Famous Notice Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke
The First Elegy


Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me 
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
I that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror which we still are just able to endure
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel...Read more of this...

The Sparrow

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A little bird, with plumage brown,
Beside my window flutters down,
A moment chirps its little strain,
Ten taps upon my window-pane,
And chirps again, and hops along,
To call my notice to its song;
But I work on, nor heed its lay,
Till, in neglect, it flies away.
So birds of peace and hope and love
Come fluttering earthward from above,
To settle on life's window-sills,
And ease our load...Read more of this...

Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --

by Emily Dickinson
 Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --
Indicatives that Suns go down --

The Notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness -- is about to pass --...Read more of this...

They Did Not Expect This

by Vernon Scannell
 They did not expect this. Being neither wise nor brave 
And wearing only the beauty of youth's season 
They took the first turning quite unquestioningly 
And walked quickly without looking back even once. 

It was of course the wrong turning. First they were nagged 
By a small wind that tugged at their clothing like a dog; 
Then the rain...Read more of this...

Notice

by Steve Kowit
 This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into this street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to...Read more of this...

The Harvest Bow

by Seamus Heaney
 As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I...Read more of this...

World Take Good Notice

by Walt Whitman
 WORLD, take good notice, silver stars fading, 
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching, 
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning, 
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning, 
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores. 5...Read more of this...

Notice this cup made of clay; it is possessed of a

by Omar Khayyam
Notice this cup made of clay; it is possessed of a
soul! They say a jasmine produces the flowers of the
Judas-tree. But what do I say? The shining purity of
wine is a cause of my error? Oh, no [it is not wine], it is
diaphanous water shot with a liquid fire.
360...Read more of this...

Who Said It Was Simple

by Audre Lorde
 There are so many roots to the tree of anger 
that sometimes the branches shatter 
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march 
discussing the problematic girls 
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject 
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who...Read more of this...

Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing

by William Stafford
 The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.

Notice what this poem is not doing.

A house, a house, a barn, the old
quarry, where the river shrugs--
how much of this place is yours?

Notice what this poem is not doing.

Every person gone has taken a stone
to hold, and catch...Read more of this...

The Notice that is called the Spring

by Emily Dickinson
 The Notice that is called the Spring
Is but a month from here --
Put up my Heart thy Hoary work
And take a Rosy Chair.

Not any House the Flowers keep --
The Birds enamor Care --
Our salary the longest Day
Is nothing but a Bier....Read more of this...

Conversation

by Ai
 We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a...Read more of this...

The Chanpa Flower

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Supposing I became a chanpa flower, just for fun, and grew on a
branch high up that tree, and shook in the wind with laughter and
danced upon the newly budded leaves, would you know me, mother?
You would call, "Baby, where are you?" and I should laugh to
myself and keep quite quiet.
I should slyly open my petals and watch you at...Read more of this...

This that would greet -- an hour ago --

by Emily Dickinson
 This that would greet -- an hour ago --
Is quaintest Distance -- now --
Had it a Guest from Paradise --
Nor glow, would it, nor bow --

Had it a notice from the Noon
Nor beam would it nor warm --
Match me the Silver Reticence --
Match me the Solid Calm --...Read more of this...

No You Be A Lone Eagle

by Ogden Nash
 I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.
I just can't see any fun
In soaring up up up into the sun
When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium
That you'll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable
cranium.
I know the constant refrain
About how safer up in God's trafficless heaven...Read more of this...

Just Keep Quiet and Nobody Will Notice

by Ogden Nash
 There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to...Read more of this...

If I may have it when its dead

by Emily Dickinson
 If I may have it, when it's dead,
I'll be contented -- so --
If just as soon as Breath is out
It shall belong to me --

Until they lock it in the Grave,
'Tis Bliss I cannot weigh --
For tho' they lock Thee in the Grave,
Myself -- can own the key --

Think of it Lover! I and Thee
Permitted -- face to face...Read more of this...

Cosmopolitan Greetings

by Allen Ginsberg
 To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates
 & International Bards 1986

Stand up against governments, against God.

Stay irresponsible.

Say only what we know & imagine.

Absolutes are coercion.

Change is absolute.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.

Observe what's vivid.

Notice what you notice.

Catch yourself thinking.

Vividness is self-selecting.

If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.

Remember the future.

Advise only yourself.

Don't drink yourself to death.

Two molecules clanking against...Read more of this...

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

by William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length 
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.  Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I...Read more of this...

In the Stable

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and...Read more of this...

Disobedience

by Alan Alexander (A A) Milne
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he;
"You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can...Read more of this...

No Notice gave She but a Change --

by Emily Dickinson
 No Notice gave She, but a Change --
No Message, but a Sigh --
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

She was not warm, though Summer shone
Nor scrupulous of cold
Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled --

Of shrinking ways -- she did not fright
Though all the Village looked --
But held Her gravity aloft --
And met...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait At 28

by David Berman
 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...Read more of this...

Improvisations: Light And Snow

by Conrad Aiken
 I

The girl in the room beneath 
Before going to bed 
Strums on a mandolin 
The three simple tunes she knows. 
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! 
When she has finished them several times 
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails 
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

II

I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling
 1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,...Read more of this...

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