Famous Meetings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Epitaphs

by Anne Bradstreet
 Her Mother's Epitaph

Here lies
A worthy matron of unspotted life,
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true instructor of her family,
The which she ordered with dexterity,
The public meetings ever did frequent,
And in her closest...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts XXXIX: There Is a Looker-On

by Rabindranath Tagore
 There is a looker-on who sits behind my eyes. I seems he has seen
things in ages and worlds beyond memory's shore, and those
forgotten sights glisten on the grass and shiver on the leaves. He
has seen under new veils the face of the one beloved, in twilight
hours of many a nameless star. Therefore his sky seems to ache with
the pain...Read more of this...

Our Son

by Barry Tebb
 Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth

Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark

In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts

Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s 

Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...

The Rhyme of the Three Greybeards

by Henry Lawson
 He'd been for years in Sydney "a-acting of the goat", 
His name was Joseph Swallow, "the Great Australian Pote", 
In spite of all the stories and sketches that he wrote. 

And so his friends held meetings (Oh, narrow souls were theirs!) 
To advertise their little selves and Joseph's own affairs. 
They got up a collection for Joseph unawares. 

They...Read more of this...

The Iron Wedding Rings

by Henry Lawson
 In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, 
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; 
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, 
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. 

In the days of black oppression, when the best abandoned hope,...Read more of this...

Fareweel ye bughts

by James Thomson
 1. Fareweel, ye bughts, an' all your ewes, 
An' fields whare bIoomin' heather grows; 
Nae mair the sportin' lambs I'll see 
Since my true love's forsaken me. 

CHORUS. 
Nae mair I'll hear wi' pleasure sing 
The cheerfu' lav'rock in the Spring, 
But sad in grief now I maun mourn, 
Far, far frae her, o'er Logan-burn. 

2. Alas! nae mair...Read more of this...

If only out of vanity

by Staceyann Chin
If only out of vanity
I have wondered what kind of woman I will be
when I am well past the summer of my raging youth
Will I still be raising revolutionary flags
and making impassioned speeches
that stir up anger in the hearts of pseudo-liberals
dressed in navy-blue conservative wear

In those years when I am grateful
I still have a good sturdy bladder
that does not leak...Read more of this...

Waring

by Robert Browning
 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...

Dream Song 224: Lonely in his great age

by John Berryman
 Eighty

Lonely in his great age, Henry's old friend
leaned on his burning cane while hís old friend
was hymnéd out of living.
The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow
bowed to them with his thoughts-”it's hard to know them though
for the old man sang no word.

Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let's guess.
Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses
of the...Read more of this...

When First We Faced And Touching Showed

by Philip Larkin
 When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your...Read more of this...

The Three Monuments

by William Butler Yeats
 They hold their public meetings where
Our most renowned patriots stand,
One among the birds of the air,
A stumpier on either hand;
And all the popular statesmen say
That purity built up the State
And after kept it from decay;
And let all base ambition be,
For intellect would make us proud
And pride bring in impurity:
The three old rascals laugh aloud....Read more of this...

America

by Allen Ginsberg
 America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 
 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb. 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. 
America...Read more of this...

The Raft

by Vachel Lindsay
 The whole world on a raft! A King is here,
The record of his grandeur but a smear.
Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
That makes the band upon his whims to wait?
Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled.
Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
That he may preach upon the Spanish main.
What...Read more of this...

Chance Meetings

by Conrad Aiken
In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive, 
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves, 
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices, 
I suddenly face you, 
  
Your dark eyes return for a space from her who is with you, 
They shine into mine with a sunlit desire, 
They say an 'I love...Read more of this...

Three Odes To My Friend

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THESE are the most singular of all the Poems 
of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to 
leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, 
addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, 
and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite 
young. Despite, however,...Read more of this...

On Kileys Run

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The roving breezes come and go 
On Kiley's Run, 
The sleepy river murmurs low, 
And far away one dimly sees 
Beyond the stretch of forest trees -- 
Beyond the foothills dusk and dun -- 
The ranges sleeping in the sun 
On Kiley's Run. 

'Tis many years since first I came 
To Kiley's Run, 
More years than I would care...Read more of this...

The Bush Girl

by Henry Lawson
 So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,” 

Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn--- 

You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect 

That you were glad to be gone; 

You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her 

By the homestead receding from view, 

And you breathed with relief as you rounded...Read more of this...

Meeting

by A S J Tessimond
 Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.

We then, at first encounter, should be silent;
Not court the cortex but the epidermis;
Not work from inside out but outside in;
Discover each other's flesh, its scent and texture;
Familiarize the sinews and the nerve-ends,
The...Read more of this...

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

by James Tate
 The disorganization to which I currently belong
has skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day...Read more of this...

Elliott Hawkins

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I looked like Abraham Lincoln.
I was one of you, Spoon River, in all fellowship,
But standing for the rights of property and for order.
A regular church attendant,
Sometimes appearing in your town meetings to warn you
Against the evils of discontent and envy,
And to denounce those who tried to destroy the Union,
And to point to the peril of the Knights of Labor.
My...Read more of this...

Sestina Otiosa

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Our great work, the Otia Merseiana, 
Edited by learned Mister Sampson, 
And supported by Professor Woodward, 
Is financed by numerous Bogus Meetings
Hastily convened by Kuno Meyer 
To impose upon the Man of Business. 

All in vain! The accomplished Man of Business 
Disapproves of Otia Merseiana, 
Turns his back on Doctor Kuno Meyer; 
Cannot be enticed by Mister Sampson, 
To...Read more of this...

Twenty-First. Night. Monday

by Anna Akhmatova
 Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...
I found this out by...Read more of this...

Fit the Fifth ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Beaver's Lesson 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; 
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan 
For making a separate sally; 
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man, 
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...

The Coastwise Lights

by Rudyard Kipling
 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when...Read more of this...

General Gordon the Hero of Khartoum

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Alas! now o'er the civilised world there hangs a gloom
For brave General Gordon, that was killed in Khartoum,
He was a Christian hero, and a soldier of the Cross,
And to England his death will be a very great loss. 

He was very cool in temper, generous and brave,
The friend of the poor, the sick, and the slave;
And many a poor...Read more of this...

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