Famous Listener Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Listener poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous listener poems. These examples illustrate what a famous listener poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Berryman, John
...d say it will come with pain,
in mystery. I'd rather leave it alone.
I do leave it alone.
And down with the listener.
Now he has become, abrupt, an industry.
Professional-Friends-Of-Robert-Frost all over
gap wide their mouths
while the quirky medium of so many truths
is quiet. Let's be quiet. Let us listen:
—What for, Mr Bones?
—while he begins to have it out with Horace....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...mmering in upon me.
I am ill at their numbers,
sick, sick in the summer heat
and the window above me
is my only listener, my awkward being.
She is a large taker, a soother.
The giver of breath
she murmurs,
exhaling her wide lung like an enormous fish.
Closer and closer
comes the hour of my death
as I rearrange my face, grow back,
grow undeveloped and straight-haired.
All this is death.
In the mind there is a thin alley called death
and ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...o the rocks my dreams a soul should find,
Mine arms should wreathe themselves around the stone,
My griefs should feel a listener in the wind;
My joy--its echo in the caves should be!
Fool, if ye will--Fool, for sweet sympathy!
We are dead groups of matter when we hate;
But when we love we are as gods!--Unto
The gentle fetters yearning, through each state
And shade of being multiform, and through
All countless spirits (save of all the sire)--
Moves, breathes, and blends, the ...Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...ut thou shalt speak for love. Yea, thou shalt teach
The mystery of measured tone,
The Pentecostal speech
That every listener heareth as his own.
For on thy head the cloven tongues of fire,--
Diminished chords that quiver with desire,
And major chords that glow with perfect peace,--
Have fallen from above;
And thou canst give release
In music to the burdened heart of love.
Sound with the 'cellos' pleading, passionate strain
The yearning theme, and let the flute re...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...than they
of what grips and why, I am
moved to prayer, the quaint gestures
which ennoble beyond shame
only the mute listener.
No one hears. A dry wind shifts
dry snow, indifferently;
the roof, rotting beneath drifts,
sighs and holds. Terrified by
sleep, the child strives toward
consciousness and the known pain.
If it were mine by one word
I would not save any man,
myself or the universe
at such cost: reality.
Heir to an ancestral curse
th...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The w...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...f booze on my account?
Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell me what was good for me? Have I been a bum listener?
Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn while I made speeches on the retributions that shadow the heels of the dishonest?
Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always put it in the show windows and the newspapers?...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener, if not from all risk of recognising the melody at all, at least from the too-exciting transports which it might produce in a more concentrated form. The process is termed "setting" by Composers, and any one, that has ever experienced the emotion of being unexpectedly set down in a heap of mortar, will recognise the truthfulness of this happy ph...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...m,
Mine was it to fulfil!"
--"Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!"
Outspake the preacher then,
Unweeting he his listener, who
Looked at the names again.
That he had come and they'd been stayed,
'Twas but the chance of war:
Another chance, and they'd sat here,
And he had lain afar.
Yet saw he something in the lives
Of those who'd ceased to live
That rounded them with majesty
Which living failed to give.
Transcendent triumph in return
No longer lit his br...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...e this day and this place and your spirit that has spoken."
And he answered, Was it I who spoke? Was I not also a listener?
Then he descended the steps of the Temple and all the people followed him. And he reached his ship and stood upon the deck.
And facing the people again, he raised his voice and said:
People of Orphalese, the wind bids me leave you.
Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, b...Read more of this...
by
de la Mare, Walter
...y poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets, -- dar, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near.
And lest some hideous listener tells,
I'll ring my bells.
They're all at war!
Yes, yes, their bodies go
'Neath burning sun and icy star
To chaunted songs of woe,
Dragging cold cannon through a mud
Of rain and blood;
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities.
Hush! . . . I use words
I hardly know the meaning of;
And the mute birds
A...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...r speech there hung
The accents of the mountain tongue,—-
Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear,
The listener held his breath to hear!
XIX.
A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.
And seldom was a snood amid
Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid,
Whose glossy black to shame might bring
The plumage of the raven's wing;
And seldom o'er...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality....Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...It is an old story, the way it happens
sometimes in winter, sometimes not.
The listener falls to sleep,
the doors to the closets of his unhappiness open
and into his room the misfortunes come --
death by daybreak, death by nightfall,
their wooden wings bruising the air,
their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over.
There is a need for surprise endings;
the green field where cows burn like newsprint,
where the farmer sits a...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is....Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...face;
It seemed as though some heavenly, unknown power
Had come to her within that strange, short hour,
To make the listener feel the truth divine
That lingered in her words and true design.
Her rich young voice flowed on and on,
In silvery cadence earnest, clear and strong,
And still he stood with bowed head 'neath the skies
Bound by the fascination of her eyes
And winning voice—and manly thought he stood,
He humbly bowed before that womanhood
Which seemed with c...Read more of this...
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