Famous Napping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Cupid Caught Napping

...Cupid on a summer day,
Wearied by unceasing play,
In a rose heart sleeping lay,
 While, to guard the tricksy fellow,
Close above the fragrant bed
Back and forth a gruff bee sped,
And, to lull the sleepy head,
 Played “Zoom! Zoom!” upon his ‘cello.

Little did the god surmise
That sweet Anna’s cerule eyes
Gazed on him with glad surprise,
 Or that he was in ...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker


In A Eweleaze Near Weatherbury

...cher,
I remain what I was then
In each essential feature
Of the fantasies of men.

Yet I note the little chisel
Of ever-napping Time,
Defacing ghast and grizzel
The blazon of my prime.
When at night he thinks me sleeping,
I feel him boring sly
Within my bones, and heaping
Quaintest pains for by-and-by.

Still, I'd go the world with Beauty,
I would laugh with her and sing,
I would shun divinest duty
To resume her worshipping.
But she'd scorn my brave endeavor,
She would not ba...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

More Later Less The Same

...ying that, and it's still just barely
possible that I didn't, and the clock is running
out on his sort of behavior. I'm napping in a wigwam
as I write this, near Amity Street, which is buried
under fifteen feet of ashes and cinders and rocks.
Moss and a certain herblike creature are beginning to
whisper nearby. I am beside myself, peering down,
senselessly, since, for us, in space, there is
neither above nor below; and thus the expression
"He is being nibbled to death by duck...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

More Later Less The Same

...ying that, and it's still just barely
possible that I didn't, and the clock is running
out on his sort of behavior. I'm napping in a wigwam
as I write this, near Amity Street, which is buried
under fifteen feet of ashes and cinders and rocks.
Moss and a certain herblike creature are beginning to
whisper nearby. I am beside myself, peering down,
senselessly, since, for us, in space, there is
neither above nor below; and thus the expression
"He is being nibbled to death by duck...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

My Mothers Body

...
threw you so you fell with a sharp 
cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. 
My father heard the crash but paid 
no mind, napping after lunch 

yet fifteen hundred miles north 
I heard and dropped a dish. 
Your pain sunk talons in my skull 
and crouched there cawing, heavy 
as a great vessel filled with water, 

oil or blood, till suddenly next day 
the weight lifted and I knew your mind 
had guttered out like the Chanukah 
candles that burn so fast, weeping 
veils of wax down ...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge


Napping at midday

...Napping at midday
I hear the song of rice planters
and feel ashamed of myself....Read more of this...
by Issa, Kobayashi

Salts And Oils

...at Athens, Georgia. We sang
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender.
Napping in an open field near Newport News,
I chewed on grass while the shadows of September
lengthened; in the distance a man hammered
on the roof of a hangar and groaned how he
was out of luck and vittles. Bummed a ride
in from Mitchell Field and had beet borscht
and white bread at 34th and 8th Avenue.
I threw up in the alley behind the YMCA
and slept unti...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

The Raven

...while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the m...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

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