Famous Next Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Next Please

by Philip Larkin
 Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with...Read more of this...

Work Gangs

by Carl Sandburg
 BOX cars run by a mile long.
And I wonder what they say to each other
When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack.
 Maybe their chatter goes:
I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line.
I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards.
I came from Detroit heavy with a...Read more of this...

Juliet

by Hilaire Belloc
 How did the party go in Portman Square?
I cannot tell you; Juliet was not there.

And how did Lady Gaster's party go?
Juliet was next me and I do not know....Read more of this...

The Maids Thought

by Robinson Jeffers
 Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something.
The west wind is dead, the waves
Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons
Whole hillsides burst aglow
With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month,
And every pool was rimmed
With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines.
Now tall and slender suddenly
The stalks of purple iris blaze by the brooks,
The pencilled ones...Read more of this...

The Next War

by Robert Graves
 You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father’s hay 
With bows and arrows and wooden spears, 
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers, 
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end? 
Boys, from the first time you prod 
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod, 
From the first time you tear and slash 
Your long-bows from the...Read more of this...

Where Is David the Next King of Israel?

by Vachel Lindsay
 Where is David? . . . O God's people, 
Saul has passed, the good and great. 
Mourn for Saul the first-anointed — 
Head and shoulders o'er the state. 

He was found among the Prophets: 
Judge and monarch, merged in one. 
But the wars of Saul are ended 
And the works of Saul are done. 

Where is David, ruddy shepherd,...Read more of this...

Hiawathas photographing ( Part IV)

by Lewis Carroll
 Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of 'passive beauty-'



Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squinting of the left-eye,
Was a drooping of the right-eye,
Was a smile that went up Sideways
To the corner of the nostrils.


Hiawatha, when she asked him
Took no notice of the question
Looked as if he hadn't heared...Read more of this...

From a Survivor

by Adrienne Rich
 The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days

I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race

Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them

Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special

Your body is as...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXIX. L' aura mia sacra al mio stanco riposo. HE TELLS HER IN SLEEP OF HIS SUFFERINGS, AND, OVERCOME BY HER SYMPATHY, AWAKES.  On my oft-troubled sleep my sacred airSo softly breathes, at last I courage take,To tell her of my past and present ache,Which never in her life my heart...Read more of this...

Next Day

by Randall Jarrell
 Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to...Read more of this...

The Three Bares

by Robert William Service
 Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em clean
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine.
It worked all right. She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd do
With all that bucket load of high explosive residue.
She knew that it was dangerous to scatter it around,
For Grandpa liked to throw his lighted matches...Read more of this...

Two Items

by Carl Sandburg
 STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge … always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them …
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter.
In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and...Read more of this...

Davis Matlock

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Suppose it is nothing but the hive:
That there are drones and workers
And queens, and nothing but storing honey --
(Material things as well as culture and wisdom) --
For the next generation, this generation never living,
Except as it swarms in the sun-light of youth,
Strengthening its wings on what has been gathered,
And tasting, on the way to the hive
From the clover field,...Read more of this...

In the Next Galaxy

by Ruth Stone
In the Next Galaxy 
Things will be different. 
No one will lose their sight, 
their hearing, their gallbladder. 
It will be all Catskills with brand 
new wrap-around verandas. 
The idea of Hitler will not have vibrated yet. 
While back here, 
they are still cleaning out 
pockets of wrinkled 
Nazis hiding in Argentina. 
But in the next galaxy, 
certain planets will...Read more of this...

Song of the Battle Eve

by Thomas Moore
 (Time -- the Ninth Century)


To-morrow, comrade, we 
On the battle-plain must be, 
There to conquer, or both lie low! 
The morning star is up -- 
But there's wine still in the cup, 
And we'll take another quaff, ere we go, boy, go; 
We'll take another quaff, ere we go. 

'Tis true, in manliest eyes 
A passing tear will rise,...Read more of this...

My Groupie

by Charles Bukowski
 I read last Saturday in the
redwoods outside of Santa Cruz
and I was about 3/4's finished
when I heard a long high scream
and a quite attractive 
young girl came running toward me
long gown & divine eyes of fire
and she leaped up on the stage
and screamed: "I WANT YOU!
I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE
ME!"
I told her, "look, get the hell
away from me."
but...Read more of this...

Leeds 2002

by Barry Tebb
 What ghosts haunt

These streets of perpetual night?

Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums

For nouveam riche merchant bankers

Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos

Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton:

Hot tubs, saunas, swim spas, en suite 

Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners.

I knew Len, the tubby taxi man

With his retirement dreams of visiting

The world’s great galleries:

‘Titian, Leonardo, Goya,

I’ve lived all my life...Read more of this...

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going To Bed

by Jonathan Swift
 Corinna, Pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no Shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a batter'd, strolling Toast;
No drunken Rake to pick her up,
No Cellar where on Tick to sup;
Returning at the Midnight Hour;
Four Stories climbing to her Bow'r;
Then, seated on a three-legg'd Chair,
Takes off her artificial Hair: 
Now, picking out a Crystal Eye,
She wipes it clean, and...Read more of this...

Horse Fiddle

by Carl Sandburg
 FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind.
Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on his soft wire legs learning...Read more of this...

Alexanders Feast; Or The Power Of Music

by John Dryden
 'Twas at the royal feast for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son— 
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais by his side
Sate like a blooming eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride:— 
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None...Read more of this...

Hidden

by Constantine P Cavafy
 If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has 
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you....Read more of this...

Lament for the Makers

by William Dunbar
 I THAT in heill was and gladness 
Am trublit now with great sickness 
And feblit with infirmitie:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. 

Our plesance here is all vain glory, 
This fals world is but transitory, 
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee:-- 
 Timor Mortis conturbat me. 

The state of man does change and vary, 
Now sound, now...Read more of this...

Not Every Day Fit For Verse

by Robert Herrick
 'Tis not ev'ry day that I
Fitted am to prophesy:
No, but when the spirit fills
The fantastic pannicles,
Full of fire, then I write
As the Godhead doth indite.
Thus enraged, my lines are hurl'd,
Like the Sibyl's, through the world:
Look how next the holy fire
Either slakes, or doth retire;
So the fancy cools:--till when
That brave spirit comes again....Read more of this...

Next Years Spring

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE bed of flowers

Loosens amain,
The beauteous snowdrops

Droop o'er the plain.
The crocus opens

Its glowing bud,
Like emeralds others,

Others, like blood.
With saucy gesture

Primroses flare,
And roguish violets,

Hidden with care;
And whatsoever

There stirs and strives,
The Spring's contented,

If works and thrives.

'Mongst all the blossoms

That fairest are,
My sweetheart's sweetness

Is sweetest far;
Upon me ever

Her glances light,
My song they waken,

My words make bright,
An ever open

And blooming mind,
In sport, unsullied,

In...Read more of this...

I pray thee to my counsel lend thine ear,

by Omar Khayyam
I pray thee to my counsel lend thine ear,
Cast off this false hypocrisy's veneer;
This life a moment is, the next all time,
Sell not eternity for earthly gear!...Read more of this...

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