Famous Keeping Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Keeping poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous keeping poems. These examples illustrate what a famous keeping poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
No more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite
The shifting and the many-shaded.
The grace, divine, definitive,
Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
name meaning thread weaver or duck
(these may be guesses from obscurity)
ten-year faithful wife whilst her husband
was gallivanting round the islands
deceiving the suitors by her shroud-unpicking
or maybe not such a savoury dame having
a high time with those after her favours
allegedly allowing hermes up her skirts
and becoming the mother of pan
or even (when odysseus was killed)
getting married to her...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Aug. 13. 1653.
Lord in thine anger do not reprehend me
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me Lord for I am much deject
Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,
For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,
Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore
And thou O Lord how long? turn Lord, restore
My soul, O save me for...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
I wish I had not got a cold,
The wind is big and wild,
I wish that I was very old,
Not just a little child.
Somehow the day is very long
Just keeping here, alone;
I do not like the big wind's song,
He's growling for a bone
He's like an awful dog we had
Who used to creep around
And snatch at things--he was so bad,
With just...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Let another cross his way-
She's the one will do the weeping!
Little need I fear he'll stray
Since I have his heart in keeping-
Let another hail him dear-
Little chance that he'll forget me!
Only need I curse and fear
Her he loved before he met me....Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
from an officer's diary during the last war
I
The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids.
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands:
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea,
Yesterday's napkins, and an opened letter.
"Your asthma's bad, old man." He doesn't answer,
And turns to the grey windows and the...Read more of this...
by
Mark Strand
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole....Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !
II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
The murkiness of the local garage is not so dense
that you cannot make out the calendar of pinup
drawings on the wall above a bench of tools.
Your ears are ringing with the sound of
the mechanic hammering on your exhaust pipe,
and as you look closer you notice that this month's
is not the one pushing the lawn mower, wearing
a straw hat and...Read more of this...
by
Eavan Boland
Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.
Yes I am torching
ber curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch in my self denials.
How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers
till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.
I vomited
her hungers.
Now the ***** is burning.
I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.
Thin as a...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
I didn't make you know how glad I was
To have you come and camp here on our land.
I promised myself to get down some day
And see the way you lived, but I don't know!
With a houseful of hungry men to feed
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me
I can't express my feelings any...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the province of Ontario.
But here I am leaning on the rusted railing
looking at the water below,
which is flat...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;
I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.
And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped
I would not stop
All practice, like so many wives who let their
music drop.
So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each day
To keeping vocal chords...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
All the hills and vales along
Earth is bursting into song,
And the singers are the chaps
Who are going to die perhaps.
O sing, marching men,
Till the valleys ring again.
Give your gladness to earth's keeping,
So be glad, when you are sleeping.
Cast away regret and rue,
Think what you are marching to.
Little live, great...Read more of this...
by
James Tate
After the burial
we returned to our units
and assumed our poses.
Our posture was the new posture
and not the old sick posture.
When we left our stations
it was just to prove we could,
not a serious departure
or a search for yet another beginning.
We were done with all that.
We were settled in, as they say,...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
When SUPERSTITION rul'd the land
And Priestcraft shackled Reason,
At GODSTOW dwelt a goodly band,
Grey monks they were, and but to say
They were not always giv'n to pray,
Would have been construed Treason.
Yet some did scoff, and some believ'd
That sinners were themselves deceiv'd;
And taking Monks for more than men
They prov'd themselves, nine out of ten,
Mere dupes of these Old Fathers hoary;
But read--and...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
He sang, with oaken stock
His steps from rock to rock
In safety keeping,
“Here Faun is free,
Here Faun is free!”
Today against yon pine,
Forlorn yet still divine,
King Faun leant...Read more of this...
by
Seamus Heaney
The piper coming from far away is you
With a whitewash brush for a sporran
Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair
Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm
Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.
*
The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Sing of the O'Rahilly,
Do not deny his right;
Sing a 'the' before his name;
Allow that he, despite
All those learned historians,
Established it for good;
He wrote out that word himself,
He christened himself with blood.
How goes the weather?
Sing of the O'Rahilly
That had such little sense
He told Pearse and Connolly
He'd gone to great expense
Keeping all the Kerry men
Out of that crazy fight;
That he...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore:
Yet, having once begun to try,
Dares not desert his quest,
But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
On one small hut against the sky
Wherein he hopes to rest:
Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
With...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Because there was no other place
to flee to,
I came back to the scene of the disordered senses,
came back last night at midnight,
arriving in the thick June night
without luggage or defenses,
giving up my car keys and my cash,
keeping only a pack of Salem cigarettes
the way a child holds on to a toy.
I signed myself in where a stranger
puts the inked-in...Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
GATHER the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.
And then …
Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say good-by....Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
A lot of us were on the bark:
Some framed a sail for windy weather,
The others strongly and together
Moved oars. In silence sunk,
Keeping a rudder, strong and clever,
The skipper drove the heavy skiff;
And I -- with careless belief --
I sang for sailors... . But the stiff
Whirl smashed at once the waters' favor...
All dead -- the captain and his guard! --
But...Read more of this...
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