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Famous Invitation Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...SIR,Yours this moment I unseal,
 And faith I’m gay and hearty!
To tell the truth and shame the deil,
 I am as fou as Bartie:
But Foorsday, sir, my promise leal,
 Expect me o’ your partie,
If on a beastie I can speel,
 Or hurl in a cartie.
YOURS,ROBERT BURNS.MAUCHLIN, Monday night, 10 o’clock....Read more of this...



by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
Here grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
An Invitation to the Dance.
. . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not wa...Read more of this...

by Blackburn, Thomas
...Holding with shaking hands a letter from some
Official – high up he says in the Ministry,
I note that I am invited to Birmingham,
There pedagogues to address for a decent fee.
'We like to meet,' he goes on, 'men eminent
In the field of letters each year,' and that's well put,
Though I find his words not wholly relevant
To this red-eyed fellow whose mou...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...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...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ntransmissible by print;
They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, 
Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth—I utter and utter, 
I speak not, yet if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you? 
To bear—to better—lacking these, of what avail am I? 

4
Accouche! Accouchez!
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? 
Will you squat and stifle there? 

The earth does not argue, 
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, 
Does not scream, haste, ...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ck and polished very smoothly.
She had sent through all the village 
Messengers with wands of willow, 
As a sign of invitation,
As a token of the feasting;
And the wedding guests assembled, 
Clad in all their richest raiment, 
Robes of fur and belts of wampum, 
Splendid with their paint and plumage, 
Beautiful with beads and tassels.
First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma, 
And the pike, the Maskenozha, 
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis; 
Then on pemican they feasted, 
Pe...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing....Read more of this...

by Taylor, Edward
...igations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitation
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill,
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse,
if you'll pardon my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
d...Read more of this...

by Tate, James
...igations and responsibilities,
and if you would prefer to simply visit with us
from time to time, between patients, our invitation
is nothing if not flexible. And, we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the mentally ill,
depraved, diseased, the purely knavish, you in your bughouse,
if you'll pardon my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
d...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...y hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.

In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an aërial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet ever...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...e
The nipping North, -- where nature's powers smile, --
Where Chesapeake holds frankly forth her hands
Spread wide with invitation to all lands, --
Where now the eager people yearn to find
The organizing hand that fast may bind
Loose straws of aimless aspiration fain
In sheaves of serviceable grain, --
Here, old and new in one,
Through nobler cycles round a richer sun
O'er-rule our modern ways,
O blest Minerva of these larger days!
Call here thy congress of the great, the wis...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...n odours fanned
From their soft wings, and Flora's earliest smells.
Such was the splendour; and the Tempter now
His invitation earnestly renewed:—
 "What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?
These are not fruits forbidden; no interdict
Defends the touching of these viands pure; 
Their taste no knowledge works, at least of evil,
But life preserves, destroys life's enemy,
Hunger, with sweet restorative delight.
All these are Spirits of air, and woods, and springs,
Thy ...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...s, emulating them 
In each disturbing stratagem and each lascivious appeal. 


Each turn a challenge, every pose an invitation to compete, 
Along the maze of whirling feet the grave-eyed little wanton goes, 


And, flaunting all the hue that lies in childish cheeks and nubile waist, 
She passes, charmingly unchaste, illumining ignoble eyes. . . . 


But now the blood from every heart leaps madder through abounding veins 
As first the fascinating strains of...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d for rain and cloudy weather
Waving lines descending from it.

Footprints pointing towards a wigwam
Were a sign of invitation,
Were a sign of guests assembling;
Bloody hands with palms uplifted
Were a symbol of destruction,
Were a hostile sign and symbol.
All these things did Hiawatha
Show unto his wondering people,
And interpreted their meaning,
And he said: "Behold, your grave-posts
Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol,
Go and paint them all with figures;
Each one wit...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...elescope as you fall back at a speed
Faster than that of light to flatten ultimately
Among the features of the room, an invitation
Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"
Syndrome, though the "all" tells tersely
Enough how it wasn't. Its existence
Was real, though troubled, and the ache
Of this waking dream can never drown out
The diagram still sketched on the wind,
Chosen, meant for me and materialized
In the disguising radiance of my room.
We have seen the city; it i...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...br>

14
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night; 
Ya-honk! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation; 
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close; 
I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.) 

The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the
 chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, 
The brood of the turkey-hen, and she with her half-spread ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...-up books, texts in five languages

Or six, the well-thumbed classics worn cassettes

Of Bach, Tippett’s ‘Knot Garden’, invitation

Cards, the total waste, my own and your’s and her’s.

Love does not seem an answer

That you want to know,

The hours, the years of waiting

Gather loss on loss until

My hopes are brief as days

That rush and go like speeding trains

That never stop. You drink, I pay,

You ramble through an odd text-book

And go and eat and drink and tal...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...BEST and brightest come away ¡ª 
Fairer far than this fair day  
Which like thee to those in sorrow 
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 
To the rough year just awake 5 
In its cradle on the brake. 
The brightest hour of unborn Spring 
Through the winter wandering  
Found it seems the halcyon morn 
To hoar February born; 10 
Bending from heaven i...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...e, men are palpable, invisible nearnesses in the dark 
Sending out magnetic vibrations of warning, pitch-dark throbs of invitation. 

But you, pale-faces, 
You are painful, harsh-surfaced pillars that give off nothing except rigidity, 
And I jut against you if I try to move, for you are everywhere, and I am blind, 
Sightless among all your visuality, 
You staring caryatids. 

See if I don't bring you down, and all your high opinion 
And all your ponderous roofed-in er...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
..., ninety if she lives at all,

The memory of a lilac tree, the Anderson shelter hidden by the fence,

And the incomer’s invitation to call again and then and then...



We were wrong from the beginning, you always said, wrong

To be together, wrong to go away or perhaps, as Hobsbaum said,

‘It was the place’s fault. If we’d made it to Haworth as we

Dreamed, standing on the moor top, the heather muffling your tears,

The wind sighing its threnody, crying its c...Read more of this...

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