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Famous Nearly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...o late; 
Everything's too late after the first seven years. 

The long street we lived in 
Was duller than a drain 
And nearly as dingy. 
There were the big College 
And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall. 
There were the sordid provincial shops -- 
The grocer's, and the shops for women, 
The shop where I bought transfers, 
And the piano and gramaphone shop 
Where I used to stand 
Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures 
Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone. 

How d...Read more of this...
by Aldington, Richard



...e darkening boughs,
Lies a deep hollow, from whose ragged brows
Bushes and trees do lean all round athwart,
And meet so nearly, that with wings outraught,
And spreaded tail, a vulture could not glide
Past them, but he must brush on every side.
Some moulder'd steps lead into this cool cell,
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward, through the bushes, to the sky.
Oft have I brought thee flowers, on their stalks set
Like vestal...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...e evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning....Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead *******, cows and chicken ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...dy, chanting and praying
In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed
In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician

For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin
In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes
Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer

Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition
He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man's face.
Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture

And said, "Arise and breathe!" And still the body
Lay as b...Read more of this...
by Pinsky, Robert



...e them." Here he lent 
 A hand to draw me through the gate, and bent 
 A glance upon my fear so confident 
 That I, too nearly to my former dread 
 Returned, through all my heart was comforted, 
 And downward to the secret things we went. 

 Downward to night, but not of moon and cloud, 
 Not night with all its stars, as night we know, 
 But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe 
 The darkness closed us. 
 Sighs, and wailings loud, 
 Outcries perpetual of recruited pain, 
 Sou...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...uth his fatherland; 
But from the hour he waved his parting hand 
Each trace wax'd fainter of his course, till all 
Had nearly ceased his memory to recall. 
His sire was dust, his vassals could declare, 
'Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there; 
Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew 
Cold in the many, anxious in the few. 
His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name, 
His portrait darkens in its fading frame, 
Another chief consoled his destined bride, 
The young fo...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...o any change from hot to cold, from wet 
To dry, from poor to rich, or back again.
I make a virtue of my suffering
From nearly everything that goes on round me.
In other words, I know wherever I am,
Being the creature of literature I am, 
1 sball not lack for pain to keep me awake.
Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:
"Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it."
Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,
No less than England, France, and Italy. 
Because I wrote my novels in Ne...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...smiling, to his only Son thus said. 
Son, thou in whom my glory I behold 
In full resplendence, Heir of all my might, 
Nearly it now concerns us to be sure 
Of our Omnipotence, and with what arms 
We mean to hold what anciently we claim 
Of deity or empire: Such a foe 
Is rising, who intends to erect his throne 
Equal to ours, throughout the spacious north; 
Nor so content, hath in his thought to try 
In battle, what our power is, or our right. 
Let us advise, and to this ha...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine wh...Read more of this...
by Berman, David
...and this — no more than this; 
For, Allah! Sure thy lips are flame: 
What fever in thy veins is flushing? 
My own have nearly caught the same, 
At least I feel my cheek too blushing. 
To soothe thy sickness, watch thy health, 
Partake, but never waste thy wealth, 
Or stand with smiles unmurmuring by, 
And lighten half thy poverty; 
Do all but close thy dying eye, 
For that I could not live to try; 
To these alone my thoughts aspire: 
More can I do? or thou require? 
But, Sel...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...open the house door, with kerchief flapping
She stood and gazed along the street. A man
Flung back the garden-gate and nearly ran
Her down as she stood in the door. "Why, Dear,
What in the name of patience brings you here?
Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin
I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light.
This clasp is very much too worn and thin.
I'll take the other fiddle out to-night
If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite
Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case w...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy
...e chase might fail,
 And the Beaver, excited at last,
Went bounding along on the tip of its tail,
 For the daylight was nearly past.

"There is Thingumbob shouting!" the Bellman said,
 "He is shouting like mad, only hark!
He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,
 He has certainly found a Snark!"

They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed
 "He was always a desperate wag!"
They beheld him--their Baker--their hero unnamed--
 On the top of a neighbouring crag,

Er...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...reary, 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 wishe...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly said:
"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,"
but the ***** look through me like I was dead.
A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on.
The driver size up my bags with a grin:
"This time, Shabine, like you really gone!"
I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in
the back seat and watch the sky burn
above Laventille pink as the gown
in whi...Read more of this...
by Walcott, Derek
...rays.Galen was near, of Pergamus the boast,Whose skill retrieved the art so nearly lost.Then Anaxarchus came, who conquer'd pain;And he, whom pleasures strove to lure in vainFrom duty's path. And first in mournful moodThe mighty soul of Archimedes stood;And sage Democritus I there beheld,Whose daring ha...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco
...help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...r even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
 and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before 
 and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky 
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish 
I hear voice...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...n me 
Already. Don't tell me that was dream! When you came in, 
Staring round in your stripey coat and brocade 
Vest, I nearly died! I fainted, I was flame! I recognized
The you I'd always listened to alone, when I wrote
Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm.
*
"Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent
Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you
My guardian angel? Or is this arrant
Seeming, hallucination, thrown 
Up by that fly engineering a novel does
S...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry