC 'a mouse from the mountain'; Bishop of Durham to-be

David Jenkins a wimp and worse and all in colourful verse

And 'Guntrip's Ghost' went to every VC in England in a

Single day. When she sat on the English lawn Park Honan

Flew paper aeroplanes with messages down and

And when she was in Classics they took away her chair

...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Through those old Grounds of memory

...temperance
A prudent man would shun.
Of liquors that are vended
'Tis easy to beware
But statutes do not meddle
With the internal bar.
Pernicious as the sunset
Permitting to pursue
But impotent to gather,
The tranquil perfidy
Alloys our firmer moments
With that severest gold
Convenient to the longing
But otherwise withheld....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Work

...I caught rumours of some internal hearing
then you appeared with tears squeezing your eyes,
hands scrunched up like a child's, rice paper skin.
That work mates complained was a big surprise
as you were office sunshine, shafted no-one,
and turned your quick mind to the broadest cause.
But there you were, a whisper finished…gone,
scooping reams of data from cabinet drawers,
your kiddi...Read more of this...
by Jones, Chris

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