Famous My Musings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Hope

by John Keats
 When by my solitary hearth I sit,
 And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
 And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
 Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
 Where woven boughs shut out...Read more of this...

The Executor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Greedy Heir long waited to fulfill, 
As his Executor, a Kinsman's Will; 
And to himself his Age repeated o'er, 
To his Infirmities still adding more; 
And nicely kept th' Account of the expected Store: 
When Death, at last, to either gave Release, 
Making One's Pains, the Other's Longings cease: 
Who to the Grave must decently convey, 
Ere he...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...

Frost at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCV. Fresco ambroso fiorito e verde colle. HE CONGRATULATES HIS HEART ON ITS REMAINING WITH HER.  O hill with green o'erspread, with groves o'erhung!Where musing now, now trilling her sweet lay,Most like what bards of heavenly spirits say,Sits she by fame through every region sung:My heart, which wisely unto her...Read more of this...

Thanatopsis

by William Cullen Bryant
TO HIM who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms she speaks 
A various language; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty and she glides 5 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When...Read more of this...

This Morning

by Raymond Carver
 This morning was something. A little snow
lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear
blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green,
as far as the eye could see.
Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went
for a walk -- determined not to return
until I took in what Nature had to offer.
I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.
Crossed a...Read more of this...

Remorse

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon  
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even: 
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon  
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. 
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!' 5 
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood: 
Thy...Read more of this...

Epitaphs For Two Players

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. EDWIN BOOTH

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices...Read more of this...

The Dame of Athelhall

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said, 
 "In one brief hour? 
And away with thee from a loveless bed 
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower, 
And be thine own unseparated, 
 And challenge the world's white glower? 

II 

She quickened her feet, and met him where 
 They had predesigned: 
And they clasped, and...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

Unclean

by Brooks Haxton
 I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am 
 like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am 
 as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. 
 Psalm 102

The pelican in scripture is unclean. It pukes dead fish
onto the hatchlings, and it roosts alone, like Satan
on the Tree of Life. Nobody told me. I liked pelicans.
I...Read more of this...

The Dead Heart

by Anne Sexton
 After I wrote this, a friend scrawled on this page, "Yes." 

And I said, merely to myself, "I wish it could be for a 
different seizure--as with Molly Bloom and her ‘and 
yes I said yes I will Yes."

It is not a turtle 
hiding in its little green shell. 
It is not a stone 
to pick up and put...Read more of this...

Personality

by Carl Sandburg
 Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau

YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.
You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only
one thumb.
You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and
win all the world's honors, but when you come back
home the print of the one thumb your mother gave
you...Read more of this...

A Nocturnal Reverie

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined;
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wand'rer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heav'ns' mysterious face;
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving...Read more of this...

To Albert Dürer

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dans les vieilles forêts.") 
 
 {X., April 20, 1837.} 


 Through ancient forests—where like flowing tide 
 The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide, 
 Mounting the column of the alder dark 
 And silv'ring o'er the birch's shining bark— 
 Hast thou not often, Albert Dürer, strayed 
 Pond'ring, awe-stricken—through the half-lit glade, 
 Pallid and...Read more of this...

The Philosopher

by Emily Brontë
 "Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space - sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again? 

"Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity,
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven, these wild desires,
Could all, or half fulfil;
No threathened hell, with quenchless...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXVII. Che fai, alma? che pensi? avrem mai pace? DIALOGUE OF THE POET WITH HIS HEART.  P.        What actions fire thee, and what musings fill?Soul! is it peace, or truce, or war eterne? H.    Our lot I know not, but, as I discern,Her bright eyes favour not our cherish'd ill....Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...

Musings On A Landscape Of Gaspar Poussin

by Robert Southey
 Poussin! most pleasantly thy pictur'd scenes
Beguile the lonely hour; I sit and gaze
With lingering eye, till charmed FANCY makes
The lovely landscape live, and the rapt soul
From the foul haunts of herded humankind
Flies far away with spirit speed, and tastes
The untainted air, that with the lively hue
Of health and happiness illumes the cheek
Of mountain LIBERTY. My willing soul
All eager follows...Read more of this...

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