Famous Make Sense Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Sense Of Something Coming

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am...Read more of this...

If you have sense, true senselessness attain,

by Omar Khayyam
If you have sense, true senselessness attain,
And the Etern Cupbearer's goblet drain,
If not, true senselessness is not for you,
Not every fool true senselessness can gain!...Read more of this...

Happy Dust

by Aleister Crowley
 For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter,...Read more of this...

Sense of love

by Ehsan Sehgal
"The world of love is so strange, where is capability to reach, there is no sense of love and where is no capability to get, there is deep sense of love."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

The Dance At The Phoenix

by Thomas Hardy
 To Jenny came a gentle youth 
 From inland leazes lone; 
His love was fresh as apple-blooth 
 By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone. 
And duly he entreated her 
To be his tender minister, 
 And call him aye her own. 

Fair Jenny's life had hardly been 
 A life of modesty; 
At Casterbridge experience keen 
 Of many loves...Read more of this...

Fragment

by Thomas Hardy
 At last I entered a long dark gallery,
Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

"The sense of waiting here strikes strong;
Everyone's waiting, waiting, it seems to me;
What are you waiting for so long? --
What is to happen?" I said.

"O we are waiting for one called God," said...Read more of this...

81. Song—For a' that

by Robert Burns
 THO’ 1 women’s minds, like winter winds,
 May shift, and turn, an’ a’ that,
The noblest breast adores them maist—
 A consequence I draw that.


Chorus For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
 And twice as meikle’s a’ that;
 The bonie lass that I loe best
 She’ll be my ain for a’ that.


Great love I bear to a’ the fair,
 Their humble...Read more of this...

A Sense of Humor

by Vachel Lindsay
 NO man should stand before the moon 
To make sweet song thereon, 
With dandified importance, 
His sense of humor gone.

Nay, let us don the motley cap, 
The jester's chastened mien, 
If we would woo that looking-glass 
And see what should be seen.

O mirror on fair Heaven's wall, 
We find there what we bring. 
So, let us smile in honest...Read more of this...

Virgule

by Thomas Lux
 What I love about this little leaning mark
is how it divides
without divisiveness. The left
or bottom side prying that choice up or out,
the right or top side pressing down upon
its choice: either/or,
his/her. Sometimes called a slash (too harsh), a slant
(a little dizzy, but the Dickinson association
nice: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--"), solidus (sounding
too much like a Roman...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLVIII. Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni. CONSCIOUS OF HIS FOLLY, HE PRAYS GOD TO TURN HIM TO A BETTER LIFE.  Father of heaven! after the days misspent,After the nights of wild tumultuous thought,In that fierce passion's strong entanglement,One, for my peace too lovely fair, had wrought;Vouchsafe that, by...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

Some Things Don't Make Any Sense at All

by Judith Viorst
My mom says I'm her sugarplum.My mom says I'm her lamb.My mom says I'm completely perfectJust the way I am.My mom says I'm a super-special wonderful terrific little guy.My mom just had another baby.Why?...Read more of this...

Sound And Sense

by Alexander Pope
 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent...Read more of this...

True I drink wine, like every man of sense,

by Omar Khayyam
True I drink wine, like every man of sense,
For I know Allah will not take offence;
Before time was, He knew that I should drink,
And who am I to thwart His prescience?...Read more of this...

The Sense of the Sleight-of-Hand Man

by Wallace Stevens
One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold,
As if someone lived there. Such floods of white
Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind
Threw its contorted strength around the sky.

Could you have said the bluejay suddenly
Would swoop to...Read more of this...

The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape Waddon Vale

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours, 
 As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? 
 Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, 
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, 
 As of angel fallen from grace?" 

II 

- "Her look is but her...Read more of this...

The God Of Common-Sense

by Robert William Service
 My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense:
"Its takes a hair-brush back," said he, "to teach kids common-sense."
And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face.
Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place.
For Dad declared with unction: "Spare the brush and spoil the brat."
The dear old man! What e'er his faults he...Read more of this...

When I have sense of what to sense appears,

by Fernando Pessoa
When I have sense of what to sense appears,

Sense is sense ere 'tis mine or mine in me is.

When I hear, Hearing, ere I do hear, hears.

When I see, before me abstract Seeing sees.

I am part Soul part I in all I touch--

Soul by that part I hold in common with all,

And I the spoiled part, that doth make sense...Read more of this...

Much Madness is divinest Sense

by Emily Dickinson
 Much MADNESS is divinest sense (Author)
To a discerning eye
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T' is the MAJORITY 
In this, as all, prevail
Assent and you are sane
Demur, you're straightway dangerous
And handled with a Chain....Read more of this...

Sense, seeking happiness, bids us pursue

by Omar Khayyam
Sense, seeking happiness, bids us pursue
All present joys, and present griefs eschew;
She says, we are not as the meadow grass,
Which, when they mow it down, springs up anew....Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
   Thou madest Life in man and brute;
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast...Read more of this...

Modern Love XLVIII: Their Sense

by George Meredith
 Their sense is with their senses all mixed in, 
Destroyed by subleties these women are! 
More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar 
Utterly this fair garden we might win. 
Behold! I looked for peace, and thought it near. 
Our inmost hearts had opened, each to each. 
We drank the pure daylight of honest speech. 
Alas I...Read more of this...

Modern Love XXXII: Full Faith I Have

by George Meredith
 Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift 
To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie 
With her fair visage an inverted sky 
Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift, 
Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth 
(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address 
The inner me that thirsts for her no less, 
And has so long been...Read more of this...

A Week Later

by Sharon Olds
 A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted...Read more of this...

The Deepest Sensuality

by D. H. Lawrence
 The profoundest of all sensualities
is the sense of truth
and the next deepest sensual experience
is the sense of justice....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Make Sense poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace