Famous Notwithstanding Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Floss wont save you from an Abyss

by Emily Dickinson
 Floss won't save you from an Abyss
But a Rope will --
Notwithstanding a Rope for a Souvenir
Is not beautiful --

But I tell you every step is a Trough --
And every stop a Well --
Now will you have the Rope or the Floss?
Prices reasonable --...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Columbine

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Kind Christians, all pay attention to me,
And Miss Mouat's sufferings I'll relate to ye;
While on board the Columbine, on the merciless sea,
Tossing about in the darkness of night in the storm helplessly. 

She left her home (Scatness), on Saturday morning, bound for Lerwick,
Thinking to get cured by a man she knew, as she was very sick;
But for eight days...Read more of this...

Elizabeth

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Elizabeth, it surely is most fit
[Logic and common usage so commanding]
In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
Zeno and other sages notwithstanding;
And I have other reasons for so doing
Besides my innate love of contradiction;
Each poet - if a poet - in pursuing
The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
Has studied very little of his part,
Read nothing,...Read more of this...

Vacant Lot With Pokeweed

by Amy Clampitt
 Tufts, follicles, grubstake
biennial rosettes, a low-
life beach-blond scruff of
couch grass: notwithstanding
the interglinting dregs

of wholesale upheaval and
dismemberment, weeds do not
hesitate, the wheeling
rise of the ailanthus halts
at nothing—and look! here's

a pokeweed, sprung up from seed
dropped by some vagrant, that's
seized a foothold: a magenta-
girdered bower, gazebo twirls
of blossom rounding into

raw-buttoned, garnet-rodded
fruit one more wayfarer
perhaps may salvage from
the season's frittering,
the annual wreckage....Read more of this...

Genius

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Genius, like gold and precious stones, 
is chiefly prized because of its rarity. 

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, 
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, 
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. 

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres 
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul 
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid...Read more of this...

A Song of Brave Men

by Henry Lawson
 Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave? – 
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave: 
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands, 
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands! 
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,...Read more of this...

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly

by Emily Dickinson
 From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged -- a Summer Afternoon --
Repairing Everywhere --

Without Design -- that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers -- understood --

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay --
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud --

Where Parties -- Phantom as Herself --
To Nowhere -- seemed to go
In...Read more of this...

A loss of something ever felt I --

by Emily Dickinson
 A loss of something ever felt I --
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was -- of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out --

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is --
I find myself still softly searching
For...Read more of this...

Not any more to be lacked --

by Emily Dickinson
 Not any more to be lacked --
Not any more to be known --
Denizen of Significance
For a span so worn --

Even Nature herself
Has forgot it is there --
Sedulous of her Multitudes
Notwithstanding Despair --

Of the Ones that pursued it
Suing it not to go
Some have solaced the longing
To accompany --

Some -- rescinded the Wrench --
Others -- Shall I say
Plated the residue of...Read more of this...

To do a magnanimous thing

by Emily Dickinson
 To do a magnanimous thing
And take oneself by surprise
If oneself is not in the habit of him
Is precisely the finest of Joys --

Not to do a magnanimous thing
Notwithstanding it never be known
Notwithstanding it cost us existence once
Is Rapture herself spurn --...Read more of this...

Paradise is of the option

by Emily Dickinson
 Paradise is of the option.
Whosoever will
Own in Eden notwithstanding
Adam and Repeal....Read more of this...

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