Famous Interval Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Black Rook In Rainy Weather

...n table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
M...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia


Custer

...smile on fair broad bosomed Sleep
While in her soothing arms, the vanquished cease to weep.



BOOK THIRD.
There is an interval of eight years between Books Second and Third.

I.
As in the long dead days marauding hosts
Of Indians came from far Siberian coasts, 
And drove the peaceful Aztecs from their grounds, 
Despoiled their homes (but left their tell-tale mounds) , 
So has the white man with the Indians done.
Now with their backs against the setting sun
The remnants of a...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Eviradnus

...re. 
 
 Thus very rarely passer-by is seen; 
 But—it might be with twenty years between, 
 Or haply less—at unfixed interval 
 There would a semblance be of festival. 
 A Seneschal and usher would appear, 
 And troops of servants many baskets bear. 
 Then were, in mystery, preparations made, 
 And they departed—for till night none stayed. 
 But 'twixt the branches gazers could descry 
 The blackened hall lit up most brilliantly. 
 None dared approach—and this the ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

History Of The Night

...t.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took...Read more of this...
by Borges, Jorge Luis

I or Someone Like Me

...effortlessly from the brainpan behind his eyes.
But the music continued and the valley of forest floor
became itself an interval in a natural melody
attuned to the wind, embedded in the bass of boughs,
the tenor of branches, the percussion of twigs.

He, or someone like him, laughed at first,
dismissing what had happened as the incandescence
of youthful metabolism, as the slight fermentation
of the last of the wine, or as each excuse of love.
Learning then the constancy of mu...Read more of this...
by Bell, Marvin


Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

...e winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies;
And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood:
They, not it, would change; and soon
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again....Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Mac Flecknoe

...nce,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fogs prevail upon the day:
Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye,
And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty:
Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain,
And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign.
Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee,
Thou last great prophet of tautology:
Even ...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Middle Passage

...most; but for the storm we should 
have been prepared for what befell. 
Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was 
that interval of moonless calm filled only 
with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds, 
then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries 
and they had fallen on us with machete 
and marlinspike. It was as though the very 
air, the night itself were striking us. 
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm, 
we were no match for them. Our men went down 
before the mu...Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

On the Way

...I gave nothing worse 
Than some advice at which he may have smiled. 
I must have given a modicum besides, 
Or the rough interval between those days 
And these would never have made for me my friends,
Or enemies. I should be something somewhere— 
I say not what—but I should not be here 
If he had not been there. Possibly, too, 
You might not—or that Quaker with his cane. 

BURR

Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty
Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it. 

HAMILTO...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Paradise Lost: Book 06

...n shields; 
Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now 
"twixt host and host but narrow space was left, 
A dreadful interval, and front to front 
Presented stood in terrible array 
Of hideous length: Before the cloudy van, 
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined, 
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced, 
Came towering, armed in adamant and gold; 
Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood 
Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds, 
And thus his own undaunte...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Reading Moby-Dick at 30000 Feet

...d my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage

from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,

a little bored, a little old and strange.
I remember, as a dreamy
backyard kind of kid,

tilting up my head to watch
those planes engrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight

they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker

from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back...Read more of this...
by Hoagland, Tony

Storm-Music

...serpents gleam.
Echo the moaning
Of the forest in its sleep 
Like a giant groaning
In the torment of a dream. 

Now an interval of quiet
For a moment holds the air
In the breathless hush
Of a silent prayer. 

Then the sudden rush
Of the rain, and the riot
Of the shrieking, tearing gale 
Breaks loose in the night, 
With a fusillade of hail! 
Hear the forest fight,
With its tossing arms that crack and clash 
In the thunder's cannonade,
While the lightning's forked flash 
Bring...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van

The Emigrants: Book II

...st.
But on this Upland scene, while April comes,
With fragrant airs, to fan my throbbing breast,
Fain would I snatch an interval from Care,
That weighs my wearied spirit down to earth;
Courting, once more, the influence of Hope
(For "Hope" still waits upon the flowery prime)
As here I mark Spring's humid hand unfold
The early leaves that fear capricious winds,
While, even on shelter'd banks, the timid flowers
Give, half reluctantly, their warmer hues
To mingle with the primro...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Makers

...less world and sang the towers 
Of the city into the astonished sky. 

They were the first great listeners, attuned 
To interval, relationship, and scale, 
The first to say above, beneath, beyond, 
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine, 
Who having uttered vanished from the world 
Leaving no memory but the marvelous 
Magical elements, the breathing shapes 
And stops of breath we build our Babels of....Read more of this...
by Nemerov, Howard

The murmuring of Bees has ceased

...tions of the Book
Whose Genesis was June.
Appropriate Creatures to her change
The Typic Mother sends
As Accent fades to interval
With separating Friends
Till what we speculate, has been
And thoughts we will not show
More intimate with us become
Than Persons, that we know....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

This Consciousness that is aware

...iousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men --

How adequate unto itself
Its properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery.

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be --
Attended by a single Hound
Its own identity....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

To Ladies Of A Certain Age

...Yet hold thy hand, restrain thy passion,
Thou cankerworm of reputation;
Bid slander, rage and envy cease,
For one short interval of peace;
Let other's faults and crimes alone,
Survey thyself and view thine own;
Search the dark caverns of thy mind,
Or turn thine eyes and look behind:
For there to meet thy trembling view,
With ghastly form and grisly hue,
And shrivel'd hand, that lifts sublime
The wasting glass and scythe of Time,
A phantom stands: his name is Age;
Ill-nature f...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Tortoise Shout

...of life, and the secret.

So he tups, and screams
Time after time that frail, torn scream
After each jerk, the longish interval,
The tortoise eternity,
Age-long, reptilian persistence,
Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the next spasm.

I remember, when I was a boy,
I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting snake;
I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring;
I remember hearing a wild goo...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Waiting

...eep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once--twice--and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memor of one absent, most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye....Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Written among the Euganean Hills North Italy

...s whose wings rain balm 
On the uplifted soul, and leaves 
Under which the bright sea heaves; 
While each breathless interval 180 
In their whisperings musical 
The inspir¨¨d soul supplies 
With its own deep melodies; 
And the Love which heals all strife 
Circling, like the breath of life, 185 
All things in that sweet abode 
With its own mild brotherhood:¡ª 
They, not it, would change; and soon 
Every sprite beneath the moon 
Would repent its envy vain, 190 
An...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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